"Contemporary architecture in much of Europe can be said to reflect the commercial exigencies of our times. Globalization, market forces and the standardized products of the building industry increasingly shape the environments that surround us. The work of the Swiss architect Peter Markli in many respects resists all that. It stands apart - constructs a temporal pause. Greek antiquity, the Romanesque and the farmhouses of the Po Delta are all because of their elementary character, sources of inspiration and, like them, Markli's architecture approximates an ideality that it never seeks to achieve. Peter Markli has an exceptional presence in an architectural culture that has produced some of the world's most unconventional buildings of the last decade. In Switzerland he is an architect's architect: this book is the first to document and analyse his work for an international audience."--Jacket.