1 comments about American Apocalypse: The Great Fire and the Myth of Chicago.

1. A word of caution for the reader: this book tells us almost nothing about the Great Chicago Fire itself. It says a little about the city's history and a lot about its ethos, but the fire is only a backdrop. I hope I am not alone in feeling that something mentioned in a title should be included extensively in the book.

1 comments about The Inflatable Moment: Pnuematics and Protest in '68.

1. So you thought that inflatable chairs were just goofy, disposable conversation pieces - the lava lamp of furniture, doomed to evoke hazy images of some late 60s lysergic idyll no matter how many times they come back in fashion. This book is here to blow that perception out of the water - to tell for the first time the fascinating story of inflatables: how the idea emerged from the US military, was baptized by the ludic "instant city" manifestoes of Archigram, and became bound up in the politics of the Situationist-inspired street protests of May '68. There aren't quite as many high-quality images as I'd have liked, and from time to time the book descends into unwonted theoryspeak, but I know of literally no other reference on this particular moment - one where optimism, liberation, and technology fused to suggest possibilities where none had existed before. Highly recommended.

No comments about Beaux Arts New York.

No comments about Varactor Applications.

3 comments about Architectural Heritage of the Caribbean: An A-Z of Historic Buildings.

1. "This book offers the academic and casual visitor alike a unique insight into the varied architectural treasures of the Caribbean... through this book we can appreciate the true history of the Caribbean."
   
   ---Professor Richard Hodges, OBE, PSA
   Director, The Prince of Wales Institute of Architecture



2. I order every book on Caribbean architecture I can find. My biggest disappointment with this one is with the drawings, most of which are from Pamela Gosner's Caribbean Georgian, published by Three Continents Press in 1982. (You'll get many more informative drawings if you can find this book.) One of the other illustrations, a "classical" column and pediment, is filled with the most basic errors. The text neither contradicts not adds anything new to Gosner's book or Buissert's Historic Architecture of the Caribbean (1980, Heinemann Educational Books) or Crane's Historic Architecture of the Caribbean Islands (1994, Univ. of Florida Press). The photography is better in the later two books as well.

   I recommend searching for used copies of these other books instead.




3. The Caribbean islands offers the student of architecture a wealth of historic buildings reflecting Spanish, French, British, Dutch, and Creole colonial heritages and styles. Andrew Gravette's Architectural Heritage Of The Caribbean: An A-Z Of Historic Buildings is a comprehensive reference guide to more than a thousand architectural sites including churches, plantation houses, fortresses, and ordinary homes. Enhanced with a useful glossary of architectural terms, 16 color plates, and 120 line drawings, Architectural Heritage of the Caribbean is a superbly descriptive introduction to notable and interesting buildings, and encompasses every Caribbean island from the Bahamas to Trinidad. Architectural Heritage Of The Caribbean is an invaluable guide for tourists, architectural students, and regional historians.

No comments about The Ethics of Building.

No comments about The buildings of early Islam.

1 comments about Labour, Work and Architecture.

1. An accurate title, for it is laborious work to extract the nuggets of wisdom from Frampton's dense prose. However, the result justifies the effort, for the Columbia professor has an intelligent opinion on almost every modern building and movement. This anthology of essays, written over the past 35 years, ranges from Russian Constructivism, through evaluations of Aalto, Kahn, and Le Corbusier, to reviews of the Berlin Philharmonie, the Leicester Engineering Building and the Ford Foundation Headquarters - which he excoriates as "A House of Ivy League Values."

No comments about Chartres Cathedral: Illustrations, Introductory Essay, Documents, Analysis, Criticism (Norton Critical Studies in Art History).

No comments about City Speculations:.