Spires that aspire

Buildings are a lot more like people than you may think. That’s the impression one gets from the lavish photographs in “Architectural Excellence: 500 Iconic Buildings” (Firefly Books: 512 pp., $49.95). Preening (Jag Mandir, a white marble palace on Lake Pichola in Rajasthan, India, completed in 1620), no-nonsense (Walter Gropius’ 1926 Bauhaus in Dessau, Germany), exuberant (New York’s Chrysler Building, designed by William Van Alen and completed in 1930) -- there are many personalities on display here.

More than just presenting us with style and function, this book traces architecture’s place in the march of time. Conquest, trade and culture all come startlingly alive as buildings become players and purveyors in the exchange of ideas and influence of power. Or, as Paul Cattermole explains in his introduction, a “single building may offer an interesting historical snapshot, but without the support of its forebears and successors its meaning is substantially diluted.” One building, though, struck me as so simple in its ability to tell us about our aspirations. Hope is palpable in the ziggurat of the Great Mosque of Samarra in Iraq, as it spirals five times toward the sky. Apart from the minaret, though, much of the mosque lies in ruins, reminding us that buildings, like people, disappear.

-- Orli Low