5 comments about Modern Architecture: A Critical History (World of Art).

1. This is one of those 'must have' books for anyone interested in modern architecture. Although it does not have detailed information on each architect or movement, it is a great starting point from which to have a general idea of how the pieces of modern architecture fit with each other.



2. This book is admittedly very dense. Each short essay is packed with knowledge, but Frampton is not difficult. It certainly isn't useful to rush through it. Mull over a paragraph instead of the whole book. I originally found Frampton a challenge but it never seemed hopelessly out of reach. His writing coaxes you to a higher level. Your knowledge grows as you consider and wrestle with any two essays. It forces you to amass an inter-related structure of knowledge. I now think the book is extremely forthright and consider it a generous gift to those striving to get deeper; a primer and a leg-up on assessing the history of architecture. I don't think Frampton is pretentious at all. His personality is not even present in the mateiral. I have no more idea about who he is now than before I picked up this book a long time ago. He foregrounds his architectural knowledge and graciously disappears.
   
   90 percent of architecture publishing is coffee-table quality stuff that asks little of a reader, and consequently leaves you with little of substance. If you think this is difficult, pick up anything by the inscrutable, pretentious K. Michael Hayes. If you want facts in isolation, just keep telling yourself that Liebeskinds new WTC tower "which is 1,776 feet tall..." is architecture.



3. I took the first year architecture history in community college. Frampton's book is extreme. This book is absolutely not a choice for beginers in architecture history. It is not the pleasant experience to read Frampton's book. I doubt whether it is necessary for the author to use such not understandable writing style. In average, I read about three times in order to understand what he is talking about VAGUELY! However, it is no doubt that this book is considered as the classic (or the Bible) of architecture history. Frampton made a lot (A LOT!) comparison of enormous archtiects from different eras and different parts of the world. According most practicing architects, it is the best arch history book you could read (only if you are knowledgable enough in the field)

   By the way, if you are interested in a visual architecture history book, this is not you choice. All the illustration in this book is all white & black, small.

   Hope this commend help!




4. Frampton makes no apologies for modern architecture, instead he makes one of the more arduous defenses of modern architecture, taking in the full sweep of this architectural movement, and critically examining some of the contemporary trends which have followed in its wake.

   It is a very readable overview of modern architecture, beginning with the late 18th century and 19th century predecessors which led to a thorough re-examination of architecture in the early 20th century. Frampton divides his study into short thematic chapters which allow readers to focus on one movement at a time. There are various recurring figures such as Frank Lloyd Wright, Le Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe; but Frampton covers an exceedingly broad range of architectural ideas in the past century.

   He has updated the book to include some of the more recent currents in architecture such as deconstruction and fragmentation, which he places in the context of the broader stream of architecture since 1962 in one of his more thought-provoking chapters, "Place, Production and Scenography." He notes how many of the recent ideas in architecture draw from the Russian avant-garde and Italian Futurism. He pans Post-Modernism for its pretension display of historicism, as exhibited in the work of Michael Graves, preferring the more rigorous historic views of neo-rationalists like Aldo Rossi. It is an insightful, illuminating book, which has been updated to include Modern Architecture to 1991.




5. Calculus textbooks read easier than this book. The content is probably concise but the communication is not. The writing is awkward and often incoherent.

   Whatever happen to the simplistic yet skillful writing style of a Hemingway? His style was neither haughty nor indolent. He did not have to impress with fancy wordage. And his simplistic, flowing style took far more effort and thought than the rudimentary level of stringing out difficult sentences.

   This book is okay for the intellectual or the elitist but for the real world it can be painful. Architects are not always known for their communication skills. This book does'nt help.

1 comments about Islamic Architecture: Form, Function, and Meaning.

1. This is an excellent book about Islamic Architecture. It offers a comprehensive coverage of building typologies, their influences, and the context (historical and geographic) within which these types can be found. However, I cannot use it as a textbook alone. I need to complement the content with other sources that talk about cultural context as both determinants and modifiers of the built form. I complement the book with George Michell's "Architecture of the Islamic World", the work of AlSayyad, Rapport, and many of the published work of the Aga Khan program.

5 comments about Architecture and Disjunction.

1. This book was required for our studio (third year), and I am very glad that it was. I found it to be thought-provoking and helpful to my studio project.



