Danish Architecture and Society gennemgår på dragende vis den arkitektoniske historie bag de institutioner og offentlige bygninger der har været med til at forme danskernes hverdag siden 1700-tallet og frem til i dag. Bogen beskriver hvordan disse institutioner opstod og har udviklet sig og følger de arkitektoniske og sociale idealer der under stadig forandring har haft indflydelse på design, interiør og organisering af institutionerne.

Bogen prydes af mere end 200 illustrationer – både tegninger, skitser, plantegninger og fotografier, mange aldrig før udgivet – som tilsammen beskriver dansk arkitekturhistorie og dens rolle i skabelsen af den danske velfærdsstat.

One of the primary strengths of this book is that it provides a broad overview of Danish public architecture that transcends formal tendencies or styles and includes a wide variety of architects. The emphasis on building types allows the authors a wide degree of latitude in choosing their examples from a variety of periods.

For all these reasons and in all these ways, this book is a gift to future scholarship. While it provides another model for layered, interdisciplinary study, the book also contains significant source material for continued research into individual building types, buildings and architects, and will undoubtedly be cited in many later studies, including my own. Moreover, it provides a signpost towards the extraordinary collections of architectural material held in The Danish National Art Library, which contains the treasures for many lifetimes of productive research. As such, it is another link in a long chain of articles, journals and books that stretches into the past and will continue into the future, illuminating the intimate relationship between Danish architecture and the society to which it gives form, for worse and for better.

— Fra forordet af Michael Sheridan