Unit 3: Exercise 1

Read the sentences in the box. Do the verbs in bold in the sentences refer to past time?
Complete the table with the sentences. The first one has been done for you.
Architects used to produce all their drawings on a wooden drawing board.
I wouldn’t want to be an artist unless I was a rich and famous one.
Breaking news – prime minister resigns in shock announcement
When heated to high temperatures, the material becomes flexible and easy to work with.
He told me he was a sculptor.
not past time past time

Most architects wish that they didn’t have to

work such long hours.

Unit 3: Exercise 2
Read the information. Then skim read the article quickly. Put the topics in the order in
which they appear in the article.
In the IELTS Reading test, there isn’t a task that asks you to put information in the correct order.
However, doing this is a useful way for you to practise quickly looking at the whole text to see
what it is about before trying to answer the questions.
Architectural determinism
Back in the 1960s, the Welsh academic and town planner Maurice Broady came up with a new term in
architectural speak: architectural determinism. This referred to what he saw as the practice of making
unjustified claims that the built environment could somehow change people’s behaviour in ways that
could be predicted. It was a new term to describe what at the time was not uncommon. Although the
idea of architectural determinism is now widely discredited, it had allowed the heroes of architecture
to make all sorts of ridiculous claims in the past.
In the 1400s, one of the stars of the Italian Renaissance, Leon Battista Alberti, claimed that the
balanced classical forms of well-designed buildings would convince invaders to abandon their
weapons and become calm, non-violent citizens.
In the early twentieth century, the British theorist and planner Ebenezer Howard developed the idea of
garden cities. These were to be village-like housing schemes with substantial gardens and green areas,
and were intended to provide working people with an alternative to living in ‘crowded, unhealthy
cities’. He envisaged a ‘group of slumless, smokeless cities’, in which employees, benefiting from
better living and working conditions, would be more efficient.
Frank Lloyd Wright, designer of New York’s Guggenheim Museum and many of the USA’s most
iconic houses, believed that appropriate architectural design could even save the USA from corruption
and make people more virtuous.
The Swiss-born modernist architect Le Corbusier declared that one of the houses he designed outside
Paris, the Villa Savoye, would heal the sick. But when it did exactly the opposite (its large windows
made the house overheat, and its flat roofs let in the rain), the owners threatened legal action. Le
Corbusier only managed to avoid court due to the outbreak of the Second World War.
The failings of modernist architecture are well documented, and many writers and theorists have made
a living out of critiquing it. But the high point of this trend was the delight that many shared over the
demolition of the disastrous Pruitt-Igoe urban housing complex in St Louis in the USA. It had been
designed by architects George Hellmuth, Minoru Yamasaki and Joseph Leinweber, supposedly to
create ‘community gathering spaces and safe, enclosed play yards’. And yet for some reason, the
community declined to gather and play safely in their enclosed yards. Instead, the complex became a
hotspot for crime and poverty and was demolished in the 1970s.
As with many of the modernist planning and design philosophies of the twentieth century,
architectural determinism was appealing at first sight but ultimately misguided. It became
unfashionable during the post-modern era and all but disappeared. One of the consequences of this
loss of faith in the power of architecture is that architects are now left defenceless before the superior
technical know-how of structural engineers, the restrictions placed on them by generations of planners
and the calculations of project managers.
But was architectural determinism dismissed too soon? This is one question posed by Jan
Golembiewski, a researcher in the environmental determinants of mental health at the University of
Sydney and a consultant for Medical Architecture, a firm specialising in architectural psychology.
Golembiewski’s research has found that the healthier a person is, the more a well-designed
environment will affect them positively, and the less a badly designed one will affect them negatively.
Patients who are mentally ill react more negatively to bad environments, which means ‘fewer smiles,
less laughter and a reported drop in feeling the fun of life’.
Likewise, Charles Montgomery, author of Happy City: Transforming our Lives Through Urban
Design, points out that some environments do affect our moods, and that they do so rather predictably.
His central thesis is that urban sprawl – the unplanned spread of car-dependent, low-density
development that accounts for most new housing in many parts of the world – makes us unhappy and
isolated and drives teenagers to boredom. The drawbacks of urban sprawl aren’t confined to
psychological health; living amongst sprawl ages people by an extra four years, and there are four
times as many fatal traffic accidents on suburban roads as on city streets, according to Montgomery’s
research.
Many progressive measures were implemented by Enrique Peñalosa during his tenure as mayor of
Bogota in Colombia from 1998 to 2000. Bogota, now a city of 8 million people, had no underground
rail system at that time and suffered from chronic congestion. Peñalosa’s city model gave priority to
children and people not using vehicles. He built hundreds of kilometres of cycle paths, pavements and
parks, and set up traffic-free zones. He organised a car-free day in 2000 (now an annual event), took
measures to address poverty and started a programme of urban improvement, with more than 100,000
trees being planted across the city. All of these are impressive accomplishments in themselves, but his
most compelling legacy has to be the way that he transformed people’s view of Bogota. Whereas
previously, the city’s troubles had been seen as an inevitable consequence of uncontrolled urban
growth, people now began to see that they could influence change in Bogota for the better.
Clearly, there is now a resurgence in the belief that the built environment is a key factor in how we
feel, and that buildings are central to influencing behaviour. Many of the journals adopting this stance,
such as World Health Design and Environment and Behaviour , focus primarily on the design of
healthcare facilities, as this is where quality design can potentially have life-and-death consequences.
Schools of architecture need to focus on how their students might predict how their designs can
impact the users of the buildings, and give thought to including calming areas and spaces, such as
gardens, in order to affect our moods, behaviours and health in as positive a way as possible.