2. If the architecture of Frank Gehry, has been described as a movie composed entirely of special effects, then Tschumi's is like special effects that don't quite come off. Herbert Muschamp, the modernist cheerleader who is the architecture critic for the NY Times, began his review of Tschumi's Lerner Student Center at Columbia University by saying "By now, everyone knows that Bernard Tschumi's new Lerner Hall is a dud." And City Journal described his work as ""an agitated, irrational mix of limestone, brick, metal, and glass... giving the impression of a building on the edge of a nervous breakdown." Journalist Robert Locke has written, ""Tschumi's theoretical writings, the basis of his reputation, are a tangled mess that alternately induces dizziness and puzzlement as to whether the author actually knows what philosophy is, or merely heard it described by someone in a bar once ...... The worst of this stuff is so self-evidently empty as to defy attack". - It only remains for you to ask yourself whether you are one of those fools who will be taken in by this confidence trickster who has ruined the cities we live in, or whether you will move on to more intelligent reading. [Hint: Try Louis Kahn. It's a good start!]



3. Disjuntion indeed. More BS pontification than valuable commentary. The arguments are poorly considered, heavily flawed and bear no tangible relationship to the projects they are supposed to describe. Tschumis is just one of the many theoretical architects who make great claims about the buildings and cities they design for, but in practice produce the same tired cliched sculptural rubbish that has ruined Paris and other great places. But worse, Tschumi's buildings are poorly built and look even worse after a few years. - Check out his work at Columbia Campus in New York. The loading dock of any warehouse looks better than the entry ramp that he designed. - Time to wake up from the rubbish Tshumi and his ilk have been getting away with for years.



4. Tschumi states more-or-less obvious truths about the failure of modern architecture to create meaningful places. The arguments are clear, if simply stated. - My big regret is that the writer never heeds his own message. Tschumi himself is one of the worst practitioners of the very ideologies he criticizes. [Anyone who has looked at the Columbia building by Tschumi will know how poor, cold, puerile, vacuous and dumb (that's right DUMB) a building it is.] Tschumi has fallen into the trap so common in architecture these days, of believing that writing ("theorizing") is more important than observing and building for a true reality. Pragmatics and real life issues are not his bag. - In the end, Tschumi is just another architectural hypocrite. He sort of knows the real stuff, but is too much of a wanker (ask your British friends if you don't know what a wanker is), to care about real architectural problems enough to solve them. - A few diagrams here, a few poorly assembled details there ... who cares if it falls apart three days after he photographs it. - It's just such a pity this flaky poof is allowed to teach. - If you read it, (and I don;t recommend you waste your time doing so), just ask yourself if the doctor seems to use his own medicine.



5. In an amazing collection of essays, Tschumi criticizes both modernism objectivity and post-modern nostalgia. His most important proposition -- that there is no cause and effect relationship between function and space -- is a kick in the teeth of functionalist thinkers. Instead of "form and function", he proposes an architecture based on "space, event and movement", in which the conflit and contradictions between the terms of the equation is its most relevant aspect. "Architecture and disjunction" is a Pandora's Box -- some of the questions it proposes are painful and disturbing (like "what is space?", for instance), but have been overlooked long enough. To paraphrase Morpheus in the movie "The Matrix", "you can take the blue pill, and believe whatever you like, or you can 'read the little red book', stay in Wonderland, and I'll show how deep the rabbit hole goes..."

1 comments about Japan-ness in Architecture.

1. I ordered this book before publication and it wasn't until the summer of 2006 that i read it. and read it and read it. It is not easy to grasp for it complexly relates the myth of "Japan-ness' and how the qualities of Japanese architecture have been influenced by critics, history, individuals and foreign interventions - Isato concludes that there is no 'essential Japanese style but a complex web of forces creating various Japanesese architectural forms. "Japan-ness in Architecture" is a beautiful blend of personal and historical explorations that reveal the sources of styles whose effects continually define structural identities and transformations throughout 'Japanese' history. This is one of the best books I have read on the interaction of Japanese history and culture.

4 comments about Olson Sundberg Kundig Allen Architects: Architecture, Art, and Craft.

1. Very well edited book. Mostly residential projets. Each one is introduced w/ concept, dwg, (almost excessive)photos, and details. Design is a little on the conservative side sometimes(especailly for those ultra-rich clients), but spatial concept and detailing are still modern and very well developed. Some formal languages are complicated by, say, using double columns, which I really don't know what for other than visual complication.
   
