Rice's Language of Buildings

As Matthew Rice says, once you speak any language, communication can begin - and the same is true for architecture. If you do not know how to describe a building, you cannot say what is or isn’t exciting, dull or peculiar about it. Freed of ‘the curly bit on top of the square thing’, fluent in volutes, hood moulds, lobed architraves and bucrania, you will leave a cathedral or country house with as much to say as from a visit to a cinema, theatre or gallery.