Totems: Selected Essays on Architecture

A collection of essays by London-based architect Irénée Scalbert.

Totems brings together ten texts by architect, historian, and critic Irénée Scalbert. Written between 2001 and 2025, they reflect nearly three decades of critical engagement with architecture and its cultural contexts. Ranging in length and register—from concise meditations to extended analytical essays—the collection captures the evolution of Scalbert’s thinking as a critic, teacher, and participant in architectural discourse.

Organized thematically into sections on buildings, cities, and the environment, Totems traces a loosely autobiographical arc. Earlier pieces echo Scalbert’s formative years in London during a period of architectural ferment are marked by the work of James Stirling and Norman Foster, influential figures from Europe such as Aldo Rossi, as well as his close association with a generation of contemporaries, including Peter St John (Caruso St John Architects), and Tom Emerson and Stephanie Macdonald (6a architects). Later texts expand outward, both geographically and conceptually, as Scalbert brings a speculative and at times personal lens to questions of urbanism, nature, and meaning in contemporary architecture.