COLIN ROWE is well known for his books The Mathematics of the Ideal Villa and Collage City (with Fred Koetter), and many articles in magazines and books world wide. He has taught at the University of Liverpool, Texas, Cambridge and Cornell, and he has been cited by the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture as 'the most significant teacher of architecture in the latter half of the twentieth century'.

How can we begin to look back at modern architecture today? In this book, Colin Rowe leads us through the development of twentieth-century architecture designated as 'modern', in a series of essays which trace the themes of Epistemology, Eschatology, Iconography, Mechanism and Organism in their relation to architecture. The Architecture of Good Intentions is an attempt to articulate the complex of opinions, aims and visions promulgated at the beginning of this century, which, at the time, elicited a revolution in the art of building. In further studying the various climates of opinion back to their first visible adumbrations, Rowe offers a possibility of situating modern architecture within a historical, ideological and aesthetic tradition.

An insightful, lively and provocative analysis, reflecting the author's articulate passion fro modern architecture, The Architecture of Good Intentions is certain to be a key work for all architects and those with an interest in modern architecture and architectural aesthetics.