Many of the world s greatest buildings are made of wood, yet it is undervalued or ignored in histories of architecture. However, leading designers around the world are increasingly drawn to it to satisfy social and environmental needs. Will Pryce is an award-winning photographer who trained as an architect and photojournalist. Intensely dramatic but not overdramatized, technically flawless but not merely documentary, his internationally acclaimed photographs convey all the excitement of encountering these amazing structures firsthand. He has traveled the world seeking the famous and the obscure. In the text he shows how the wooden heritage of Japan grew from its Buddhist history; how Russia's carpenters determined its iconic domes; how Norway's stave churches contain clues to her pagan past; how Turkic tribes brought the yali from Asia; how the settlers of New England employed a provincial English tradition on the new continent; and how, today, sophisticated architects such as Peter Zumthor and Renzo Piano are inventing an eloquent new wooden architecture.

This epic history is the first comprehensive survey of the use of wood in architecture throughout the ages. The book is organized both chronologically and geographically. It features works from the oldest heritage of wooden buildings (Kyoto's Buddhist temples and Scandinavia's pagan-inspired stave churches) to the latest cutting edge designs, proving that wood is on the rise as the preferred material in these ecologically conscious times. Every region of the world with a native tradition of building with wood is carefully examined. In North America, the book demonstrates the European origins of New England's clapboards and saltboxes, and later shows how such sophisticated California architects as Greene & Greene or Bernard Maybeck could blend age-old traditions of the Far East and Switzerland with a Pacific Coast sense of novelty and whimsy. Spectacular and diverse photographs highlight the architectural masterpieces of wooden architecture throughout the world, illustrating that wood is a building material with a deep history as well as a vibrant future.