No comments about Sprawltown: Looking for the City on its Edges.

No comments about Arts & Crafts Masterpieces (Architecture 3s).

No comments about Tower and Office: From Modernist Theory to Contemporary Practice (A Buell Center/Columbia Book of Architecture).

1 comments about The Havana Project: Architecture Again (Architecture & Design).

1. Do you want to know architects' own thinking and voices? Take this book. It would be the one that can satisfy your wondering about architecture.

No comments about Great Buildings of Boston.

3 comments about Irving Gill and the Architecture of Reform: A Study in Modernist Architectural Culture.

1. To look back at the work of Irving Gill is a revelation. His buildings could come out of the architecture studio of today with their pared down facades, sparse oranamentation, and uniquely angled roof lines. His hotel in Torrance, Ca looks like something that a circa 2000 urban planning commission would commend--with its pedestrian friendly entrance, and urbane appearance.

   If Gill were alive today, he would throw up at what is being built in Southern California. The infantilization of buildings--with needlessly narcissistic angles, jarring colors, and arbitrary roof lines calls out for discipline of Gill. [For more nonsensical, solipsistic and soccer mommy design architecture of today, check out the new Studio City Library on Whitsett and Moorpark]

   Gill opened up buildings to their surroundings, united interiors and exteriors. He built in a way that did not diminish the occupants of his buildings, but enhanced their lives. So little ego, so much concern for the client. This book is a remarkable look into one of the early geniuses of architecture in California.




2. FINALLY a new book on the great works of Irving Gill!



3. FINALLY a new book on the great works of Irving Gill!

1 comments about Architecture and Art of the Deccan Sultanates (The New Cambridge History of India).

1. This scholarly work covers a long neglected area in the art world. Southern India and the contribution of Islamic art to this region has had insufficient attention over the years. Here we have renowned experts surveying the area with great skill. A book that will give great joy and value to scholars and the general reader alike.

No comments about L.A. Deco (California Architecture and Architects).

1 comments about The Ten Books of Architecture: The 1755 Leoni Edition.

1. The author of this book is often cited as the ideal of a Renaissance man, an architect, writer, musician, painter and by some accounts an amazing athlete. This book is based upon the Leone edition, a 1755 English translation of Alberti's original work from the 1400's. Alberta has a very modern succinct style. The chapters include many subchapters to help organize the information. He covers all the aspects of architecture and construction from laying the foundations to the wood joinery in the rafters, to adding the classical facade. He reduces classical design to a series of rules, and proportions, most of which are still followed today when a classical facade is desired. Alberti wrote with one foot in the modern world and one foot in the Renaissance world. He still respects some of the superstitions of his time, but all in all it is a dry book? I would not recommend this book to anybody unless they have a strong desire to learn about classical or Renaissance architecture. The Leone edition also includes many very good plates of his drawings. These drawing are incredible for their time period and more informative than the majority of pictures in most modern architectural books. I became interested in this book because of the plates portraying the construction of construction crane, but the font ruined the book for me. The publisher kept to the original 1755 font style. I'm sure there is some value to this, but it cut the readability factor in half. What could have been an enjoyable book was reduced to slogging through paragraph by paragraph, so (lector caveat) reader bewares?

1 comments about Living Library: Wiel Arets University Library Utrecht.

1. Take Koolhaas's content minus the content. This book is all flash and dance with no substance. From front to the back the book is laced with images. They definately chose quantity over quality. This book offers very little information about the library. It talks more about the history of the collections in the library than the actually library and the architect's thought behind the library. You are not missing much passing up on this book. Huge dissapointment. You can get more information on this work by finding any magazine that briefly talks about the building