This important book, an erudite sweep across western architecture and thinking through the lens of Alberti's 'house-city' speaks to the emergent concern for pro-social place-making and in doing so provides a foundation for work in social value today. Bravo for illustrating so fulsomely how history is relevant for practitioners and for celebrating practice as a form of research.
Flora Samuel, Professor of Architecture, University of Cambridge
Inspired by the chiastic analogy that Alberti draws between the house and the city, Zucchi traces the historical justification for Alberti's proposition and explores its implications for contemporary practice. In so doing, he makes a powerful case for an architecture - and an urbanism - that is structured, above all, by social relationships; one that is concerned, in other words, as much with the way spaces interconnect as it is with the spaces themselves.
Bob Allies, Founding Partner, Allies and Morrison
Big House Little City is that rare beast, a drawbridge between the scholarly world of history and theory and the gritty realities of contemporary practice. Zucchi's ability to review ideas and designs from the last five centuries through a very current lens recasts the great thinkers of architecture and urbanism as modern-day mentors, very much in dialogue with the current generation, and ready to share both wisdom and mistakes.
Isabel Allen, Editor, Architecture Today
