No comments about Far from Equilibrium: Essays on Technology and Design Culture.

5 comments about The Option of Urbanism: Investing in a New American Dream.

1. In _The Option of Urbanism_, Christopher Leinberger documents the history of both urban ("walkable urbanism") and suburban ("drivable sub-urbanism") settings. Before WW II, most people lived in cities and towns where most of their needs (shopping, etc.) could be met via a short walk, or perhaps, with public transportation.
   
   After the war, the big swing was to the suburbs, due to several factors. Government and financial-institution policies tended to favor the suburbs, freeways, single-family housing and shopping malls....and discouraged any meaningful pro-urban development--at least until very recently. Nowadays there is a considerable demand for more dense housing, with destinations within walking distance.
   
   Although Leinberger is very much in favor of urbanism, he does talk about some problems with it (affordability/gentrification is a big issue with some of the newer urban developments). Neither does he call for the suburbs to cease to exist, although he warns that some suburban developments may be hurt by the shift to the cities, rising gas prices, etc. (This book was written right before the current mortgage and gas price crises, and we're starting to see their effects on certain suburban areas as I write this)



2. Great book. I lived the phases of walkable neighborhoods to driving-suburban. Now we have return to sustainable, walking neighborhoods especially with the gas cost.
   
   As I grew up, I felt supply and demand dictated growth. This book explained government and economic factors that influence development.
   
   good read



3. I met Chris Leinberger 13 years ago when we began in earnest to address how we were growing in Atlanta. He was knowledgeable, articulate and helpful then, and he continues to be so today. I have borrowed extensively from this new book of his in helping people to understand how growth and development issues relate to each other, why we must pursue walkable urban development, and what the multiple benefits are that derive from this approach to development and redevelopment. This book is well written, is appropriate for lay persons and "wonks" and can be read in just a few sittings. Thank you, Chris, for a terrific resource at such an important time in our nation's development history.



4. Written from a perspective that most urban critiques fail to provide, this book grounds the reader in the real estate, demographic and policy realities that have shaped the American built environment into what we see today. Leinberger knows this stuff cold, both as a developer and through his more recent positions in Brookings and academia. He writes in an approachable style and provides the most thorough discussion to date of the entrenched system of subsidies and practices fueling types of residential and commercial construction that is increasingly at odds with the "true" market. Late in the book, I think he makes a rare--but very appropriate--connection between the implication of the continuation of these policies and our future energy needs. For those of us who like a good, constructive reality check now and again in the midst of all the usual suburban finger-wagging, it's a must-read book this year.



5. People outside the planning profession would find this book helpful in understanding new directions that are possible. Developers who are looking for a competitive advantage tool would do well to avail themselves to Leinberger's perspective on urbanism. It is an easy read, not technical, requires no specific background other than a healthy curiosity and drive to do better. City commissioners would also benefit from purusing these pages.
   
   The author is a major mover and shaker in Albuquerque and a key proponent of their downtown revival. Leinberger writes from first-hand experience. I recommend reading books like this because it is a chance to get inside the head of a visionary. A person could easily read one book like this each week; how else could you immerse yourself in 52 change agents per year?? When a consultant of Leinberger's stature shares 5 hours of his insights for less than $20 it is a pretty good value.

5 comments about Understanding Architecture: Its Elements, History, And Meaning (Icon Editions).

1. This book is one of the seminal readings for architectural history, and the reason is that the contents are well-thought-out, well-researched, and interestingly written.
   That said, shouldn't such a book, one you'll keep a good long time as a reference, come with a binding that doesn't fall apart on the first open? Sumeria and Mesopotamia are ready to leap out of the spine. It's a real travesty and the publisher should be embarassed. I'd have returned it if I didn't need it for a class.
   As for the contents, I'd say that Roth is a great scholar and writer. He's also done or reworked many of the very solid illustrations in the book, and the book is a good read as well as a good reference. You can pick up the thread anywhere and don't necessarily have to read in chronological order. Worth buying a copy (that doesn't fall apart in your hands.)



2. As Marion Dean Ross Professor of Architectural History at the University of Oregon at Eugene, Leland M. Roth summarized his research and experience in "Understanding Architecture: Its Elements, History, And Meaning."
   