an abandoned belief about what architecture could do

the reappearance and increased popularity of an idea
the similar findings of two writers
exaggerated claims made by architects about buildings
the positive influence of one politician on an environment
the virtual disappearance of a belief about architecture

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.

Unit 3: Exercise 3
Read the information. Then quickly skim read the article in exercise 2 again to see what the
main ideas are. Read the four sentences about the article in the box. Which two sentences are
the main ideas, and which two are the less important supporting ideas? Complete the table with
the sentences.
Being able to distinguish between the main ideas in a text and the supporting information is a
very useful reading skill. It will help you with lots of different task types in the IELTS Reading
test, including multiple-choice questions and matching headings tasks.
After reading the text and identifying the two or three main ideas, try to express them in your own
words.

People used to think that architecture could change the world.

There is more interest nowadays in how building designs affect people psychologically.
The architect Le Corbusier faced legal difficulties during his career.
Some architectural projects in the past proved to be failures.

main ideas supporting ideas

Unit 3: Exercise 4
Read the tip box about the True / False / Not Given task. Then read the statements and choose
the correct answer.
True / False / Not Given tasks
Learners of English at all levels of proficiency are familiar with reading and listening tasks that
ask them to decide if statements about the text are true or false. In the IELTS Reading test, this
task type is given a twist: instead of two options (True or False), there are three: True, False or
Not Given. In particular, it appears to be the identification of this third option, Not Given, that
many candidates consider to be a real challenge.
There seems to be a widely held misconception that these questions have been written to trick
candidates. While there are certainly pitfalls to be avoided, the questions are designed to enable
you to develop a very important reading skill: being able to read a text closely and critically, and
to tell the difference between what a text tells us and what it doesn’t.
So, what does ‘Not Given’ actually mean? Firstly, it isn’t the same thing as just being ‘False’.
With a false statement, we know that it’s wrong, or not true. If a statement is ‘Not Given’, then
we can’t tell from reading the text if the statement is true or not. It might be true or false, but the
text doesn’t say, so we can’t be sure.
1. ______________ IELTS candidates need to answer True / False / Not Given questions in the
Reading and Listening tests.
2. ______________ Some IELTS Reading candidates find it particularly tricky to identify when
a statement is ‘Not Given’.
3. ______________ True / False / Not Given questions only exist in order to make candidates get
some of the questions wrong.
4. ______________ If a text doesn’t confirm that a statement is true, but the statement isn’t
actually wrong, then the answer is ‘False’.
5. ______________ ‘Not Given’ basically means ‘we don’t know’.
Unit 3: Exercise 5
Read the information. Then read the opening paragraph of the article and the statements below.
Choose True or False.

