I bought that Muschamp book a few years ago, largely for
the same reasons.  Upon reading it, if I recall
correctly, I found some parts intriguing, some parts
worth nodding along in agreement, and some parts just a
bunch of crap.  I think it was the latter parts that I e-
mailed to a friend in architecture school at the time.
Come to think of it, I don't think he ever responded to
those messages....

- Johnette
> -- Herbert Muschamp, "File under Architecture"
> I bought this book, because of the cover - corrugated card board - and its
> comments on the back page: "I am an architect who has neither designed nor
> built any buildings nor has the inclination to do so.I call myself an
> architect purely out of the comic conceit which is all that remains of the
> Western architectural tradition.  Buildings have such short life spans
> nowadays, and few bother to look at them, anyway.  Planning schemes must be
> revised each year, and still can't keep up.  Last winter's cosmic comical
> conceptual designs are forgotten with the appearance of the new spring line.
> Books last longer, take up less space, are easier to take care of, make
> better gifts than do most buildings.  In the last analysis, architecture is
> not a very highly evolved state of mind."  1974, Cambridge, MA
> Best,
> Leland