   Having done extensive graduate studies in architecture, landscape architecture and urban planning, I always find the history and meaning of architecture, gardens and places fascinating.
   
   "Understanding Architecture: Its Elements, History, And Meaning" is a feast for people like me. It is separated into 2 parts. Part I covers elements of architecture including "Commoditie" (Function), "Firmeness" (Structure), "Delight" (Space, Acoustic and Aesthetic), architecture as part of natural environment, architecture, memory and economics. Part II covers history and meaning of Western architecture from the dawn of the civilization to present, including "from caves to cities," the architecture of Mesopotamia and ancient Egypt, Greek architecture, Roman architecture, Early Christian and Byzantine architecture, Medieval architecture, Renaissance architecture, Baroque and Rococo architecture, the origin and development and versions of Modernism, and various schools of Postmodernism.
   
   "Understanding Architecture: Its Elements, History, And Meaning" has 652 pages and many line drawings and good interior black-and-white photos. It is a valuable survey of Western architecture from the dawn of the civilization to present.



3. Excellent text of architectural history, with good information and explanations of each style in cronological order and lots of sections on examples and masters of each epoch. Lots of pictures of plans and sections! I only wish I had had it for the assignments I had to do last semester! I do wish it had more color fotos instead of black and white. Like all architecture books, it's a little too expensive, but reasonable for the comparatives I found localy. Excellent book, Highly recommended for architecture students and enthusiasts alike.



4. I'm a college instructor for beginning level Architecture Appreciation, and the Leland Roth book is an excellent choice to use for such a class. It is concise, informative and for the students, easy to read. Also, for their purposes, because the book is mostly black and white, it is rather cost efficient in an age of over-priced rip-off textbooks. The only problem with the book is that it can really stand to be updated. There is no chapter about Decontructivism or anything that followed, and the book ends with Mario Botta in 1993, which these days is antiquity already. Roth must know that his book is a gold standard for such a class. Knowing this, it is imperative that he revise it soon. it's too good of a product to stop 12 years ago.



5. This is a very well written approach to the understanding of Architecture and Urbanism. In the first half of the book, Roth analyzes the basic concepts or "elements" that conform today's Architecture. The second half of this clear and readable text is dedicated to the investigation of the history and significance of Architecture. These enjoyable and didactic thirteen chapters are an excellent starting point for a journey into past and present Architecture

5 comments about Learning from Las Vegas - Revised Edition: The Forgotten Symbolism of Architectural Form.

1. I admire and respect Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown for their great career and contribution to architecture, which has yet to be fully assessed. The depth of their thinking, the vigilant efforts to achieve their aesthetic vision, their desire to overcome modernist dogma, which had mutated into marginalized elite uncivic abstraction, falsely denying vibrant areas of life...how can one argue with the importance and value of such work?
   
   Let me try.
   
   To me, this book represents one of the most interesting turning points of an architectural career, very similar to Rem Koolhaas' essay on Bigness in S,M,L,XL.
   
   Both texts are attempting to give themselves an elite artist's alibi for co-opting the corporate machinery's unself-conscious production. Here, both artists (VRSB and OMA)attempt to escape into pop art, just like their friend Andy Warhol, thumbing his nose at the self important abstract expressionists.
   
   There's just one problem with this; they are architects, not just artists.
   And this places them in significantly different political territory. Architects build in the public sphere, and therefore have a powerful civic impact. They enable some political forces, and, by physical default, suppress others. If they were artists, their voice is a singular one, an unsponsored comment, to be entertained or dismissed. Architecture cannot be waved away.
   
   So, being architects, is 'Learning from Las Vegas' and 'Bigness' an elite artist's manifesto, or a cynical architect's effort to solicit clients from the bloated and most lucrative areas of commerce? The ambiguity is disturbing, because ultimately it has proven out not to matter what their intention. Both Venturi and Rem Koolhaas have been most useful tools for the most egregious excesses of our runaway imperial corporate world.
   
   And this is a sad legacy for two brilliant architectural careers. No matter what their aesthetic accomplishments in the way of rarified architectural thought, the more brutal reality is that architects seeking fame cannot also speak truth to power. This gravely undermines their civic responsibilities.
   I am reminded of William Morris' quote, a sad retrospective look at his career, saying that ultimately, his work "only served the swinish luxuries of the rich." A bitter realization for a socialist, one who chose to retreat into archaic craft, instead of trendy pop.
   
