5 comments about Zaha Hadid: The Complete Buildings and Projects.

1. Some 20 years after she won the Hong Kong Peak Competition, Hadid is still churning out the seductive but unresolved jaggedness that characterizes her work. Unlike more mature artists who's work ripens after they have executed and learned from a few built commissions, Hadid remains stuck in the same, now jaded and predictable rut. Not least, she has never developed as a skilled practitioner. Sticking with the diagrammatic approach to design, Hadid's buildings have the look of cheap, temporary structures, lacking depth or quality of detailing. They lack the sophistication of more capable architects (Foster or Rogers, for example), who understand and appreciate assembly and materials. Hadid's "work" is more about computer graphics than any important architectural concerns. It has the flash sensibility of a catchy pop-tune - the sort of music that gets irritating very quickly because it lacks substance. And lacking substance, it's principal appeal is to the unsophisticated viewer.



2. It must be said that Hadid's office staff are capable graphic artists, but it would be very wrong to make the assumption that these slick images lead to architecture. As her Cinicinatti art center shows, Hadid's built work is typically very unsatisfying. She has not grasped scale or contextual issues at all, largely due to her working in an abstract, purely graphic mode. The Vitra Building likewise is no longer used because it fails so badly as a building. If you are interested in real architectural issues, this book is not the place to start.



3. Hadid was one of those breakthrough architects who achieved early recognition merely for being different. (It is very easy to be different; it is difficult to be good.) Her work has always been insubstantial, little more than crudely assembled buildings that look more like full-size mock-ups than real architecture. Clouding herself in a quasi-intellectual mystique, she has found favor among impressionable youth, but garners little integrity or respect from serious professionals. If you like flash, go ahead, spend your money. But look elsewhere for decent architectural study. Hadid is more about gimmick than anything else



4. This is a fantastic compilation of Hadid's work. It's more comprehensive than the El Croquis, although there is no long interview. There is adequate text for each project, however.

   If you like her work, or are interested in contemporary architecture, I highly recommend it. It's fairly inexpensive and catalogues her exceptional work.




5. I think this book has more to it than technical drawings could ever give. It's an artistic sight of what and how architecture should be thought and viewed like. Colours, shapes and forms seem to spring out the pages of this book. Go out there and see it four yourself, it's not a book about construction, it's a book about ideas.

No comments about Nightlands: Nordic Building.

1 comments about Single Building: Type Variant House: The Process of an Architectural Work.

1. Despite its modest format, this elegant monograph more than does justice to Vincent James' extraordinary copper pavilions floating in a birch forest, comprehensively illustrated here with a wide range of visual materials, from early design sketches, construction photographs, and extensive working drawings to exquisite images of the finished building through four seasons of rain, mist, snow, and sun. Fold-out plans are provided in the inside cover, with a location key to all photos for readers' convenience. The graphic design of the book is clearly a labor of love, far beyond the often perfunctory standard of architectural publishing. Professional readers will regret the absence of scale information, but this is a minor lapse amidst the books many virtues.

No comments about The Organizational Complex: Architecture, Media, and Corporate Space.

3 comments about Verb: Architecture Boogazine.

1. A new type of publication 'bookazine' does match to what 'Verb' has. What 'Verb' is all about is both conceptual and constructional progress in the field of architecture in recent years. It shows us selected good examples which manage to cope with the state of uncertainty by paying attention to the development of design process. Changing paradigm gives rise to changing type of publication.



2. I've read the majority of it, and now I could say that it's worth reading 'Verb' for those who would like to know how we can find/generate a kind of new concept and develop it into buildable form in the state of uncertainty. I think projects and buildings in 'Verb' are quite good examples. And the word 'boogazine' is pretty interesting because it implies that the new controversial topics like things in magazines and little old undoubtful ones like in referential books would be combined into one so that the main concept of so-called new architecture, which is neither single assertion nor definite, can be well-expressed.
   BUT I've felt a bit boring about its contents. Most of them could not tell us things different from what Jeffrey Kipnis wrote in 'Towards a New Architecture' and what Deleuze describe world, which means the majority of articles/books after his are similar to one another and not progress further.
   Is it time to see a new one or fine architectural result based on the philosophy of Deleuze?
   I hope 'Verb' will be another step forward to it.



