No comments about Chicago Architecture 1872-1922: Birth of a Metropolis (Architecture).

2 comments about Sketches from Japan.

1. Every fan of drawing, everyone who has ever traveled with a sketchbook will enjoy this little collection of his travel sketches from Japan, and this will delight those already acquainted with the ravishing beauty of Francis Ching's architectural drawings. Ching's other books are analytical drawings, showing architectural detail and forms with a controlled, disciplined line that architects know as the Ching style - contour drawings with a hierarchy of line emphasizing the outlines of figures. Ching's freehand sketches are a remarkably free riff on the drawing approach seen in his other work, as if he finally took his tie off and improvised a solo.
   
   These are predominantly contour drawings. Tone is used for contrast of focus, or emphasis of a figure to its ground, but tone is rarely used to define a volume. The control of line is extraordinary, and the variety of marks interesting. But the power of the drawings often comes from his orchestration of many contrasting textures, shapes, and details.
   
   Ching has remarkable control of representing a detail and describing its place as a part of a whole: there is always clarity in the disorder, even showing the exuberant chaos of telephone and power lines criss scrossing over the busy street. One can almost feel the mist, smell the sounds and hear the bustling noise on the street. The crowds of people are convincing, and he has no fear of quickly sketching a whole cluster of motorcycles. Looking at Ching's drawings feels like taking lessons in vitality, in visual selection, and in how a talented draughtsman really requires an editing, selective eye.
   
   The drawings are unfortunately interrupted by a graphic drawing analysis of the Centennial Hall of the Tokyo Institute of Technology. There's nothing particularly wrong with the analysis but it is nowhere near as compelling as the drawings, and also this sort of formal drawing analysis is covered well in Ching's other works. This analysis breaks the tone of the rest of the books, and it's a relief when the analysis ends and the exploration of Japan's urban life begins again.



2. There is a long tradition among artists and writers of maintaining a journal to record observations and impressions. Many writers use journals to write informally, often spontaneously, to describe real or imagined people, places, and events. Artists and naturalists as well fill sketchbooks with both words and images to help focus their observations. Frank Ching, the author of this sketchbook, not only records the optical reality of what is seen; he uses these drawings as a means of gaining understanding, insight, and perhaps even inspiration. His drawings stimulate the mind to think and can even make visible aspects that cannot be seen by the naked eye, or captured on film by a camera.

   Frank Ching made most of the drawings in this sketchbook in or around O-okayama, a town southwest of downtown Tokyo, where the Tokyo Institute of Technology is located. The subject matter ranges from street scenes to traditional construction details, from temples and their sacred precincts to stimulating juxtapositions of old and new. He has successfully captured the sights, sounds and even smells of vibrant metropolis Tokyo, enabling the reader to feel the humid heat of the day or the cool rainy mist that fell as he drew. In addition, there are scenes sketched during the author's brief excursion to Kyoto and the mountain village of Takayama

   All the drawings were executed in a pure contour-line technique with a fountain pen and black ink. There is a crispness and finality to an inkline that is both daunting and exciting. The process not only fostered the careful observation of details; it also required seeing how they fit into the larger framework and pattern of shapes, and noting which details could be omitted. The shape and extent of the white spaces are as important to a composition as what is delineated.

   Francis D.K. Ching (1943- ) completed a month in the spring of 1990 as a visiting scholar at the Tokyo Institute of Technology which he spent producing this sketchbook.

No comments about Gozar El Arte, Gozar La Arquitectura/enjoying the Art, Enjoying the Architecture.

1 comments about Contemporary World Architects: Central Office of Architecture.

1. I was a student of Russell N. Thomsen at SciArc and was very impressed with his passion for an art in a difficult place in American culture. His work displays a dedication to theoretical discourse all too vacant in the majority of architectural practices in the United States these last few decades.

No comments about The Architectural Unconscious: James Casebere and Glen.

No comments about Public Spaces - Prototypes.

No comments about Medieval Tuscany and Umbria (Architectural Guides for Travelers).

1 comments about Eleven Authors in Search of a Building: Aronoff Center for Design and Art at the University of Cincinnati.

1. Cynthia Davidson interviews Eisenman (her husband), the self-styled "theorist", and other pretentious colleagues about Eisenman's incomprehensibly idiotic building, The Aronoff Center. For Davidson and Eisenman, Architecture has nothing to do with designing spaces that enhance the human condition, but rather it is a substitute for the psychoanalyst's couch. And a passing glance at the Aronoff Center is all that is needed to assure you that Davidson and Eisenman both have a great deal of time due on that couch. The intellectually dysfunctional Eisenman is fond of "destabilizing", "disorienting", "disturbing" and "unbalancing" the viewer or occupant. Feeling uncomfortable in your surroundings is, for Eisenman, a quality we need more of. The uncritical Davidson soaks up this idiocy and presents it without so much as a smirk. As any student will tell you, exposure to Eisenman dulls the mind and the critical capabilities. This book (and its author/collaborators) is no more that a PR exercise for Eisenman and his amateur journalist wife. Predictably, the author comes out in favor of her husband's most absurd pronouncements. Be thankful that you don't have to sit around the dinner table listening to these two clowns.

