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.

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.

No comments about Italian Cities and Landscapes.

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.

1 comments about Gnostic Architect.

1. ....about the creator, the work and the ambitious nature of all three intertwined together.

1 comments about On Tour with Renzo Piano.

1. This small album at only 6.5 x 6.5 inches (16.5 x 16.5 cm) contains almost exclusively photos, but good ones. After book's Introduction, each of 22 main Piano's project is headed by a title page with a very simple, hand drawn sketch or two, followed by a page of text, and only full page or double page photos thereafter. At the end of book, there are a few pages with office personnel list, project credits, selected bibliography, prizes, etc., and small B&W photos of coworkers. This is a non-technical book without plans, sections, etc.

No comments about Transportable Environments: Theory, Context, Design & Technology.

No comments about Lewis Mumford and American Modernism: Eutopian Theories for Architecture and Urban Planning.

No comments about Interpretation in Architecture: Design as a Way of Thinking.

1 comments about Blobitecture: Waveform Architecture and Digital Design.

1. This copiously illustrated survey posits architect Frank Gehry in an unfolding evolution of a phenomenon described as "Blob." The book, 'Blobitecture', shows the antecedents to Gehry, and parallel movements that have spawned such notable industrial designs as the Eames chairs and the Apple iMac.

   Form-follows-function was a stringent dictate on designers for many recent years. Advances in computers and computation [not to mention composite materials] have allowed Gehry to visualize designs that would not, on the face of it, seem to hold up, and come to up with the means to make these buildings - drooping, swooping, and so on - stand.

   Waters notes that this style arose as something of an anti-machine impulse, yet it could not have occurred without machine technology, specifically the computer technology that could provide underpinnings for 'improbably fluid forms.'

   The author uncovers some things that surprise. A Disneyland Monsanto house of the future [which could be a happy home for Zippy the Pinhead], could not be readily demolished after its stay as a futurist grotto was at an end, Waters notes. The wrecking ball bounced off the [perhaps fiberglass] Monsanto house, and good old sledge hammers had to do the dirty deed!

   There have been a lot of movements, some that vaporize in the blink of an eye. Does Blob as a serious movement hold up to scrutiny? Here, Waters takes a journalist's tack, and leaves the final judgment largely to the reader and future historians.

   A different approach than the movie The Blob [from whence the movement gains its name it seems], where, as the movie trailer had it, "there's no stopping the blob [a "blood-curdling threat"] as it goes from town to town."

   Missing perhaps is a look at Gaudi, and Dali [especially the latter's work at the 1939 World's Fair] - two individuals that melted a building or two in their day. I guess I say this because I can recall when I first saw Gehry's now famous Gugenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain [depicted gloriously in Blobitecture], that's what I thought of. Waters does point to Eero Saarinen and his TWA Terminal as a potent precursor of Gehry, but photos he includes are of the Saarinen's St. Louis arch, to my mind less of a pointer to Frank. But the book on the main is quite generous in its illustration of things blob like.