3. Exceptional production values enhance this well illustrated and innovatively designed book-magazine (produced in a French and Spanish edition too) that includes critical and theoretical essays on design and architectural topics. Planned to issue three issues annually. Recommended.

No comments about Noise Orders: Jazz, Improvisation, and Architecture.

5 comments about A History of Russian Architecture.

1. I suppose I was set up for disappointment by the four 5-star reviews, so this is to balance those out - Actually, I'd give this a three and a half, mainly because I am used to books where at least the majority of the reproductions are in colour. This is the pitfall of buying unseen off the internet, and I think that disappointment for me is the main reaction for many art books purchased this way. In this volume, everthing is in black and white with the exception of five or six inserts each with maybe fifteen or twenty buildings featured in colour. That said, the text is readable, and from the little I know of Russian architecture, comprehensive. Just be aware of the pictures being mainly in black and white.



2. A wonderful book on a fascinating subject. Russian architecture is so varied, I really had no idea and this book is exhaustingly thorough. I especially enjoyed the section on Imperial Russian Architecture and the later Soviet Architecture. It is obvious how Speer influenced Soviet architecture, his Third Reich Berlin may have never been realized, but his spirit it is alive and well in Soviet buildings. If you have any interest in Russia or architecture or just well researched, scholarly books, then i cant imagine you being disappointed.



3. THIS BOOK IS PHAT. IT'S FAT TOO. IT'S A HUGE FAT BOOK FULL OF WONDERFUL COLOR AND B&W PHOTOS OF ALL KINDS OF CHURCHES, MONASTARIES, AND ALL THAT JAZZ. I'M STILL KIND OF INTIMIDATED BY IT THOUGH, JUST BECAUSE OF IT'S SIZE. I THINK IT'LL TAKE ME A COUPLE YEARS TO 'REALLY' GET THROUGH IT. MANY OF THE PICTURES, AT LEAST THE COLOR ONES, ARE FULL PAGE SIZED. THE PICTURE QUALITIES ARE VERY GOOD AND THE SUBJECT MATTER OF COURSE IS AWESOME. I LOVE HOW THESE ARCHITECTS WERE THINKING OUTSIDE THE BOX. SOME OF THESE CHURCHES MAKE NOTRE DAME LOOK BORING.



4. Russian architecture is not well known to Western readers. Prof. Brumfield is a prolific and systematical writer about Russian architecture. Reviewing book is the best modern book in English about a history of Russian architecture. The book covers whole periods of a long history of the glorious Russian architecture. Author have visited Russia several times and most of pictures made by author and that also makes his approach more unique and personal. Text, pictures and references are very impressive and higly professional. As a systematical desription of history of Russian architecture (data base) it is close to classical Grabar's work History of Russian Culture (in Russian). The book creates a solid basement for building a theory of Russian architecture with discussion its origin, its unique stylistic features and factors which influence the development of Russian architecture. Prof. Brumfield's book established a golden standard for any other attempt to write a book about a history of Russian architecture (in Russian or in English). I have this book and I am treating it as a my national treasure. Everybody who are interested in the architecture and/or Russian architecture must buy this excellent, beautiful, well written, highly informative and richly illustrated book.



5. I studied under Brumfield at Tulane, with this book as the main text for study. He employs strong, fluid writing to encompass a millenium of russian expression and turmoil. The book does not lose its sense of history. A decisive book for any interested.

No comments about Emancipating Space: Geography, Architecture, and Urban Design.

No comments about Architecture and Modernity: A Critique.

5 comments about Giuseppe Terragni: Transformations, Decompositions, Critiques.