   Pop architecture is not a game. It is an insidious symptom of the polarization of wealth, a symptom that Venturi and Koolhaas cheerfully enable, both with their particular form of dissociating irony. They can play with it as a theory, but it has wrought disastrous consequences in the physical and political landscape. Same thing happened to Frank Gehry, another symptomatic starchitectural monster, who apparently doesn't need to theorize. Hard to say when the deal went down exactly. I just don't know.



2. this book is extremely condensed into a multitude of thumbnails or panoramas and text that never fails to reiterate its point. i mean, these two architects really understand the idea of symbols, suggestions, and sheds but after a dozen pages on one idea, you already get the point.
   
   the images are really helpful in exemplifying the amount of criticism for or against the city ("idea") of las vegas.



3. This is a quite unusual and offbeat treatise on architectural theory, as applied to the world's greatest architectural monstrosity - Las Vegas. This analysis from the early 1970s is obviously outdated because Las Vegas hadn't yet become the monument to megalomania and excess that it is today, but it was already well on its way. The authors analyze Vegas' unique usages of space, lighting, placement, transportation, and building design for the purposes of communication and promotion. Strange chapter titles give a clue to the left-field analysis in store, and the authors have a clear sense of irony, underhandedly implying that Vegas presents the worst in architecture while they appear to be praising its uniqueness. Unfortunately the narrative gets bogged down in dense professor-speak terminology like "Brazilianoid" and "neo-Constructivist megastructures," along with a general overload of obtuse theory. Add to that the poor-quality and under-elaborated illustrations and you have a book that sacrifices insight and readability in favor of pedantic attempts to impress the authors' colleagues. [~doomsdayer520~]



4. Read this book to learn what you shouldn't do as an architect!

   This book follows Venturi's "Complexity and Contradiction", where you can learn how cynically to use casement windows in housing for the elderly where the elderly will happily put their plastic flowers in the windows, but *you* secretly know these are not really hormal casement windows, since they are out of scale (like fascist architecture's lack of scale?).

   This book will tell you about ducks and decorated sheds, but it will tell you nothing about building spaces which nourish creative human community. Try Louis Kahn (e.g., John Lobell's lovely little book "Between Silence and Light"). My postmodernist teachers at Harvard said Kahn's writings were incomprehensible, which says more about them than about him.

   Read Lobell's book and learn why, e.g., a city might deserve to exist. Remember: Only *you* can get beyond postmodernism!




5. Robert Venturi's study of the Las Vegas signage phenomena and it's impact on "architecture" is brilliant in it's scope. While written almost twenty five years ago, this book gains more and more pertinence as we as a society progress further into a "reality" of symbols, reproductions and representations. These words and thoughts are basically essential to the understanding of any city anymore, not just Las Vegas. Where this book misses the mark though is in the execution, as shown in Venturi's work, of these ideas. The projects put forth seem to pale in comparison to the implications the text actually has. These notions of architecture are by far some of the most relevant and important in modern theory today, it is unfortunate that their full potential could not be realized in these projects.... but maybe that is for you and I to do.

5 comments about Designing Disney's Theme Parks: The Architecture of Reassurance.

1. This book is a must have for enthusiasts and interested scholars. The book is filled with many pictures, illustrations and original renderings of Disneyland, and the subsequent other parks. The conceptual development of the original Disneyland is the focus of the book that admirably discusses the many details involved in the process. The amazing part for me was the scholarly research and the well written quality of the text. The subject is well examined for the volume of information it covers. It is the first book I have come across that credit's Walt Disney's innovative process of applying stage set design to 3D proportionality using an over-ridding narrative to connect it all. The scholarly research by art historians and architects for the Canadian exhibition is impressive, which is done without the control of the Disney Corporation. The scholarly nature of the book lends a new dimensionality to the understanding of Disneyland as an innovative artistic development, and a new architectural expression.
   Unlike other texts I have read about Disney architecture, this one takes on the subject from the art historical perspective examining the process that creates a new architectural form. Other books seem to veer away from this in favor of the new, celebrated corporate architecture at Disney company headquarters, or on these applications at newer Disney parks. By concentrating on the original development of Disneyland as a concept of Walt Disney's, and his special team of designers, the idea is well established as creating the foundation for everything else that comes after. This difference is insightful, and makes the understanding of the original conceptual design clearer.
   I highly recommend this book for the wealth of information it provides and the good read it is. Even for a seasoned Walt Disney enthusiast, like me, it provides a new awareness of the multi-dimensional qualities of the form created, and it makes a rich addition to the information previously unknown.



