Reading buildings ... Brighton's Jubilee library. Photograph: Roger Bamber
Like many another dedicated "Week" of special events, Architecture Week has whizzed past without my having properly registered it was going on. For those who are curious, you can still visit "architecture island" in secondlife.com or a photographic exhibition of derelict buildings. The main events have been and gone but if, like me, you missed out, there's no need to be disheartened.
If you're interested in the buildings around you - and you probably should be, given the impact they have on all our lives - why not settle down with a good book? Architecture, despite being such a visual medium, has a long and illustrious history with the printed page.
It starts with Vetruvius. Marcus Vetruvius Pollio dedicated De Architectura Libri Decem (The Ten Books on Architecture) to his patron Augustus Caesar, in about 20 BC, setting out for the first time the principles that would be sacrosanct to architects for a good 1,500 years - from the golden mean to the basics of surveying, as well as the technology of artillery and siege machinery. The master masons responsible for Europe's great cathedrals obeyed his rules as faithfully as the generations of Roman engineers and builders who had preceded them.
In later years, great architects set out their manifestos in their own publications, influencing their contemporaries by arguing for their own philosophies. Andrea Palladio, responsible for the eponymous Palladian style and the inspiration for Inigo Jones's Queen's House in Greenwich, produced his Four Books on Architecture.
In the 20th Century, too, luminaries such as Le Corbusier published their own radical tracts - Towards a New Architecture continues to influence contemporary architects, although his style of building has proved unpopular with most non-architects since.
It's not just the architects who've resorted to print to get their views across - possibly the most influential book of recent years has been Prince Charles' A Vision of Britain. His famous views on the "carbuncle" proposed for the National Gallery led to the scheme being scrapped, and whatever you think of Charlie using his position to comment on a profession that regards him, at best, as an interfering amateur, there's no doubt that the book had a profound effect, and ushered in a more consensual approach to building using local vernaculars and materials. At its heart is a plea to respect the average citizen, and the historic buildings and traditions of Britain's towns and cities. It's surprisingly difficult to disagree with.
Perhaps the leading architect of his generation, Lord Wobbly himself has also penned (in conjunction with The Guardian's design critic, Jonathan Glancey) a very useful and scholarly guide to the last 5,000 years' building - The Story of Architecture is a great place to start if you're new to the subject, and takes you from ziggurats to Frank Gehry's Guggenheim. Invaluable, and not the slightest hint of polemic.
If you want to find out what the future holds, you could do a lot worse than Tony Chapman's soon-to-be published Architecture: 07. Glossy, yet by no means destined only for the coffee table, it showcases the most recent RIBA Award-winning buildings by new and established architects alike - this is the bleeding edge of architecture in Britain, and the best place to start if you're trying to work out which direction the profession is heading in. Even if you disagree with some of the judges' choices.
Of course, what we really need is a pop-up version. Photos just aren't a substitute for scale models.
But which other books would you recommend?
