Many of the fundamental problems that architects encounter in design practice--questions of proportion, spatial composition, relations to the environment, representation, meaning, appropriateness to time, etc.--are manifestations of wider philosophical problems, according to the author, but many of the works that sought to address the importance of philosophy for architects in earlier decades merely borrowed philosophical jargon without systematically and coherently treating the philosophical ideas. His work aims for just such a systematic presentation and therefore begins with the early philosophical ideas of Plato and Socrates as relevant to architecture and proceeds through discussions of Aristotle, early modernity, Immanuel Kant, romanticism and historicism, phenomenology and hermeneutics, postmodernism and poststructuralism, and analytic philosophy. Annotation ©2011 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)