3 comments about Architecture + Animation (Architectural Design).

1. this book gives another dimentition to the understanding of animation, it goes more into the philosophical use and representation ideas of creationg both formas and spaces in digital reality



2. I high recommend this book for all the architects interested in architecture in motion.



3. I am a architect and I want to collect some articles about animated architecture and architectural animation.

2 comments about Ultimate Landscape Design (Ultimate Books).

1. This is a great book to see many of the better landscape projects around the world. Lots of new ideas, details and strategies for designers to look at. For the price (28$ for a hardcover and more than 500 pages!), a really nice resource. Good photo book for non-designers, too. A little redundant about some projects that are in other books of this sort, but for the most part has many new ones that I have not seen.



2. A concise pictorial essay of the state of Contemporary Landscape Architecture globaly. Fantastic images for each project. A short paragraph per project is provided, giving the reader a brief introduction to each project.
   
   Beautiful book!

4 comments about 1001 Traditional Construction Details.

1. Unuseful book for traditional or classical architects.
   Lost money



2. These may very well be the most beautifully-drawn details I have seen in a long time. Granted, there's not much here for a modernist other than some general stuff like pipe supports, signage, flashing and the like, but that's pretty obvious from the title of the book.



3. First, by way of full disclosure, I'm a registered architect with NCARB certification and over 24 years of experience.

   This book is completely frustrating. It holds such promise, or perhaps I should say the author does. He clearly knows his stuff, and there's no question that there's extremely useful information here. But anyone who knows architectural detailing knows that there are many, many aspects of construction that are not even touched on in this volume.

   In all fairness, neither the author nor the publisher claim that this book is all things to all people, but with a total of 1001 details (a figure I trust is accurate - I haven't counted them), one can't help but be disappointed that over 20% of them are all related to custom cabinets, or that there are 30 different examples of window/door elevations all showing brick veneer and stone/brick lintels, with the only difference being the size of the stone. Likewise, there are something close to 20 different door head details, all showing a stone lintel of varying size, brick veneer and wood stud framing.

   Please tell me what the point of this kind of padding is. Why are all of these details necessary when one or two drawings with a few carefully chosen notes can explain the various possible permutations? If you as the reader think you're going to get 1001 details of different construction conditions, you're going to be as disappointed as I was. And the frustrating part of all of this is that the details are good. Damned good. I might quibble with his point of view on text in drawings (he makes a good case for legibility of text through the use of serif fonts rather than the ones that emulate hand drawn "architectural" lettering), but then throws any notion of legibility out the window by clustering all of his notes together with no line spacing between one note and the next. Still, the drawn information is good, just not of the quantity or variety to be worthy of the title "1001...Details." I'm even wrestling with the notion of returning the book, but I'll probably keep it since it does have useful information in it, and I'm a packrat when it comes to that sort of thing. But I won't feel good about it, especially when I think of what this could have been.




4. I was happy to come across this title with hopes that this was a book I could really learn from. Yet as with many other similar books the information presented in the CAD drawings are minimal and of little substance.

   It is surely a waste of money to purchase the CD.

   Did people forget how to actually detail buildings when they stopped drawing by hand?

No comments about Tadao Ando: Light and Water.

No comments about Materials, Specification and Detailing: Foundations of Building Design (Technologies of Architecture).

1 comments about UN Studio: UNFOLD.

1. This publication pales in comparison to van Berkel's first book - MOVE. Everything written is documented almost exactly on the firm's free website. UNstudio has much more to offer in terms of theory, process, and product than what they have demonstrated with Unfold. I personally want to see more drawings - one can't document a project and not put in massive amounts of plans and sections.

No comments about CATIA V5 Tutorials Mechanism Design & Animation Release 17.

No comments about Advanced Technologies: Building in the Computer Age (The Information Technology Revolution in Architecture).

5 comments about Morphosis: Recent Works (Planet Architecture).

1. This CD is a bit short of a new media experience; the content and file size is limited and low res.; I had hoped it would permit more detailed viewing than the equivalent material in book form. I also bought the Hadid CD which was several years newer, slightly better presentation and more content. Still neither gave the satisfaction of flipping pages at the coffee table or on the thrown.



2. Glad that Morphosis is featured in the planet architecture series. The virtual reality panoramas really show you the power of these digital archives. I haven't got a chance to be in many of these buildings so these archives get me as close as i can get. Lots of good info and interesting interviews. Looking forward to seeing more archives on these great architects.



3. I found this cd-rom to very informative of the architectural world. Morposis is a very intersting firm with very intriguing designs and projects. I look forward to seeing more of Morphosis's work.



4. This is a very good cd. Any architecture student should prchase it. I would buy it again.



5. Morphosis is leading the way for new architecture with innovative, fluid designs today, and what a better way to discover their works than through Planet Architecture's feature CD-Rom. It is comprehensive with plenty of exciting photos, drawings, interviews, and so much more providing you with a deeper understanding and analysis of the projects without dry reading. It includes much more interesting content than any comparative book and for a very modest price. Rather than breeze through a lacking book, the CD engages your interests as you explore and interact. Navigating through the CD is intuitively easy. It is well worth the money to get complete studies on the many dynamic projects listed. I recommend it to anyone that is considering, you will not be disappointed!

2 comments about Living Downtown: The History of Residential Hotels in the United States.

1. Much has been written about luxury hotels, but Paul Groth has chosen an overlooked subject: the bottom-rung hotels, often known as SROs (single-room occupancy), that serve as homes for those at the margins of society. Groth is an architecture professor who has actually lived in such places, which gives a refreshing personal touch to the book. He discusses the physical characteristics of such buildings, combined with a sympathetic description of who lives in them and what their lives are like. At the end of the book, Groth argues that SRO residents have been overlooked in urban renewal, and he explains how naive it is to expect that demolition of SROs will cause their residents to disappear.

   The book has a distinct San Francisco emphasis. There are over 150 illustrations, mostly photos, but also including 12 floor plans. If you've ever wondered about the down-and-out hotels that are in every town and city, Paul Groth explains what is behind the facades.




2. Living Downtown is an evocative study of residence hotels, a misunderstood and often maligned type of housing stock. The book is effectively split into two parts: an examination of types of residence hotels and a discussion of how progressive ideals became policies that would instigate the SRO crisis following World War II. In his exploration of the history of residence hotels, Groth categorizes the structures into four categories based on class and presents anecdotes and newspaper accounts to paint a picture of how their residents and owners once lived, worked and interacted. The balance of the book is given over to analysis of how the attitudes of a few urban critics came to set national and local policies regarding housing and residence hotels, and how the demolition of the latter would create housing crises in cities across the country. Numerous schematic drawings and photographs show the layout of various residence hotels and the context of the neighborhoods in which they existed. Groth relies heavily on San Francisco examples to prove his points, but he presents cases from other cities as well, though sometimes in passing. Overall this book does an excellent job of explaining the residence hotel and the roots of the SRO crisis. Architects, planners, historians and even sociologists should find it an absorbing read.