Barbarian Architecture

A richly visual architectural history and theory of modernity that reexamines Thorstein Veblen’s classic text The Theory of the Leisure Class through the lens of Chicago in the 1890s.An important critic of modern culture, American economist Thorstein Veblen is best known for the concept of “conspicuous consumption,” the ostentatious and wasteful display of goods in the service of social status—a term he coined in his 1899 classic The Theory of the Leisure Class. In the field of architectural history, scholars have employed Veblen in support of a wide range of arguments about modern architecture, but never has he attracted a comprehensive and critical treatment from the viewpoint of architectural history. In Barbarian Architecture, Joanna Merwood-Salisbury corrects this omission by reexamining Veblen’s famous book as an original theory of modernity and situating it in a particular place and time—Chicago in the 1890s.Merwood-Salisbury takes her title from Veblen’s use of the term “barbar