Sweet Disorder and the Carefully Careless

"Sweet Disorder and the Carefully Careless: Theory and Criticism inArchitecture" is the first comprehensive collection of essays by RobertMaxwell, an important member of the postwar generation of architects who established a critical interest in the pre-war modernist tradition, agroup including Colin Rowe, James Stirling, and Alan Colquhoun. Manyessays in the book, written over the last ten years, originally appearedin scholarly and professional journals, including Oppositions, Architectural Digest, and Progressive Architecture.

From a diverse selection of essays emerges the powerful voice of aparticular sensibility as Maxwell considers the tension between opposedurges in architecture: the rational, technological, timeless monumentality of the Modern Movement and the more emotional, nostalgic references of historicism. Out of this tension, he argues, can come a vital juxtaposition, a "sweet disorder" that should be cultivated by architects in the search for valid architectural forms.

"Sweet Disorder" joins "Sexuality and Space" in a growing series of titles called Princeton Papers on Architecture, published in collaboration with the Princeton University School of Architecture.