2. This book is great! I also want to be a Disney Imagieer. I already designed some cool, new rides. I hope I become an Imagineer! See Ya!



3. This book is amazing. It immediately captured me. It gives valuable insight on the vison of disneys world and on how this vision becomes tangible.

   Not only it talks abou the history of the themeparks but it shows the sketches, maps, plans of different parts and attractions of the disney world. An amazing resource full of phantasy and a joy to watch. The photographs and illustrations are very well chosen and it is a plasure to flip through this pages every once in a while. A very inspiring book, showing that often it is enough to dream it and then it becomes reality.The most peculiar shapes and interior spaces are built to be reality.

   I highly recommend it.




4. Many books on Disney's art and achitecture try to convey its appeal primarily through the visual. Other books, particularly those that whole-heartedly criticize Disney, try to ignore the appeal of Disney altogether. This book attempts to integrate the visual evidence (photos, concept art) with academic writing on Disney (Karal Ann Marling, Erika Doss, Greil Marcus, etc.). Together, these aspects make for a solid inquiry as to the appeal of Disney's architecture.

   The book was written to supplement an art exhibit of the same name and, in many ways, feels a bit incomplete without its exhibition, partly because the book tries to cover a lot of territory in its two hundred or so pages. And a lot of the book's pages are used for the essays. But the essays also provide the readers with another "way of seeing" the imagineers' works, something that other books of this type tend to forgoe for more pictures. The essays are irreplaceable for this book--and many are useful for re-examining other books' materials as well (Try it!).

   Particularly useful for the Disney enthusiast is the criticism of Disney criticism by Greil Marcus. He astutely summarizes much of the current criticism of Disney: "All [the works mentioned earlier in the essay] have their moments of interest and all devolve quickly into a kind of critical voice that can perhaps best be called spite. This is not a good posture from which to practice criticism--an angry defensiveness, a fear that somehow one's faculties or tools of analysis are not up to the job disguised as contempt for the job itself...." What Marcus calls for is a real attempt to understand Disney for what it is and for how it affects people/American culture, something too few critics have done without falling into an either all-good or all-evil knee-jerk reaction. Worse, many critics make no attempt to experience Disney before making up their minds. This essay is an excellent reminder to those critics and a call to action.

   The other essays are interesting and useful, as well. The interview with Frank Gehry seems a bit brief, and perhaps Karal Ann Marling takes too much center stage in the interview (as with the entire book). Still, this book opens the door for an appreciative examination of Disney and one that embraces Disney by attempting a "thick description" of its materiality and appeal. This book will not provide an exhaustive look at Disney's theme parks but it will offer the interested reader materials with which to look at Disney's parks in a new way.




5. It's too bad that so many people who reviewed the book here didn't seem to understand what they were buying and then were disappointed. It's a great book! I was particularly enthralled by the chapters by Greil Marcus and Erika Doss -- but who wouldn't be? Their work always combines the everyday and the academic in such fluid and fun ways. It's clear from the reviews that the folks who rated this 1 or 2 stars simply didn't understand what they were looking at!

5 comments about The Ten Books on Architecture.

1. Vitruvius's 10 books (or chapters) on architecture lets you view life through the lens of the 1st century BC builder. While Vitruvius does explain the principals of how to build various buildings and rules for the construction and use of columns, perhaps the most amusing part of the book is his description of life and the things that govern it. Throughout the book he describes certain materials that should be selected for building and their composition of the four basic elements: earth, air, fire, and water. In some sections he spends an excessive amount of time making a point, and some points are glossed over. Many of the things he describes we are still doing to this day. A fascinating read all in all.



2. however, it is an ancient book... I used the dimensions and architectural scales to build my model of a greek temple. Very informative when it comes to that, cause not many books have to-scale drawings of the building.



