No comments about Romanian Modernism: The Architecture of Bucharest, 1920-1940.

1 comments about Classical Architecture in Britain: The Heroic Age (Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in Britis).

1. Classical Architecture in Britain is a detailed insight in to British architecture, commencing with the works of Inigo Jones and finishing in the early nineteenth century. Arguably the most important period during British architecture, Worsley presents suprisingly novel sources and arguments. This book makes major advances upon the opinions laid down by earlier experts such as Downes, Summerson, Colvin and Pevsner providing a thoroughly modern analysis. Giles Worsley writes with fluid style making this book as equally understandable to the amateur as it is to the expert. Thus it is an enlightening read which I am sure will give many more great pleasure.

4 comments about Undesigning the Bath.

1. This is not for the intrepid house remodeler. Instead, it is for contemplation of the act of cleansing and renewal: how preparing for this act affects one's personal space: and how the bath creates and reinforces important social functions.
   
   Reading the book requires some energy. I suggest that you read the footnotes and view the photographs as you read.
   
   You will be exposed to ontology, epistemology, and axiology of the bath for a very reasonable price.
   
   It is likely that your choices about plumbing will be influenced by reading Koren.



2. Amazing photos of inspirational bathing environments. Highly recommended for sublime musings on the ideal bath--to built or take.



3. If you are looking for any kind of practical advice, you won't find it here. The author spends half the book telling us why arhitects can't design baths. The rest of the book is spent potificating on vague notions of the bath experience. The pictures suggest the ulitimate bathing experience comes from various outdoor, earthy, natural baths. If you have a desire to create a mud-pit bath in your backyard, read this book. Otherwise, forget it.



4. When my architect was beginning to design my new bathroom, I gave him a copy of this gem. He said it provided the inspiration for mine and every bath he's designed since. I've given copies to few other friends who were in a similar architectural process. I've received profuse thanks. If you're planning to build an unusual bath, I think this book is a must read.

No comments about Public and Private Spaces of the City.

1 comments about Techno Architecture (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.

5 comments about Richard Meier Architect, Vol. 3 (1992-1998) (Vol 3).

1. Will decrease a many help to you. But it is inconvenient for the photograph to be insufficient.



2. Only ISBN: 1580930611 or ISBN: 1580930441 published by the Monacelli Press on 304 pages as an exhibition catalog with beautiful only B&W photos and drawings (many 3D) and minimal text.
   FROM FRONT FLAP:
   Over his thirty-five-year career Richard Meier has produced an internationally recognized body of work that reinterprets and recovers the ideals of modernism. With the completion of the landmark Getty Center in Los Angeles, Meier's distinct vision has emerged as architecture that is truly for our time. This catalog, accompanying a major exhibition organized by The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (and traveling throughout the world), beautifully documents Meier's career with exquisite duotone photographs and the architect's own drawings, most of which have never been published.
   Twenty-five of Meier's masterworks are featured, including the Smith House in Darien, Connecticut; the Douglas House, on the shores of Lake Michigan; the Museum for Decorative Arts in Frankfurt; the Canal+ Headquarters in Paris; the Museum of Contemporary Art in Barcelona; and the Getty Center. Current projects, including federal courthouses in Islip, New York, and Phoenix, Arizona, and the Church of the Year 2000 in Rome, are also presented.
   A collection of insightful essays and commentaries by, among others, noted scholars Kenneth Frampton and Jean-Louis Cohen and architect Stan Allen illuminates various formal, theoretical, and practical issues at work in Meier's ever-evolving approach to the art of architecture. An extensively illustrated chronology of built and unbuilt work completes this first volume to document the entirety of Meier's extraordinary oeuvre.
   CONTENTS:
   Richard Koshalek and Dana Hutt 6
   Introduction: Richard Meier, Light + Space Architect
   Dana Hutt 8
   Richard Meier's Working Space: The Uses of Abstraction
   Stan Allen 12
   Figures in an Urban Landscape: Meier at the Millennium
   Kenneth Framp ton 28
   Creative Repetition Jean-Louis Cohen 34
   Smith House 40
   Bronx Developmental Center 48
   Douglas House 56
   Olivetti Branch Office Prototype 66
   The Atheneum 72
   The Hartford Seminary 84
   Frankfurt Museum for the Decorative Arts 94
   High Museum of Art 108
   Siemens Corporate Headquarters 118
   The Getty Center 128
   Westchester House 152
   Ackerberg House 162
   Grotta House 170
   The Hague City Hall and Central Library 180
   Ulm Exhibition and Assembly Building 190
   Weishaupt Forum 200
   Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art 208
   Royal Dutch Paper Mills Headquarters 216
   Madison Square Garden Site Redevelopment 224
   Canal+ Headquarters 232
   Rachofsky House 240
   Islip Courthouse 248
   Neugebauer House 254
   Phoenix Courthouse 262
   Church of the Year 2000 268
   The Richard Meier Archive Lisa J. Green 276
   Buildings and Projects 1960-1999 282
   Selected Bibliography 302



