No comments about Framing Places: Mediating Power in Built Form (Architext Series).

1 comments about Cool Construction (4x4 Series).

1. The first four volumes in the new 4x4 series, each of which features four works by four comparable architects. The concept of linkage is interesting, the four critics achieve an admirable synthesis, the price is right, and the books are full of useful information, plans and excellent photographs. Sadly, their accessibility has been compromised by a wildly self-indulgent designer who squandered eight pages on headline type, overlaid body type with shadow typography, and jammed in far too many miniscule images and discordant typefaces. ItÕs a lesson in how not to lay out a book and may scare away potential buyers.

   The persistent will be rewarded by graceful writing, especially by the peripatetic Dubliner, Raymund Ryan, and Catherine Slessor, executive editor of the Architectural Review. For the record, the architects covered are, in order: Antoine Predock, Tadao Ando, Wiel Arets and Ricardo Legorretta; David Chipperfield, Waro Kishi, Eduoardo Souto de Moura, and Tod Williams & Billie Tsien; Jones Partners, TEN Arquirtectos, RoTo, and Smith-Miller + Hawkinson; finally, Enric Miralles, Gunter Behnisch, Mecanoo, and Patkau Architects.

1 comments about Lost Russia: Photographing the Ruins of Russian Architecture.

1. This book not only met my expectations, but exceeded them. The author took me to places i will never get to see, as well as provide me amazing pictures of these sites for my artistic reference library. as well as explaining about the sites themselves. Most saddeinig is the state of dissrepair of these historical sites, and the lack of funding to keep them up.
   
   This book held many a haunting image, weither you buy this to learn about architecture of a past Russian time, or photographic reference, or the state of these amazing landmarks fallen into disrepair... or if you have an explorer's streak within.. you will not be dissapointed. Worth every penny.

No comments about Chicago Architecture 1872-1922: Birth of a Metropolis (Architecture).

1 comments about The Green Braid (ACSA Architectural Education).

1. THE GREEN BRAID: TOWARDS AN ARCHITECTURE OF ECOLOGY, ECONOMY AND EQUITY is a pick for any college-level arts or architectural library; It draws from over fifteen years of peer-reviewed essays and design awards published by the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA) and provides writings that challenge and revise modern thinking on the topic. Scholarly essays come packed with design innovations, insights, and more.

No comments about The Human Body (Consequence Book Series on Fresh Architecture).

No comments about The Emerald City: And Other Essays on the Architectural Imagination.

1 comments about Maekawa Kunio and the Emergence of Japanese Modernist Architecture.

1. The account in this book of Kunio serves as an appropriate symbol of 20th century Japanese architecture. Kunio's career spanned World War 2. He designed numerous buildings before and after the war. (Plus during the war, too.)
   
   The postwar photos show a very modernist approach, that would not have been out of place in Europe or the United States. The coverage of his projects is comprehensive. Including, naturally, his best known work, the Tokyo Metropolitan Festival Hall in 1957. The book gives this building extensive coverage, in both text and photos. A very clean design.
   
   Reynolds did a lot of his research for this book by going to many of Kunio's buildings. As indicated by the credits to numerous photos, taken by Reynolds.

No comments about The Judicious Eye: Architecture Against the Other Arts.

2 comments about Timeless Cities: An Architect's Reflections on Renaissance Italy (Icon Editions).

1. Mr. Mayernik transports the reader to the glorious past of Rome, Venice, Florence, Siena, and Pienza; a past in which city builders sought to make their cities into reflections of the perfect heavenly City of God; a past in which every stone, every building, every piazza was an episode of the larger urban narrative that played itself for its citizens as a great "theatre of the mind."

   Mr. Mayernik's writing allows us to view the urban mythologies of these places not as History, events frozen in by gone times and no longer capable of speaking to present generations, but as living lessons in city building; he invites his audience to learn the 'language' of these five cities so that we too can build memorable places.




2. Timeless Cities is indeed a wonderful journey, a voyage across time and ideas. The author tells a poetic, scholarly and delightful story of five Italian cities and how they became meaningful and memorable places, remaining so to this day.

   For those who have experienced the magical, transforming impact Rome, Florence, Venice, Siena and Pienza have on their visitors, David Mayernik unlocks the richly poetic ideas which are their very essence. An architect and traveler, his writing is filled with the passion of one who truly loves and understands the tradition of those great cities: the tradition of humanism.

   For all for whom life is, above all, a cherished series of discoveries and experiences, Mayernik extends a masterful invitation to explore those places which stir our souls and which demonstrate the highest fulfillment of our collective potential for cultural and artistic achievement. He then challenges us to again seek to create cities "through which dance the Muses", cities which are "built Ideas suffused with cultural Memory". Accept his gracious invitation. It is a journey you will treasure.