3. I really enjoyed reading this fascinating book. However, when I compared it to another translation (a two volume edition, translated by Granger) it seemed that it was missing some bits of information.
   
   It was easier to read though, so if you are interested in a casual read, this is the book for you. For a research project, you should probably stick to Granger's books.



4. This is a wonderful look at the world and its building materials through the eyes of Roman. Great insights into Roman perceptions about how the world worked.



5. I like Homer, Herodutus, Thukidydes, Plutarch, Takitus, Gibbon, Mommsen and many other ancients and their (relatively) modern interpreters.

   But my latest read, recommended by Moses Finlay in "Ancient Econonomy", is Vitruvius.

   And I like Vitruvius a lot. The only reason I gave him 4 stars rather than 5, is that he is not the greatest, in the sense of the above-mentioned.

   Nevertheless, as far as knowledge and insight into ancient life go, at a level one removed from the "greats", Vitruvius is the greatest I've so far encountered.

   Not only does one gain a feeling for life among the educated and capable strivers of the time immediately following the Ceasarian revolution, but also for the immense impact which Greek brilliance had upon the Romans.

   One also learns much about aesthetic theory and is given interesting and practical lessons in building and architecture, from the beginning and development of dwellings, the general learning required of architects, the particular characteristics of different types of stone and wood, the design of cities, the three orders of temple architecture (Doric, Ionian and Corinthian), dwelling houses, the sounding vessels in theatres (dolby surround as already implemented long before Christ) and ingenious machines, including such inventions as the screw-pump of Archimedes (the Syracusan Greek inventor).

   Vitruvius gives us the general principles of ancient aesthetic theory, the exact proportions of traditional architectural conventions and the geometric rules for determining the directions of the eight known winds.

   Like all elegantly entertaining classical writers, he intermingles everything with relevant anecdotes from, and references to, the great Greek philosophers, fine artists and fine artisans of the past who were the exemplary authorities of his (and later) time.

   As the title betrays, Vitruvius' work is divided into ten books, each of which contains an extemely relevant and interesting general introduction, followed by several chapters on theory and application, including very practical examples of the construction, proportions and generally applied mechanical principles relevant to the specific subject matter of the particular book.

   This work is better, broader and more intelligently written than all of the books I've read on building which I've acquired at second-hand bookshops in England, and which were written anywhere from the end of the last century (1890-1900!) through the 1950s. No wonder that this fellow's work remained definitive through to the renaissance (not the Carolingian, but that of the 14th-15th centuries), a duration of 1,500 years!

   I imagine that most modern day architects, adding a litte modern statics, materials and building code knowledge, and assuming enough practical building experience, could do worse than to rely otherwise on Vitruvius.

   Basic raw materials and basic building skills have been around for a long, long time. Common sense and wisdom, too.

   Furthermore, for the interested classicist, even though not specifically interested in architecture or building, this book gives a really immediate feeling for the gigantic influence not only of Greek thought but also of Greek applied artistic and technical skills (geometry comes to life!), aesthetics and craft work on the (Western) Roman world.

   Again, I can only say, a refreshing, entertaining and informative read by a practical yet educated man of ancient times. Obviously a bestseller through the ages and, indeed, timeless in its relevance and actuality.

   Highly recommended also for beginners in the study of the ancient Greek language, because of its many Greek quotes (in Greek letters, no less)!

   Altogether a highly readable, informative, insightful and educational book with a rarely found mix (in ancient literature) of both the "higher" things and the eminently practical.

   I feel privileged to be a privy party to this great inheritance of ancient learning. And I thank the Internet and Amazon for enabling those of us who are interested in learning to have access to this great library with its wonderful database, which makes everything not only easy to find but also to possess (and to own).

   The humanist's dream! Your own infinite library. Cyber-Gutenberg!

5 comments about Robert Venturi: Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture.

1. "I like complexity and contradiction in architecture." That's how Robert Venturi starts this superb book. No great proclamation. It was an age tired of great proclamations. Instead, Venturi takes us through an impressively learned tour of his favorite things, a grand overview of great architecture, with acute formal analysis of facade and plan composition, sectional variety, and an accumulating realization that complexity is an inevitable force in the tumult of human, urban life.
   Postmodernism has come and gone, but modernism looks as it does today because of this book.



