Peter Blundell Jones was Professor of Architecture at the University of Sheffield from 1994 until his death in 2016. He previously held teaching positions at the University of Cambridge and at London South Bank University, and was a prominent architectural writer, critic and historian.

Using examples ranging from farmhouses to hospitals to Cedric Price's Fun Palace, Peter Blundell Jones shows how the use of buildings is intimately tied to their social meaning. This carefully researched and well-argued book thereby helps re-cast architectural theory, bringing together separate frameworks-function, aesthetics and cultural value-into a single discourse. Professor Howard Davis, Faculty for Architecture at the University of Oregon, USA In a major contribution to the study of the anthropology of building, Peter Blundell Jones explores architecture's role as a setting for communal rituals, balancing familiar and less familiar examples from a range of cultures to provide many insights into the shared origins of different expressions in the buildings of both modern and traditional societies. Dr Eamonn Canniffe, Principal Lecturer at the Manchester School of Architecture, UK