3. The Book is Great. If you love the style of Richard Meier, you sure would love this book too.



4. This 3rd in a series monograph by Rizzoli is a must-have addition to any serious architectural book library or to fans of Richard Meiers work. The numerous color photos are top rate, and together with a large number of drawings give a thorough overview of one of the top designers of today. The many photos in particular attest as to the successful completion of previously anticipated projects which have been in the pipeline, while new drawings herald new masterpieces to come.



5. Do not confuse this Monacelli Press book with the latest Rizzoli book by the same name. This one is an "artsy cofee table book" with slightly out-of-focus artsy black and white photos of a limited selection of his projects, including some of his earlier houses as well as some of his latest works. Large two page photographs are shown, together with 3 or 4 smaller ones per project, in lieu of a more comprehensive exposition of their work. If you are looking for information on their current work or design ideas check out the Rizzoli books instead.

No comments about Classical and Modern Interactions: Postmodern Architecture, Multiculturalism, Decline, and Other Issues.

No comments about Mid-Atlantic Roadside Delights.

2 comments about The Built, the Unbuilt, and the Unbuildable: In Pursuit of Architectural Meaning.

1. As Robert Harbison puts it: "It all begins with gardens, the most trusting and innocent of human constructions. Yet, inspiring them, the supposed innocence of gardens, one is tempted to call it, for they are places where the undeclared war between architecture and its antitype, nature, between growth and the ordering impulse, is presented in delicious harmony. They are places which flirt with allowing art to disappear, which seem to embrace principles hostile to form of any kind --irregularity, change, and urge to destroy. This is the hubris of gardens, to think that they could really improve on or collect the unruliness of natural forces and make a scene of it, like a play in which the actors were all wild animals." (The Built, the Unbuilt, and the Unbuildable)
   
   Gardens represent the dynamic tension between the forces of chaos and the forces of order...thereby creating a pocket of order within a sea of change; the edge of chaos, a metaphor for Life itself.
   
   Harbison also delves into those other "nonessential" forms of the built environment such as ruins and monuments. In so doing, he crosses the line from pure art history or architecture into the realms of psychogeography. As Guy Debord puts it "Psychogeography could set for itself the study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behavior of individuals. The adjective psychogeographical, retaining a rather pleasing vagueness, can thus be applied to the findings arrived at by this type of investigation, to their influence on human feelings, and even more generally to any situation or conduct that seems to reflect the same spirit of discovery."
   
   Harbison waxes toward the poetical when entering into descriptions, often vague, of various points along an architectural amble. He approaches the necessity and purpose of ruins as a basis of self-consumption and a reminder of mortality. He addresses himself to monuments, which are concrete reminders of the id and the ego. He posits the dynamic metaphor of gardens. Ultimately he arrives at the border of the unreal, fantastic and mythical architecture, what he regards as the "unbuildable."
   
   In many ways Harbison's journey mirrors that of the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, an anonymnous book printed by Aldus Manutius in 1499. The text of the book is written in a bizarre Latinate Italian. Its story consists of precious and elaborate descriptions of scenes involving the title character, Poliphilo (the lover of Many Things), as he wanders a sort of bucolic-classical dreamland in search of his love Polia (Many Things).
   
   As Harbison may have noted himself, sardonically, "The imaginary is that which tends to become real."



2. This is a good book of 18th century architecture, it has many excellent scetches of ideas held by the architects of the time.

No comments about Steven Ehrlich Architects.