2 comments about Building the Cold War: Hilton International Hotels and Modern Architecture.

1. The weapons that won the Cold War include ICBMs and nuclear bombs flown on B-52s. These were threats, but never had to be deployed into action. But one weapon that did go into action was hotels. Hilton hotels. This is the surprising demonstration in _Building the Cold War: Hilton International Hotels and Modern Architecture_ (University of Chicago Press) by Annabel Jane Wharton. What is even more surprising is that Hilton hotels did not just participate in the capitalist boom that eventually dislodged the Soviet Union. They were deliberately placed, designed, and run to make a profit, to be sure, but also to dislodge the Red Threat. This is not just the author's speculation. Conrad Hilton made it explicit: "Let me say right here, that we operate hotels abroad for the same reason we operate them in this country - to make money for our stockholders... However, we feel that if we really believe in what we are all saying about liberty, about Communism, about happiness, that we, as a nation, must exercise our great strength and power for good against evil. If we really believe this, it is up to each of us, our organizations and our industries, to contribute to this objective with all the resources at our command." He was careful not to disparage our country's military, but said, "I will tell you frankly, satellites and H-bombs will not get the job done."

   Wharton has done an excellent job of giving a broad history of the overseas Hilton, while giving case studies of specific ones. The Istanbul Hilton, for instance, had all the usual amenities, like lawns (completely foreign to the area), tennis courts, and a swimming pool. It had the extraordinary feature, common in foreign Hiltons, of iced water piped into every room. However, the marquee covering cars that drove up to the entrance was a wavy horizontal structure that was referred to as the "flying carpet." The interior lobby had a series of domes in the ceiling, a bow to mosque designs, and there were teakwood screens and Turkish carpets. Work by local artisans decorated the public spaces. Nonetheless, you can see in the pictures (and in this book, there are many useful ones) that the Istanbul Hilton is still a concrete, metal, and glass box like nothing else around it. Old hotels concentrated on public rooms inside; the Hiltons looked out, with lots of glass in every room to supply a view. The view was carefully chosen. In Istanbul, it faced East, toward the Soviet Union, daring those Commies to look American modernity and wealth in the eyes.

   Wharton is a historian of medieval art. Her family used some of these hotels when she was growing up, and she has returned to them to give an architectural history of the Hilton overseas effort. (She could not visit two Hiltons now lost, the one in Havana and the one in Tehran.) It is a remarkable history, no longer active because the Cold War is over, and because others followed Hiltons into the modernism market. The Hilton hotels still exist, but they are just hotels now, not unique as architecture nor as Cold War armaments. They shaped the way American visitors viewed foreign capitals, and boosted American economic (and therefore political) policies. Conrad Hilton may not have won the Cold War, but he did more than plenty of the generals.




2. Annabel Wharton has written a stunning and brilliant book about the US, Europe and the Middle East during the 1950s and 1960s, the height of the Cold War. She tells the story of how Conrad Hilton and his hotel empire participated in the rebuilding of Western Europe and key spots in the Middle East in the wake of WWII by establishing the Hilton International hotels--architectural monuments to modernism--as "little Americas" away from home for US businessmen, tourists, and diplomats. She explores Hilton hotels in London, Berlin, Istanbul. Rome, Cairo , Athens and other locales. Wharton is a smart, witty writer, and this book is a great pleasure to read.

3 comments about Ten Houses.

1. Why has Amazon included reviews of the De Groote and Miller/Hull books in the Ten Houses series under Gwathmey Siegel? Like Architects, was their intent to do it correctly, but they just ran out of time?



2. This book represents an extrodianry environmental focus for design. The houses created by the Miller/Hull Partnership display architecture originality combined with a keen knowledge of the northwest. Each house is created in harmony with it's surrounding environment--a beautiful representation of both art and archecture.

   Please note the customer review entitled, "Architecture Reference Book," does not reflect the correct designer. The architects represented in this book are David Miller, Bob Hull, Norm Strong, and other very talented designers from the Miller/Hull Partnership.




3. The book reviews ten houses designed by Christian De Groote which are built in Chile round about 1988 to 1991. All the houses are contemporary and there are good photos of the houses. There is not much explination or description, however this is nor really expected of an Architecture book, since Architecture is more of a view and see experience. I thought that Christian in his designs had many great ideas. Perhaps he is not the most famous designer but I liked his designs very much and hope to incorporate some of the design ideas in the house I am building.