No comments about Sprawltown: Looking for the City on its Edges.

No comments about Networked Cultures.

No comments about Eisenman Inside Out: Selected Writings, 1963-1988.

3 comments about The Architecture of Humanism: A Study in the History of Taste.

1. Since Notre Dame has the only classical architecture school curriculum in the country, it is obvious why this is required reading for entering students. This is an impassioned defense of the humanist tradition, written just before the Modernist deluge. Anyone interested in the theory behind classical architecture should buy this book. It clearly demolishes fallacies of art criticism committed even today.



2. I'm reading this book for History or Arch class and have a paper due in two days. I get to page 146 and the next page is 163??? What gives??? How am I supposed to get this read and right a paper on it now??????



3. I read this book over thirty years ago when I was an architecture student at the University of Oregon and had a dificult time undestanding the text. I tried to read it again about ten years after graduation and couldn't develop any excitement or enthusiasm for the book. It is very difficult to understand and is written in somewhat tedious style.

No comments about Tropical Architecture: Sustainable and Humane Building in Africa, Latin America and South-East Asia.

1 comments about New Orleans Architecture: Faubourg Treme and the Bayou Road : North Rampart Street to North Broad Street Canal Street to St. Benard Avenue (New Orleans Architecture).

1. This wonderful book is the second in the now-classic survey of historic New Orleans architecture. Distinguished by the same painstaking attention to detail as the other volumes, this book concentrates on the sections of the city now known as the Central Busisness District (or CBD) and the Warehouse/Arts District. Given the dramatic changes this section has undergone since the 19th century, this volume is both more valuable historically and perhaps a bit less interesting to the casual reader.

   One section of the book is fortunately out of date. A special section highlights the row houses on Julia Street in the Warehouse District, then in sad disrepair, but now gems in that area's redevelopment.

   Despite the towering skyscrapers lining Poydras Street and the gleaming hotel towers down by the river, this book calls our attention to what remains: the exuberant architectural display of a Victorian bank building or the shockingly vibrant facade of a Canal Street storefront. Through its thoughtful scholarship and careful display of maps, historic images and contemporary photograph, this book (likes its sisters in the series) is an inviting glimpse into the past for the careful reader.

No comments about Practice: Architecture, Technique and Representation (Critical Voices in Art, Theory & Culture).

No comments about Next Wave: New Australian Architecture.

4 comments about The Story of Architecture.

1. This book's helped me a lot for my arch history class. It's a small book you can take on the go and the information is concise with great images. Great buy for anyone interested in learning about the history of architecture.



2. It's a good, quality book. Both skilled architects, those who doesn't know anything about technical architecture, art historians and even any history-buffs can enjoy this book.



3. This book is required reading for a class I am taking on Appreciation of Architecture. It is a great intro for those of us who want to learn more about the subject and it isn't overly scholastic or too dense. It is enough to give you a thirst for more knowledge, which is what a good overview book should.



4. If you are looking for a great photographical history of architecture in the modern world (15-20th centuries), this book is for you. More a page flipper than a page turner, yet absolutely worthwile if you choose to read the words as well.

2 comments about Architecture and Film.

1. I didn't really notice cinema's similarity to architecture until I read Architecture and Film, edited by Mark Lamster, the senior editor at Princeton Architectural Press. What we have here is a collection of essays by film fanatics who also happen to be architectural critics or architects. There is not one film-studies scholar among the contributors; that alone is unusual for a collection of film essays.

   The other big surprise is that the writers don't focus on architecturally striking films in the vein of Ridley Scott's Blade Runner or Fritz Lang's Metropolis. Instead they write about more obscure films, such as the hysterical Cary Grant film Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House, Robert Quine's Strangers When We Meet, and the campy film version of Ayn Rand's arguably campy novel The Fountainhead. All three films feature either an architect as a main character or the nature of architecture in a commercial world as a principle theme. The Fountainhead in particular is probably one of the most ridiculous films ever made about art and commerce. Such ideas aren't bad in and of themselves, but the fascistic and sexual overtones in Rand's book and film are so over the top that both come off as soft-porn pieces. But I like this film, as it brings up the question of architecture as an art form: Does it only serve its purpose as a structure of necessity?

   The most unusual segment in the book is the essay by Eric Rosenberg: "Architecture and the films of the Beatles." In this short essay, Rosenberg comments on the nature of space and structures in keeping the Beatles isolated from the external world, with consideration to their fans. Other subjects covered include set directors, such as the great Ken Adam, who worked on all the early James Bond films, designed the fantastic war room in Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove, and also worked on Barry Lyndon. I found the essay on Adam particularly interesting because I am a big fan of his work. Adam talks about his disappointment in Barry Lyndon because a lot of the shots were based on paintings of that period; Adam preferred to use his own imagination for his set designs. In Dr. Strangelove, for example, he essentially used his mind's eye in building the war room. But fiction can greatly intrude upon fact -- when the newly elected President Ronald Reagan asked to see the government's war room, he was disappointed that it wasn't like the one used in Dr. Strangelove. As you see, films are better than real life. And so is the architecture in films




2. This examination of the way architecture and architects have been portrayed on the screen provides fourteen essays which analyze selected productions. Their authors are set designers, architects, and film producers who use their backgrounds to analyze the presence and importance of architectural props in film production.