This exercise will help you read a text very closely, asking yourself lots of questions about what
it really says. It will train you for the next exercise, in which you will attempt an IELTS-style
True / False / Not Given task.
Architectural determinism
Back in the 1960s, the Welsh academic and town planner Maurice Broady came up with a new term in
architectural speak: architectural determinism. This referred to what he saw as the practice of making
unjustified claims that the built environment could somehow change people’s behaviour in ways that
could be predicted. It was a new term to describe what at the time was not uncommon. Although the
idea of architectural determinism is now widely discredited, it had allowed the heroes of architecture
to make all sorts of ridiculous claims in the past.
1. ________ Maurice Broady invented the phrase ‘architectural determinism’.
2. ________ Broady thought architectural determinism was a good thing.
3. ________ Architectural determinism is the idea that architecture influences the way in which
people behave.
4. ________ The text says that many people believed in architectural determinism.
5. ________ Architectural determinism is still popular today.
Unit 3: Exercise 6
Read the information. Then read the first part of the article. Do the statements agree with the
information given in the article? Choose True, False or Not Given.
Choose
True if the statement agrees with the information
False if the statement contradicts the information
Not Given if there is no information on this.
Architectural determinism
Back in the 1960s, the Welsh academic and town planner Maurice Broady came up with a new
term in architectural speak: architectural determinism. This referred to what he saw as the practice of
making unjustified claims that the built environment could somehow change people’s behaviour in
ways that could be predicted. It was a new term to describe what at the time was not uncommon.
Although the idea of architectural determinism is now widely discredited, it had allowed the heroes of
architecture to make all sorts of ridiculous claims in the past.
In the 1400s, one of the stars of the Italian Renaissance, Leon Battista Alberti, claimed that the
balanced classical forms of well-designed buildings would convince invaders to abandon their
weapons and become calm, non-violent citizens.
In the early twentieth century, the British theorist and planner Ebenezer Howard developed the
idea of garden cities. These were to be village-like housing schemes with substantial gardens and
green areas, and were intended to provide working people with an alternative to living in ‘crowded,
unhealthy cities’. He envisaged a ‘group of slumless, smokeless cities’, in which employees,
benefiting from better living and working conditions, would be more efficient.
Frank Lloyd Wright, designer of New York’s Guggenheim Museum and many of the USA’s
most iconic houses, believed that appropriate architectural design could even save the USA from
corruption and make people more virtuous.
The Swiss-born modernist architect Le Corbusier declared that one of the houses he designed
outside Paris, the Villa Savoye, would heal the sick. But when it did exactly the opposite (its large
windows made the house overheat, and its flat roofs let in the rain), the owners threatened legal action.
Le Corbusier only managed to avoid court due to the outbreak of the Second World War.
The failings of modernist architecture are well documented, and many writers and theorists
have made a living out of critiquing it. But the high point of this trend was the delight that many
shared over the demolition of the disastrous Pruitt-Igoe urban housing complex in St Louis in the USA.
It had been designed by architects George Hellmuth, Minoru Yamasaki and Joseph Leinweber,
supposedly to create ‘community gathering spaces and safe, enclosed play yards’. And yet for some
reason, the community declined to gather and play safely in their enclosed yards. Instead, the complex
became a hotspot for crime and poverty and was demolished in the 1970s.
As with many of the modernist planning and design philosophies of the twentieth century,
architectural determinism was appealing at first sight but ultimately misguided. It became
unfashionable during the post-modern era and all but disappeared. One of the consequences of this
loss of faith in the power of architecture is that architects are now left defenceless before the superior
technical know-how of structural engineers, the restrictions placed on them by generations of planners
and the calculations of project managers.

1. _____________ Alberti believed that architecture could promote peace.

2. _____________ Howard studied the effectiveness of rural housing.
3. _____________ Lloyd Wright thought that good architecture could make people behave in a
morally better way.
4. _____________ Le Corbusier’s claims about the Villa Savoye proved to be accurate.
5. _____________ Hellmuth, Yamasaki and Leinweber were pleased when the Pruitt-Igoe housing
complex was destroyed.
6. _____________ Architects often find it difficult to get on with colleagues in the building industry.

Unit 3: Exercise 7
Read the information. Then complete the table. Use the words and phrases in the box.
This activity reviews the paraphrases used in the True / False / Not Given reading tasks which
you completed earlier in this unit. In this task, you are looking for wording that expresses a very
similar meaning. The meaning doesn’t have to be exactly the same, so you may find that a
different form of a verb is used, for example.

colleagues in the building industry destroy invented a phrase

make people behave in a morally better way promote peace

phrases from the article phrases from the questions with similar
meanings
came up with a new term
convince invaders to abandon their weapons
save the USA from corruption and make people
more virtuous
demolish
structural engineers … planners … project
managers

Unit 3: Exercise 8
Match the sentence halves to create tips for doing multiple-choice questions in the IELTS
Reading test.
a. don’t need to know about these in order to get the answers.
b. good idea to cross it out on the question paper.
c. in the same order as the information you need to find in the text.
d. look for matching words.
e. than to leave the answer blank, as you won’t lose points for incorrect answers.
f. two answers from five, or sometimes three from six.
1. Texts might be about specialist academic subjects, but you …
2. The numbered questions will be …
3. Look for matching meanings in the text and the questions; don’t just …
 4. As well as choosing one correct answer from four options, you might need to select …
5. As soon as you’ve worked out that one of the options isn’t correct, it’s a …
6. If you really don’t know an answer (or are running out of time), it’s better to take a guess …

