Bold Ventures: Thirteen Tales of Architectural Tragedy

In thirteen fascinating chapters, Charlotte Van den Broeck goes in search of buildings that were fatal to their architects—architects who either killed themselves or are rumored to have done so. They range across time & space from a church with a twisted spire in seventeenth-century France to a theater that collapsed mid-performance in 1920s Washington, DC, & an eerily sinking swimming pool in the author’s hometown. Drawing on a vast range of material, from Hegel and Darwin to art history, stories from her own life, & popular culture, Van den Broeck brings patterns into focus as she asks, What is that strange, life-or-death connection between a creation and its creator?

Threaded through each story is the author’s meditation on the...