Nannini, S, et al. 2021. Reviews Summer 2021. Architectural Histories, 9(1): 11, pp.1–11. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5334/ ah.628 REVIEW Reviews Summer 2021 Sofa Nannini, Don Choi, Cosmin Ungureanu, Scott Redford and Miriam Volmert Nannini, S. A review of Antoine Picon, The Materiality of Architecture. Minneapolis and London: Minnesota University Press, 2020. Choi, D. A review of Neil Jackson, Japan and the West: An Architectural Dialogue. London: Lund Humphries, 2019. Ungureanu, C. A review of Natsumi Nonaka, Renaissance Porticoes and Painted Pergolas: Nature and Culture in Early Modern Italy. London & New York: Routledge, 2019 (2017). Redford, S. A review of D. Fairchild Ruggles Tree of Pearls: The Extraordinary Architectural Patronage of the 13th-Century Egyptian Slave-Queen Shajar al-Durr. New York: Oxford University Press, 2020. Volmert, M. A review of Susan Stewart, The Ruins Lesson: Meaning and Material in Western Culture. The University of Chicago Press: Chicago and London, 2020. Materiality, Humanity and Otherness: A New Perspective on Architecture? Sofia Nannini Università di Bologna, Università degli Studi di Firenze, Italy sofia.nannini2@gmail.com Antoine Picon, The Materiality of Architecture. Minneapolis and London: Minnesota University Press, 2020, 192 pages, ISBN 9781517909482 Architecture is a human artifact created from natural or man-made building materials. Its tangible nature cannot be ignored; the building derives from a distinct environ- mental and social context and comes to embody countless cultural meanings. Building materials and their varied his- torical connotations have been the subject of numerous material and construction histories that focus on either the development of specific materials in a given temporal epoch or building knowledge shared within a particular territory. Recent studies on building materials include Adrian Forty’s Concrete and Culture, Roberto Gargiani’s Concrete: from Archeology to Invention 1700–1769, and Valérie Nègre’s L’Art et la matière (Forty 2012; Gargiani 2013; Nègre 2016). Antoine Picon’s new book, The Mate- riality of Architecture (Figure 1), expands our perspective on building materials and their use throughout the cen- turies. The aim of this ambitious study is to offer readers, through the concept of materiality, a new lens through which to examine architectural history and theory. Accord- ing to Picon, materiality is the way we as humans relate to matter and materials. However, throughout the book this notion becomes broader and broader, requiring several Figure 1: Cover of The Materiality of Architecture. Photo credit: Minnesota University Press.