2. this book impacted the field of architecture during its time as much as LeCorbusier did with his book. Its extreme in its area of covering the world of architecture and how Venturi studies each theory on how the world of architecture has changed and is changing. Definately a must read for any architecture student or anyone associated in this long term field. the history of this book is more important than anything. Although alittle complex it is a must for those mentioned.



3. Now that the bottom of postmodernism has actually fallen out and is being dragged along the street by the chains of American capitalism, it's "alright" for students of architecture to return to that misjudged canonical textbook of post-modernism, C+C by Venturi. While not as engaging as his other main work "Learning from Las Vegas", this book still leads the reader into a meticulous analysis of the physical composition of major pieces of architecture, and the composition of the thoughts that made them. After reading it, I found myself unconciously applying it's main dichtomy of complexity and contradiction to much of the architecture around me, if that is any testament to its power.



4. I had to read this book for a class specifically regarding Robert Venturi and the postmodernism movement that he became a leading proponent of. However, this book is NOT a manifesto for a postmodern vacabulary- rather, this book looks at all architecture from the Parthenon to the common family home. Let me say that I have read many architectural theory books, but nothing that really inspired me to look at a building and really see what the architect intended like Complexity and Contradiction. This book really focused my attention on the possibilities for great architecture on any level- from museum to treehouse. I feel that anyone with an interest in appreciating architecture should certainly read this book. Because of my studies of Robert Venturi and his contemporaries, I have pursued a degree in architecture and certainly plan to incorperate his ideas and philosophies into my work.



5. venturi's book highlights the inherent complexity in today's post-modern society, coupled with the depth of comprehension often mistaken by critics. A must buy for Architecture students!

5 comments about From Bauhaus to Our House.

1. There are a lot of legitimate arguments to be made against the Bauhaus and Purism, but Tom Wolfe seems too interested in writing a sprawling rant to really explore them. Only once, near the very end, did he mention that many of these buildings were not built on a human scale -- in my view, their biggest flaw. Instead, the book focuses on these issues, which seem minor in comparison:
   
   1. Glass, steel, and concrete are bad.
   2. Simplicity is bad.
   3. Architects who bad together into compounds are bad.
   
   It's hard to accurately judge this book properly, since I read it 30 years after it was written. Still, if Tom Wolfe wanted to make a case against this type of architecture, it seems like he could have set his ego aside and done a much better job.



2. Tom Wolfe's FROM BAUHAUS TO OUR HOUSE skewers the Bauhaus School and Modernism in general (characterized by the International Style of architecture), as well as Post-Modernism (essentially, another version of Modernism). It's an intelligent, satirical look at an early 20th century European architectural ideology that rose up to reject the bourgeois and design for the working class--which the International Style architects may have regarded as too benighted to know what it really wanted. Apparently, according to these architects, what the worker would want, if s/he knew better, was to live in unadorned, black-and-white, steel and concrete boxes constructed with mass produced materials. Architecture schools and art institutes in the U.S. not only enthusiastically embraced the ideology ("They do things better in Europe," said Malcolm Cowley), but also its principle European champions, giving places of honor to the likes of Walter Gropius (Harvard), Mies van der Rohe (Armour Institute), and Josef Albers (Yale). Much of this movement was constructed around drawings and theory vice actually building buildings. In this way, architecture suffered from some of the same scholastic claptrap as the other arts, indeed of academe itself. When Wolfe drolly comments, "For the ambitious architect, having a theory became as vital and natural as having a telephone" (p. 121), he could have been speaking in general of contemporary academics--which many of these architects, ensconced in their university "compounds," were.
   
   Wolfe's targets easily lend themselves to such a treatment. The Modern architects' disdain for the opinions of both client and occupant are obnoxious. One wonders why the client (but not so much the occupant) kept, as Wolfe puts it, taking it like a man. However that may be, Wolfe's style gets a bit old after a while. You just want him to chill for a bit. People weren't all necessarily duped by Modernism. The clean lines and simplicity of forms of work by Le Corbusier constitute a refreshing break from the past, and has certain aesthetic appeal. The offense of the style is not just that it is impractical; it's that it becomes so damn derivative and so dogmatic from that point on. (Frank Lloyd Wright, who was not a member of the International Style clerisy, but was "an American original," and so fairs pretty well in Wolfe's treatment, was not necessarily very practical himself. If you're a parent, tour "Falling Water" and you'll see what I mean.)
   
