Deyan Sudjic’s The Edifice Complex isn’t awful. It’s thoughtful, well researched and full of interesting examples.  It’s also overreaching, authoritative and prone to leaps in logic.  Sudjic wants to have the readers believe that he has come up with a fresh theory on why powerful people commission buildings: to stroke their egos and imprint their legacy’s onto the larger world.  If you were to turn to a group of friends while walking around Midtown and pass off Sudjic’s theory as your own, you’d probably be met with a chorus of duh’s followed by a few minutes of being made fun of.

But I want to help Sudjic because I do believe he’s on to something.  In my (admittedly un-researched) opinion, the powerful commission architects as homages to themselves, but not in the way Sudjic seems to think.  Sure, there are imprints of the person’s character and taste on each of these buildings; if you were paying someone millions to build something on your behalf you’d assume they would attempt to tailor it specifically to you (and it would probably be their last job if they failed to do so).  But the act of deciding to erect a building in your own honor is a form of large scale philanthropy. Rich people give because they feel a sense of purpose – Who else is going to donate 50 million dollars to save dolphins in the Pacific? – and this sense of purpose leads them to commission buildings.  Who else has the power to give a University a new library, an urban skyline the modern building it deserves? Sure, there are plenty of structures that were built  wholly selfishly, but those are the exceptions, not the rule.  A book researching the psychology behind the powerful’s sense of duty that is entangled in their narcissism would be far more interesting, and might require actual interviews.  But in its current, singularly focused state, The Edifice Complex would have best been served as a kitschy 3rd story in the NY Times Magazine.