No comments about Survey of Early American Design (Architectural Treasures of Early America Series).

No comments about O'Donnell + Tuomey: Selected Works.

2 comments about Proportion: Philosophy, Science and Architecture.

1. The book looks great. Haven't had time to open it yet, but it looks like it's in great condition.



2. beyond architecture, this book examines the racionalist vs. empirist debate in science, art and phillosophy. most impresive is the way it disolves the dilemma, explaining that both approaches are essentially the same as knowledge is acquired via a continuous process of inventing and discovering, inhaling and exhaling, imposing laws on nature and observing them.

3 comments about A Vision of Britain: A Personal View of Architecture.

1. This book is about an honest account of a royal layman about the visual quality of his country. I'm an architect and I appreciate what he is trying to say even if I don't agree with all the points he is making. Architects today are too much restricted to their out "sub-culture", we need a more "holistic" approach to what we do. I wish this "vision" would have been more "ambitious" and "deep" because it deserves to be so! In time the most of the points of this "vision" will prove right, I'm sure!



2. Prince Chuck here...
   
   All I have to do is remain silent for the rest of my life for the British to cut me some slack, but I've got a head full of half-baked ideas and lack the good sense to impede their flow from my mouth. Privilege does things to you... As you know, my life hasn't a prayer of being anything but a footnote in the history of Britain, and my whole existence is an anachronism. Like Hitler I'm an amateur painter and architecture buff, so I've decided to blame all my problems on modern architecture.
   I've devised some rules that I'd like you all to follow:
   
   Rule #1: Things should be pritty.
   Rule #2: Let's go back to that time that was comforting to me.
   Rule #3: Architects should ignore all developments that have occurred since the thirties... I mean the 1730's of course.
   There are 7 more rules but I have a short attention span and a need to put my foot in my mouth on some other topics. I have to go shame the poor for being born poor. Visit me at Poundbottom, whoops, I mean Poundbury... my idyllic throwback to a happier time. Leon Krier agrees with me. Where is the royal flunky?
   
   Cheers!



3. So much has happened in the years since this title came out that it's hard to remember what a storm The Prince of Wales' venture into architectural criticism caused. He seems to have made his peace with the profession now, but this is still an interesting and useful book that tells us as much, or more, about the author than it does about the art and science of building.

   The Prince's opinions on architecture seem congruent with, for example, his more recent outspoken opposition to genetically modified food. As I've heard him described elsewhere, HRH seems to be a man not entirely comfortable with the twentieth (and now twenty-first) century. And a good thing, too: lots of discomforting things have come out of that century. While unpleasant architecture may not rank high on the scale of the twentieth century's crimes, one is reminded of Winston Churchill's saying that 'We shape our buildings, and afterwards our buildings shape us.'

   The Prince's central point is that modern architecture has lost sight of its surroundings. Rather than creating structures that harmonize with their location, using local materials and respecting the history of the site, many modern buildings seem determined to draw attention to themselves -- or rather, to their architects. Like any art, architecture is a matter of taste. But while you can hide a bad statue or painting, an ugly building is a blot on the landscape that's darn hard to avoid. My tastes must be very similar to HRH's, because when he described a certain library building, for example, as looking like a place where books are burned rather than preserved, I nearly stood and cheered.

   It's hard to say whether the Prince's activism had, in the long run, any impact on British architecture or the architectural profession. But it was noble (not to say 'royal') of him to use his position to present a viewpoint that seems all too rare these days.

No comments about Function and Meaning in Classic Maya Architecture (Dumbarton Oaks Pre-Columbian Conference Proceedings).

5 comments about Lost Chicago.

1. The well written story and photos of Chicago are great. It was amazing the number of outstanding architectural building that were built and torn down in such a short number of years.
   Having grown up in Chicagoland during the 40' & 50's, I found myself depressed to see such destruction - only to be replaced by glass and aluminum boxes. Even efforts to save the outstanding and much beloved main lobby at the Chicago and Northwestern station failed in the name of the almighty dollar!



2. First of all...Mr. Lowe obviously has a deep rooted love for our wonderful city of Chicago. Most importantly...he is ensuring future generations and historians the ability to reference so many facts. This simply said...is an incredible work of love and a dedicated effort.
   Thank You Mr. Lowe...my children's children will know what an important part that Chicago has played as our nation grew and prospered.
   
   L. Curt Erler Author of "Southside Kid"



3. Stunning photos of a beautiful city. This book is truly a step back to a time when buildings were built to withstand centuries, although tragically these examples did not. Chicago has some of the most impressive examples of architecture in the country and this book is a powerful archive of not only what the city was, but what it is today. I wish there was a similar book on the buildings of Detroit, many of which are sadly slipping into oblivion.



