The review in its multiplicity of forms and directions can be said to underpin architecture, and is crucial for its dissemination. From the perspective of a writer in and of architecture, the review is a means of both responding to the physical and creating another form on the page. This article focuses mainly on writers whose work moved from print to physical architecture: Walter Besant and Orhan Pamuk. It stresses the importance of “looking again” in relation to forms of architectural review, from the ambulatory glance to the in-depth reflection, through an array of examples including the “artefactual” and archi-fiction, manifesto, monograph and still and moving image. Revisiting the review encompasses notions of paper architecture, reconstruction, scale, weight and titles. It demonstrates how the review, the process of looking again, recovers the building or book itself and also, unavoidably, revisits the historical and political and personal narratives attached to it.

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Architecture and Culture on 16 March 2020, available online: https://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/20507828.2020.1701348.