1. Over the years (decades actually), Peter Eisenman's "Terragni" took on something of the urban myth, an elusive, unpublished work, supposedly of great genius. Draft copies were jealously hoarded by a few insiders adding to the myth. Now, after 40 years, it appears in print, no longer only the stuff of legend, but an actuality exposed to real scrutiny. Frankly, the wait has not been worth it. Exhaustively drafted from every conceivable projection and angle, the images of the building are accompanied by a text (a `critical text', the author repeatedly informs us), that pushes the limits only of the ridiculous. For example: the plan of the Casa del Fascio, Eisenman "discovers", is a square, or rather, almost a square. In order to satisfy Eisenman's supposition, the true square, it seems, is realized only when particular window is opened fully to the 90 degree position, thereby implying a volumetric extension of the building, which then completes the so-called purity of the geometry. The fact that other windows on other sides of the building might also be opened at the same time thereby undermining the purported geometrical purity, does not seemed to have occurred to the author so blinded is he by the supposed brilliance of this, the most pretentious of studies. Numerous equally untenable speculations flesh out the remainder of this overwrought, but ultimately fruitless examination. Terragni's classical parti is studiously avoided by the author who is largely ignorant of the precepts that underlie this, the most basic formal arrangement that Terragni carried through his design. Eisenman stretches similar guesswork beyond the point of irritation as though insulting the intelligence of his readers is one of the underlying purposes of this book. In the architectural industry, asinine speculation, masquerading as theory or as philosophical inquiry, are now the norm. This particular book has been billed as Peter Eisenman's "eagerly awaited magnum opus". Certainly the Casa del Fascio is deserving of study. However, if perchance "Giuseppe Terragni: Transformations, Decompositions, Critiques" does achieve long-lasting fame, it can only be for becoming the late 20th Century's high water mark of architectural pretentiousness and unbounded historical ignorance. [One star for the drawings; zero stars for the text.]



2. Eisenman dissects the Casa Del Fascio as a pathologist would examine a corpse. In simplistic diagrams the building's parts are duly chronicled in uninspired prose. One is left with the impression that he has examined a piece of graph paper with coordinates and alignments. That the building represented human endeavor, or embodied cultural aspirations seems lost on Eisenman in this humdrum attempt at scholarship.
   
   Knowing the nihilistic, anti-human qualities of Eisenman's superficial approach to design, and the ever-mutable "logic" in his work, this is no surprise. He lacks any intuitive understanding of space or scale and a lifetime of pretentious writing has not equipped him for the serious task at hand. Ever since Eisenman indulged himself placing columns in the middle of a client's dining table, he has gotten away with his preposterous intellectual gimmickry, passing it off as "challenging", the stock-in-trade excuse for ridiculous and contrived design. [Interestingly, when it came to his own apartment, Eisenman handed off the work to another firm who produced a fairly cozy design. This hypocrisy shows a lack of sincerity in his unrefined speculations, and no thinking person should ever take Eisenman seriously again.]
   
   This lowbrow rhetoric has served as a handy tool for the mediocre academic whose primary audience is susceptible students. But Eisenman's shaky credibility is rapidly and thankfully waning, the result of absurd quasi-intellectual hypotheses which produced crude buildings, no single one of which has achieved enduring respect. Revisionist histories already marginalize him as a sideshow huckster, an irritating distraction from more meaningful debates developing elsewhere. Worried about this legacy, and trying to curtail a widening flow of criticism about his crumbling oeuvre, the Terragni book supposedly was his pitch to more lasting fame. But this bumbling attempt at scholarship fails as a serious academic study more rapidly than his buildings failed as credible works of architecture.
   
   Eisenman never understood the crucial difference between diagrams and buildings. This lethargic and unperceptive book offers tedious quantities of them in lieu of keenly observed criticism. For an exercise that occupied some 40 years of his life, there's very little to show for it. Ill equipped for incisive inquiry, he offers one-dimensional reporting. For Eisenman, the dubious theorist who's act endorsed nihilism and alienation as though they were virtues, history will probably deny this sad and foolish man a favorable mention. Reading this rather desperate attempt to reinvent himself as a historian, one is tempted to feel sorry for him looking back on a wasted career. But considering the lack of sincerity in Eisenman's work and his disregard for our shared environment, sympathy is hardly a suitable reason to bother with this inept dissertation today.



3. For such a big book it is a paper-thin study. I was disappointed that Eisenman reduced the buildings in the most simplistic way to lines and platonic shapes. And the text is dull and lifeless. I would not recommend this to anyone.



4. This book reduces Terragni's buildings to a series of graphic exercises in alignment and proportion. Each elevation is studied separately but there is almost no sense of the building as a whole. Totally disappointing exercise.



5. Lots of diagrams (too many) documenting various iterations of the Case del Fascio. But it gets repetitive and boring. Eisenman makes too much out of the process and almost noting out of the result. The `critiques' are mostly predictable stuff and not at all penetrating. It's just another excuse for Eisenman to spout the usual archi-speak jargon that is wearing very thin.