   Wolfe's venom, to be sure, is aimed at the arrogance, pretentiousness, and hypocrisy of many of the leading architects comprising the Modernist and Post-Modernist movements. In that regard, Wolfe is very much on target in his criticism, even if he does go a bit overboard. Understanding that this is a screed, and not an objective critique, the reader will be pleased to find in this little book a readable, trenchant, witty, funny, and erudite treatment of these leading trends of 20th century architecture.



3. The good news is FROM BAUHAUS TO OUR HOUSE (1981) is a quick and easy read; the bad news is it is over a quarter-century out-of-date. Wolfe gives a good overview of modern architecture which developed between the wars in Germany and the Netherlands (mostly), by men [sic] who fancied themselves champions of the worker, scoffed at bourgoisie cravings for ornament and comfort, migrated to the United States, and isolated themselves in academic compounds where they spent more time issuing manifestoes and striking poses than actually designing and building buildings. These academic architects, for all their Marxist ideology, seemed to care little for what the common worker wanted or needed. And they never embraced authentic modernist American architects, such as Frank Lloyd Wright [who broke two of the compound architects' sacred rules by (a) listening to his clients, and (b) actually having clients]. Wolfe's presentation is swift and impactful and his opinions will be gratifying to anyone who is baffled or bored with modern arctitecture. I'm not sure I am ready to dismiss all 20th century architecture so completely (I love the Seagrams Building, for instance).
   
   The book ends with a preliminary sketch and discussion of Philip Johnson's AT&T building in New York City. This building with a top that is said to emulate that of a Chippendale highboy has since been built (long enough for its original tenant to have moved out) and New Yorkers have ceased to comment on it (indicating, I suppose, either acceptance or boredom). Michael Graves, whom Wolfe criticizes for doing lots of drawing and little building, has actually taken on commissions and produced buildings that are defining post-modernism (for more about these, the reader must resort to Google). I suspect Wolfe has continued to write articles on architecture; it would be nice if he could bring these together with a Second edition of FROM BAUHAUS TO OUR HOUSE.



4. This is a delightful little book, particularly so if you want to have your prejudices confirmed. Those prejudices would include the following: 1) Theory should never become detached from practice; 2) Elites who think they know what is best for the common folk are never to be trusted; 3) Europe is different from America and we should neither be intimidated by their culture nor excessively defensive concerning our own; 4) Ugliness--regardless of the political ideology supporting it--is still ugly; 5) Common sense and common aspiration trump hothouse academic posturing; 6) Architecture is space for human life, not an opportunity to make an abstract statement; 7) (my personal prejudice) Art deco (on the large scale) and prairie-style (domestically) so far exceed modernist or postmodernist architecture that one must wonder why they were ever abandoned.
   
   Tom Wolfe's purpose here is to demonstrate that establishment architecture (which happened to also be left-leaning, ideological, elitist architecture) is flat-out ugly. While he shows the linear progression of influences that led to the international style and sustained it, he never fully answers the question of why so many tolerated this nonsense for so long.
   
   I have had some personal dealings with one of the individuals in TW's rogues' gallery and I found him to be arrogant, pretentious, highhanded and not terribly imaginative. How do such individuals prosper? TW's answer, in part, is that they draw their actual living from university appointments rather than from real world construction projects, but he also argues that, in general, the consumer simply defers to such a person's judgment rather than following his own lights. Thus, one of the key lessons of the book is to trust yourself and your own inclinations and perceive the nudity of the elite culture's current emperors--a healthy antidote to many persisting cultural diseases.



5. Wolf's main thesis is that the original impulse for Bauhaus modern was for worker apartments . That it became in the lead enterprise is deeply ironic .
   
   The impulse arose in the difficult period between the two world wars when socialism and seems more vital and relevant an extreme capitalism . Very name the "international style" was rather haphazard , appearing in an essay by Johnson based on Gropius's 1925 book , international architecture .
   
