Western Architecture focuses both on the technological achievements of architects and on stylistic considerations, and stresses that architecture is both a part of history and an art form in its own right.

Arranged chronologically, the book is divided into chapters on Classical, Early Christian, Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque, Neoclassical, 19th-century revivalism, International Modernism and Post-Modernism, with each epoch's most significant architects documented and described.

A wide range of examples, both familiar buildings and many others rarely seen outside specialist books, illustrate the text, and space is given to Eastern Europe, previously neglected by architectural historians, as well as ideologically suspect styles such as Stalinist classicism.