How Architecture Tells: 9 Realities that will Change the Way You See

The general reading public is likely to think of architecture as buildings. But, with this book, Robert Steinberg would like to help readers understand that architecture shapes lives. Architecture can help communities integrate and thrive. Architecture can touch us, influencing how we feel, and how we interact with others. In short, architecture can fundamentally improve our quality of life.

As a young graduate architect fresh from Berkeley, Steinberg began to discover the potential of architecture to shape communities. Working with his father, an architect who had studied with Mies van der Rohe (and whose father was also an architect), one of Steinberg’s first projects was to draft and redraft a parking garage in downtown Silicon Valley, CA. As he mediated between the two architects in charge of the project―his father and the city architect―he noticed that with each evolution, the garage became more beautiful and refined. And with each improvement, this garage became more able to succeed in the goal of reviving the dying downtown core of Silicon Valley.