You Should Consider… : Selected Writings by Richard Ingersoll

You Should Consider… brings together texts by American architecture critic Richard Ingersoll (1949–2021) from five decades, published in magazines such as Domus, Arquitectura Viva, and Lotus: critiques of key buildings and personalities, and reflections on topics and trends in architecture since the 1970s. The collection also offers a selection of his compelling editorials in the groundbreaking magazine Design Book Review, which he directed as editor-in-chief in the period 1983–98. Contributions by architectural historian Kenneth Frampton and architects John A. Loomis and Luis Fernández-Galliano place Ingersoll’s work in historical context.

Ingersoll was one of the most eloquent and astute architectural critics of his generation. Although born and educated in California, and heavily influenced by Spiro Kostof, his mentor at the University of California, Berkeley, Ingersoll’s intellectual, cultural, and architectural outlook is essentially European, and more especially Italian, where he spent most of his working life. This European sensibility is expressed in many of the texts in this collection, in which he persistently writes about the need for diversity and equality, as well as a more sympathetic approach to the environment—decades before others realised the importance of these causes. Intelligence and clarity, astute analysis, vivid imagery and conciseness, as well as a subtle sense of humour, characterise Ingersoll’s captivating prose.