   Overall I highly recommend this book, especially to people interested in well crafted residential projets.



2. Being OSKA an incredible architecture studio, and having a very good Web page, I was eager waiting for the book, but unexpectedly, the layout, colors and pictures of the book weren't in the same level



3. In a characteristically perceptive and graceful introduction, Paul Goldberger suggests that the world has caught up with the good sense and refined sensibility of this Seattle firm. This is a handsome, expansive study of a dozen houses, built for people of means and taste-a rare combination. All but two are located in the northwest, and each immerses you in the natural beauty of its site and its inner serenity. (Michael Webb is the book reviewer for LA Architect magazine.)



4. This book wisely does not try to show all the work of Olson Sundberg Kundig and Allen, one of the Northwest's leading architecture firms. Instead it focuses on a small number of selected homes designed by the firm, and then guides the reader through the creative process, from design through construction to finished product. What emerges is an elegant book of even more elegant homes, each quite different from the other, but all seeming to harness to the max both the power of line and the nurturing complexity of light.

No comments about Toward a New Regionalism: Environmental Architecture in the Pacific Northwest.

3 comments about Chambers for a Memory Palace.

1. An interesting format for a discussion of design principles with beautiful pen and ink sketches. Imaginary letters written between two architects discussing well known and not so well known buildings that illustrate proportion, paths, angles and why they appeal to our eyes and hearts. Recommended by a designer whose course I took. A very pleasing book.



2. For the way this book is advertised, I did not feel like it accomplished what it sets out to do. Nevertheless if you are an amateur buff of architecture like me this is a good book to add to your home library collection.



3. Easily the best book on architecture, and mere observation, that I have ever read. Great even for those with little or no knowledge of the field.

1 comments about The Fashion of Architecture.

1. Is extremely modern, the information is convincing and the point of view of the book is futuristic.
   I recommend this book to anybody within the fashion or architecture industry

5 comments about Living in Morocco: Design from Casablanca to Marrakesh.

1. This is a beautiful book. Unfortunately, the cover broke away from the binding after only a couple readings.



2. BOOK ARRIVED IN POOR CONDITION WITH THE BACK UNGLUED. OTHERWISE IT IS A BEAUTIFUL PHOTO ESSAY



3. The photography is inspirational -- whether you are a shutter bug or trying to grasp the details that make this part of the world's interiors so beautiful. Striking colors, well-chosen compossions -- this book is a must have. My only regret is the lack of printed information that would educate me on the fine details and intricate subtilies of this design form.
   
   Still, a must have for anyone with interest in photography or the striking vistas on can create for their home or garden.



4. This book is really very beautiful. I have transgressed Asian and southwestern design and this book is just what I wished for.



5. I really liked this book, as well as Moroccan Style. I felt this book was a little more comprehensive on the styles by region of Morocco and showed more traditional design.

4 comments about Buildings across Time with CD-ROM.

1. I'm one of those "stodgy" old professors (who chose this book as a text before it included the disc and zoomed up in price.) I was unaware until last week that it's produced under another name without the disc, at 40% of the price of this one (Yes, tacky, isn't it?) This book is very good, but it's NOT a good purchase since the identical "A World History of Architecture," can be purchased instead. Same words, far better price. I'm changing texts for future classes.



2. I AM another testament that this book is TOTALLY the same as the other book "A World History of Architecture," but the prices ARE quite different.
   
   Of course, THANKS to the previous comment and the reply.
   
   My classmates all have this book, while I have the "World History" one, but no differences in the entire content (except the cover design) whatsoever.



3. This is an interesting book, but is marked down because the CD does not open on the Macintosh, even though it is supposed to be OS X compatible. The publisher provides no work-around to the problem.
   
   Not recommended.



4. This book appears to be exactly the same as "A World History of Architecture" (Paperback) by the same authors and available on Amazon for $33.64 without the CD. The number of pages, table of contents, and intro sentence are exactly the same. It seems more than slightly shady to me to sell the exact same book with two different names.
   
   This book is required reading for my Architectural History class and was for sale at my school's bookstore for $100. My stodgy old professor isn't teaching from the CD. I am not giving these people my money, I got my copy at the library.