Gnostic Architecture

The definitive statement of Eric Owen Moss’ design theory, Gnostic Architecture seeks to expand the discussion of contemporary architecture beyond debates over style or ideology. It does so, however, not by turning to conventional site analysis or fashionable intellectual trends for support, but by emphasizing the architect’s personal approach to the act of building. Moss focuses on fundamental questions that face architects who build critically. Gnosticism, he argues, allows the architect to transcend the contradictions encountered along the path that is the practice of architecture, so that the architect may rely on internally derived insights. According to Moss, the measure of an architect’s integrity is finally dependent on the architect’s own introverted compass and not on external factors. The book, with its unique, trapezoidal shape and suggestive visual character, gives tangible material expression to Moss’ poetic sense of the personalized intersection of architecture and culture.