4. 
   
   There is much to enjoy here even if one does not have a special interest in architecture. As a lifelong Chicagoan, I especially liked the photo of St. Stanislaus Kostka Church (p. 79) which occurs in the formerly Polish neighborhood that I grew up in. I also enjoyed the old maps of the Chicago area from the 1600's.



5. If you care about the history of Chicago and/or American architecture, you will be blown away by this photographic treasure trove of the Windy City's lost legacy. Through fire, ignorance and greed many of the country's most beautiful buildings have been lost. The Great Chicago Fire of 1871, the merchant princes and the stockyards, George Pullman and Hull House's Jane Addams, Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright, the Columbian Exposition. These people and events shaped what few would neglect to identify as one of America's architectural centers.

   This beautiful book is filled with more than 200 black-and-white photographs of buildings, bridges and other structures tragically allowed to fall into disrepair, destroyed by natural disaster, or bulldozed for parking lots and malls, repeated testaments to the Gordon Curve, predicting that a building is valued most when it is new, that it is least valued and most likely to be razed at approximately 70 years of age, and that if it makes it past that nadir it will begin to rise again in value as a relic and monument.

   Each chapter is preceded by several well-written and accessible pages, and each photograph is accompanied by informative paragraphs and quotes. The author delves into Chicago's beginnings as a frontier fort and its rapid growth into a bustling mercantile hive, along the way outlining the history of the peoples and policies of various times from 1803 to the 1970s, organized into ten conceptual and functional groups such as residences, hotels, railway stations, churches, arthouses, The Fire and the fairs.

   The photographs are wonderful, many I've never seen before, and each is described well, though the book would benefit by containing more maps. The book is constructed of good heavyweight paper and concludes with picture sources and notes, and a good index. It should be of interest to those with some connection to Chicago, architecture or American history, particularly of the 18th and 19th century.

1 comments about Architecture: From Prehistory to Post-Modernism : The Western Tradition.

1. This book contains the most comprehensive amout of Architectural infomation I have ever seen. I had to purchase this book for class and I would recommend it if you can find it... Not only can it help with studies a must own for regular knowledge.

3 comments about Architectural Composition.

1. Krier's treatise covers the lost art of building urban space as few other architecture books currently in print do. Any student hoping to understand the fundamentals of urban design will benefit from this valuable and highly accessible study.



2. This book covers many areas of architectural composition often not adequately addressed in architecture school.



3. whel actualy am looking for proporstion jogement to our my repor

1 comments about Changing Ideals in Modern Architecture 1750-1950.

1. Peter Collins is one of the more erudite architectural writers you will ever come across. This book was published in 1965, barely pre-dating the publication of Venturi's influential "Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture." Now that I've read both, if I had to recommend one, I would recommend Peter Collins. While Venturi attacks Modernism by simply saying "its not complicated enough, I like complex architecture (and therefore you should too)" Collins goes much, much more in-depth.
   
   The various ideas architects have desperately flung around since 1750 are all traced, dissected, and put into their social contexts. Rationalism, Romanticism, Ecclecticism, Historicism/Archeology, Classics versus Goths, the Moderns, the various analogies to other fields architects have attempted - it is all discussed. The book stops at 1950, but this does not detract from its relevance in 2004, as we can see that architects have continued to explore connections with other genres in order to create their various forms. It is important to realize what we're doing and if it has ever be done before - and - it all pretty much has been. Not to despair though, Collins keeps it an interesting read, if you do not chuckle at his wit every now and then, then your sense of humor is dead. It is important to read this critically, and I found myself only very occasionally disagreeing.
   
   One of my favorite chapters, which is almost a six-page long joke, is entitled "Architecture and Gastronomy." (and yet - it is not a joke!)
   
   The only criticism of the book is perhaps his less-intensive use of illustrations than he might have. Those that he does include however are well-chosen.
   
   A very closely related work to this is J. Mordaunt Crook's 1987 "The Dilemma of Style: Architectural Ideas from the Picturesque to the Post Modern." Crook makes a book that attempts to do essentially the same thing, but has a slightly diferent perspective. I mention it because I believe these two, Crook and Collins, should be read by any architect worth their salt.
   
   Kenneth Frampton writes a fairly interesting introduction to the 1998 edition, hopefully this book will continue to have stamina for future generations of architects.

No comments about 30 60 90 09: Regarding Public Space.