   The jump canes with a Rockefeller supported museum of modern art in 1929 in New York . The rise of Hitler led many of the architects to emigrate to New York or the East Coast architecture schools . This is happening in parallel with Arnold Schoenberg 's abstract music . Freudians also came , of which I was a beneficiary through Fromm. The buzz around these figures masked the American and she once, for example in psychology of William James . While the Europeans were looking to the Americans in using such as Scott Joplin and the Aaron Copland , the Americans were looking to Europe . Perhaps one can say looking without finding was the characteristic of the age .
   
   The alignment Between socialist origins and an elite clientele made a modern movement hostile to the middle class and to any sense of comfort or nostalgia . The oldest traditions became heresy . Architects like Frank Lloyd Wright was constantly marginalized . What came to dominate was what was called the "Yale box", an endless series of Cuba's made of glass and steel arranged somewhat organically and painted white and undecorated . The boards of universities and corporations embraced this move because it was simple, cheap, and made technology and modernism look good . As wolf says, "the building could scarcely have been distinguished from a Woolco discount store in a shopping center . and "an architecture whose tenets that prohibits every manifestation of exuberance, power, empire, Granger or even high spirits and playfulness . In short, the reigning architectural style in this, the very Babylon of capitalism , became worker housing. " yamasaki , the architect of the world trade center , was an early advocate and built a housing project in Saint Louis in 1955 that was dynamited in a famous movie in 1972 . The similarity with a world trade center is painful to contemplate .
   
   Creative impulses like Aero Saranan's here terminals at Kennedy and Dallas were scorned simply because they used curves . The modern architects moved strongly from office buildings to malls and museums , but the imitators can be seen in block after block of almost any ten were cheap rectangular buildings of failing break and cracked plaster are the results and remains of a hotbed undisciplined economy.
   
   It is striking a small number of people who made names for themselves and those. And this small number of commissions . Most of the building was done by unknowns in imitative style in collaboration with developers looking primarily at the bottom line . In a way, the modern movement was not so serious. This book does a good job of naming the characters and showing their interconnections .
   
   From a rhetorical point of view, Wolf at critical moments compares events to the renaissance and scholasticism. Well done.

No comments about Ten Canonical Buildings: 1950-2000.

1 comments about Strange Details (Writing Architecture).

1. There is no better argument for the reexamination of "architectural language" than this excellent book by Michael Cadwell. Writing in a tradition stemming from Kenneth Frampton's "Studies in Tectonic Culture," this volume examines four buildings by canonic figures--Carlo Scarpa, Frank Lloyd Wright, Mies van der Rohe, and Louis Kahn.
   
   Cadwell writes that, in 1999, after being granted a fellowship at the American Academy in Rome, he hoped to study the work of Carlo Scarpa, in particular the Querini Stampalia Foundation in Venice, discussed at length in the first chapter. After studying and drawing Scarpa's meticulous details at length, Cadwell discovered that "The drawings refused to cooperate. No matter how I arranged the details on the walls, they resisted an order." From this resistance emerged this book, which does not discuss the clear, perfectly articulated theories of architecture (e.g. Le Corbusier and his contemporary rationalist disciples), but rather the materials of architecture that resist explanation, a thickness of material that expands beyond its physical depth.
   
   Cadwell performs this operation again and again, tying each architect's conceptual project to the physical, material nature of their buildings. Scarpa's details flow and dissolve like the water that runs through them, Wright's Jacobs house moves in and out of his idyllic, suburban vision of the broadacre city, and Mies's Farnsworth house is revealed not as a heroic mastery of nature, but as the epitome of humility, reinserting and immersing its occupant in the surrounding environment. Cadwell has the ability to make all of these apparent at a larger level, but always zooms in and out -- the details of architecture truly become the analogue for the world around it.
   
   Finally, Cadwell's book suggests an alternate path for contemporary practice (though it never does so explicitly, a tactic that I believe carries more weight than even a manifesto). The architects discussed here are concerned with the architectural object, the physical entity of architecture. Today's image-driven architectural culture is more invested in the rendering than the building itself, the concept over the detail, architecture as graphic design--flat, flashy, and fatuous. Cadwell's analyses point toward a reevaluation of the material nature of buildings, a position that will undoubtedly be disregarded by some as hopelessly atavistic, but a position that asserts architecture in its barest, most exposed state, as the physical negotiation of the myriad worldly forces surrounding it.