Unit 3: Exercise 9
Look at the words in bold in the second part of the article. Are they used in a positive or
negative way? Complete the table with the words in the box. The first one has been done for
you.
F The failings of modernist architecture are well documented, and many writers and theorists
have made a living out of critiquing it. But the high point of this trend was the delight that
many shared over the demolition of the disastrous Pruitt-Igoe urban housing complex in St
Louis in the USA. It had been designed by architects George Hellmuth, Minoru Yamasaki and
Joseph Leinweber, supposedly to create ‘community gathering spaces and safe, enclosed play
yards’. And yet for some reason, the community declined to gather and play safely in their
enclosed yards. Instead, the complex became a hotspot for crime and poverty and was
demolished in the 1970s.
G As with many of the modernist planning and design philosophies of the twentieth century,
architectural determinism was appealing at first sight but ultimately misguided. It became
unfashionable during the post-modern era and all but disappeared. One of the consequences of
this loss of faith in the power of architecture is that architects are now left defenceless before
the superior technical know-how of structural engineers, the restrictions placed on them by
generations of planners and the calculations of project managers.
H But was architectural determinism dismissed too soon? This is one question posed by Jan
Golembiewski, a researcher in the environmental determinants of mental health at the
University of Sydney and a consultant for Medical Architecture, a firm specialising in
architectural psychology. Golembiewski’s research has found that the healthier a person is, the
more a well-designed environment will affect them positively, and the less a badly designed
one will affect them negatively. Patients who are mentally ill react more negatively to bad
environments, which means ‘fewer smiles, less laughter and a reported drop in feeling the fun
of life’.
I Likewise, Charles Montgomery, author of Happy City: Transforming our Lives Through Urban
Design, points out that some environments do affect our moods, and that they do so rather
predictably. His central thesis is that urban sprawl – the unplanned spread of car-
dependent, low-density development that accounts for most new housing in many parts of the
world – makes us unhappy and isolated and drives teenagers to boredom. The drawbacks of
urban sprawl aren’t confined to psychological health; living amongst sprawl ages people by an
extra four years, and there are four times as many fatal traffic accidents on suburban roads as
on city streets, according to Montgomery’s research.
J Many progressive measures were implemented by Enrique Peñalosa during his tenure as mayor
of Bogota in Colombia from 1998 to 2000. Bogota, now a city of 8 million people, had no
underground rail system at that time and suffered from chronic congestion. Peñalosa’s city
model gave priority to children and people not using vehicles. He built hundreds of kilometres
of cycle paths, pavements and parks, and set up traffic-free zones. He organised a car-free day
in 2000 (now an annual event), took measures to address poverty and started a programme of
urban improvement, with more than 100,000 trees being planted across the city. All of these are
impressive accomplishments in themselves, but his most compelling legacy has to be the way
that he transformed people’s view of Bogota. Whereas previously, the city’s troubles had been
seen as an inevitable consequence of uncontrolled urban growth, people now began to see that
they could influence change in Bogota for the better.
K Clearly, there is now a resurgence in the belief that the built environment is a key factor in how
we feel, and that buildings are central to influencing behaviour. Many of the journals adopting
this stance, such as World Health Design and Environment and Behaviour , focus primarily on the
design of healthcare facilities, as this is where quality design can potentially have life-and-death
consequences. Schools of architecture need to focus on how their students might predict how
 their designs can impact the users of the buildings, and give thought to including calming areas
and spaces, such as gardens, in order to affect our moods, behaviours and health in as positive a
way as possible.

drawbacks (Paragraph I) uncontrolled (Paragraph J) appealing (Paragraph G)

calming (Paragraph K) isolated (Paragraph I) sprawl (Paragraph I)
misguided (Paragraph G) chronic (Paragraph J) hotspot (Paragraph F)
progressive (Paragraph J) disastrous (Paragraph F) compelling (Paragraph J)
accomplishments (Paragraph J) defenceless (Paragraph G)

positive meaning negative meaning

delight (Paragraph F)

Unit 3: Exercise 10
Read the second part of the article again (Paragraphs F-K in exercise 9). Choose the correct
answers to the questions.
1. What does the writer say about the Pruitt-Igoe housing complex?
o A What does the writer say about the Pruitt-Igoe housing complex?
o B People were pleased when it was destroyed.
o C The architects were praised for its design.
o D The building was criticised unfairly.
2. Jan Golembiewski and Charles Montgomery agree that ...
o A architects need to predict the moods of people who use the buildings they design.
o B mentally ill people react positively to positive environments.
o C the places people are in can affect the way that they feel.
o D ugly buildings make most people feel unhappier.
3. According to the writer, what was Peñalosa’s most significant achievement in Bogota?
o A banning cars in poor areas of the city
o B beginning to build the metro
o C changing attitudes towards the city
o D encouraging children to cycle more
4. The writer suggests that there is most likely to be an increased interest in how people are
psychologically affected by the design of ...
o A gardens.
o B hospitals.
o C housing.
o D universities.