Robert Kronenburg's This Must Be The Place provides an unprecedented facet of architectural theory in the form of the popular music performance space. For the reader, an expanse of terrain is covered, from the idea of popular music in the home to the idea of travelling stages and record stores, Kronenburg's work here not only explores in historic detail the spaces of popular music performance through time as we assume them – the ballroom, the jazz club, the cabaret, for example – but explores the spatiality of these spaces for music both in terms of functionality, practicality and spatial organisation, and spatial experience, engagement and emotion. A major part of the book's success lies in the relationship between its research approach and the subject matter, addressing the spaces of music and performance by working through a traditional architectural history methodology results in a multitude of insightful descriptions of venues and buildings which in turn reveal stories about the towns and cities within which they are located.

The book is organised into 12 chapters (including introduction and conclusion), each of which is themed according to typologies of space, building and architectonics as well as notions of the sociocultural and community, such as Chapter 4 entitled ‘Jazz Clubs, Social Clubs and Riverboats’. These follow an engaging preface which locates the work in Kronenburg's own embryonic experience of music venues and explains the aim of the book to be: ‘the first architectural history of popular music performance space, describing its beginning, its different typologies and its development into a distinctive genre of building design’ (p. xvii), and This Must Be The Place does exactly that. By a smooth synergy of historical fact, forensic analysis and discursive observation, the book provides a thoroughly engaging and informative text which, at opportune moments, delves into theoretical concepts of the authenticity, significance and identity of space and architecture. In turn, these readings present co-habitual representations of the authenticity, significance and identity in the soundscapes and compositions of popular music practitioners and their reception.

Furthermore, these readings are widely referenced and framed not only within the fields of architecture and music, but also those of film and cultural history. For example, in Chapter 9, ‘Festival Stages and Travelling Sets’, the idea of the temporal and transience through music, film and architecture underpins the spectacles of performance such as The Wall Live. Visually and spatially, this show consists of an all-encompassing stage set designed by Mark Fisher for Pink Floyd's The Wall comprising a chorus of school children (‘we don't need no education’), stacked bricks and the ‘horrific giant school teacher’ (p. 156). Kronenburg's discussion of Fisher's set, interwoven by a descriptive, almost meta-narrative, places the author at the scene (Kronenburg opens all the chapters with a contextualisation narrative) and provides the armature for historic presentations of complementary and contrasting events such as The Beatles at New York's Shea Stadium, the Woodstock Festival and Glastonbury's Pyramid Stage. Drawing on This Is Spinal Tap, and the symphonically epic compositions of the prog-rock era (Genesis, Emerson, Lake and Palmer et al.), Kronenburg captures the very essence of the momentary music venue (venue in the loosest term) for the transiently epic, pinpointing the temporality of the show as a typology of architecture in its own right.

Other chapters which challenge the conventional bounds of music venues are Chapter 1, ‘Introduction: Popular Music, Architecture and the Home’, and Chapter 12, ‘Record Scenes’. It is no accident that these discussions top and tail the book. In the introductory chapter Kronenburg outlines the scope of the work and his methodology, but also explores the domestic as venue. Here in Chapter 1, through presentations of the Casbah, Liverpool and Pete Doherty and Carl Barȃt from The Libertines’ flat in Bethnal Green, he explores how the specialness of the home – the most private series of spaces – can also be a place for public performance, both during their lives as homes and as converted, permanent performance venues. In Chapter 12, the author presents an overview of scenes and subcultures, made concrete by their attachment to specific cultural touchstones – often record labels which spawned venues – such as Factory Records (and its associated venue The Haçienda, Manchester) and Fever Records (and its associated venue Disco Fever, New York), generating their own music performance spaces.

There is a strong sense that this book comes from the heart, evident in Kronenburg's narrative but also in the many references to Liverpool and the North-West, some 20 images from the author's field work, and extensive appendices which categorise venue type by capacity, music performance priority and geographic location (Appendix I), and the typology and date of construction of the principal buildings described in the main text (Appendix II). It is clear that this book does, as the author himself acknowledges, contain ‘many omissions’ (p. xvii), particularly in places where popular music is played, however, and again acknowledged by Kronenburg, this single volume is not intended as an encyclopaedia, nor does it delve deep into the technical data of the case study. What the book does do – and excellently – is provide an historical and theoretical stratum for the development of a new genre of architecture, and hopefully of research into the importance of the spatial and architectonic qualities of the music venue, and reify the idea that music performance spaces and places are crucial to the development of society across geographies.