Narrative Architecture

To architects the enduring attraction of narrative is that it offers a way of engaging with the way a city feels and works. Rather than reducing architecture to mere style or an overt emphasis on technology, it foregrounds the experiential dimension of architecture. In practice it is just as easy to be minimalist as maximalist in its execution. Nigel Coates' Narrative Architecture is the first publication to look the subject in the eye. It deals with its background, analysis and practice as well as its future development.

Nigel Coates is an architect, designer and educator. Along with eight of his ex-students, he founded the avant-garde NATO group in 1983. With Doug Branson he began Branson Coates, Architecture in 1985 (until 2006), and together they built extensively in Japan and the UK. He is a prolific product and furniture designer working predominantly with Italian companies. His drawings and furniture are in the collection of the VA and FRAC in Orleans. He has exhibited extensively, including at the Cristina Grajales Gallery, New York, and at the Venice "Architecture Biennale in 2000, 2006 and 2008. He is the author of several books, including Guide to Ecstacity (2003) arid Collidoscope (2004). Between 1995-2011 Coates led Architecture at the Royal College of Art, London. He now has his own architecture and design studio and is RCA Emeritus Professor: