Contributors to this volume strive to uncover architectural alternatives to simplistic models based on concepts of aesthetics, technology, or sociology. Seventeen essays explore historical topics ranging from antiquity, with a study of the Roman Colosseum; through early Renaissance subjects, such as the treatises of Luca Pacioli on architecture; and, through to the modern era and explorations on topics ranging from seventeenth-century Amsterdam to architectural insights that can be found in the works of the poet and mathematician Lewis Carroll. Authors examining contemporary issues seek to explicate the spatial poetics of architecture by invoking other artistic disciplines. Essays in this group include a discussion of the accomplishments of Gordon Matta-Clark, a reading of Alfred Hitchcock's "Rear Window", and an analysis of the implications of ethical/formal questions in the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein for architecture.Contributors include Caroline Dionne (Universite de Quebec a Montreal), Mark Dorrian (University of Edinburgh), Michael Emerson (University of New South Wales), Marc Glaudemans (University of Technology), George Hersey (emeritus, Yale University), Robert Kirkbride (design director, Studiolo), Joanna Merwood (doctoral dissertation, Princeton University), Michel Moussette (Ph. D. at the Universite de Montreal), Juhani Pallasmaa (architect, Finland, emeritus Washington University in St. Louis), Alberto Perez-Gomez (McGill University), David Theodore (McGill University), and Dorian Yurchuk (architect, New York City).