5 comments about The Simple Secret to Better Painting: How to Immediately Improve Your Work with the One Rule of Composition.

1. I have nothing to add to other's reviews, just want to lift up the rating.
   Five stars with no doubts.



2. Although this book focuses on one secret to better painting, it shows through images of every kind, and every subject, how that concept can be applied to any type of work. Sometimes focusing on just one element for improvement can be the best way to integrate that concept. In this case, he clearly demonstrates the application of the idea in all its forms.



3. Very helpful.
   
   I know a lot about drawing, and a lot about controlling oils, but when I am out there doing a Plein Air, I can't remember any principles of composition. All I can think of is, "Ack! The sun is moving!" I am just painting furiously.
   
   This book is like BRAINWASHING. "There is one magic rule: never make any two intervals the same."
   
   Values: never make any two intervals the same.
   Intensity: never make any two intervals the same.
   Shapes: never make any two intervals the same.
   Etc. But he goes into even more details than that. He has LOTS of little areas that this rule applies to.
   
   Each page covers this rule in respect to ONE aspect of composition. And every time he reiterates: never make any two intervals the same.
   
   Most pages have a great painting on them, and not just by him. Offhand, I remember seeing some by Kevin Macpherson. This way you see how professionals apply this rule. I realize that every GREAT painting I have ever seen has incorporated this rule into every facet of their composition.
   
   By reading this rule on every page, and seeing how it applies to so many nit-picky little things, I am noticing it more in my painting. The last time I was doing a plien air, I thought, "Oh, the fence posts are all the same: *never make any two intervals the same*, I should angle a few of them. Oh, these two trees are identical: *never make any two intervals the same*, I will make one a little warmer and shorter". Etc. I could only remember it though becuase of his successful brainwashing technique.
   
   I find this book to be very helpful, and as soon as I am done with it, I am going to read it again. Regardless of your skill level, and regardless of your medium, this book will improve your composition, and therefore your finished product.



4. As a photographer, I'm always looking for help to improve my composition. This book, though not written specifically for photographers, is the best I've found so far. It is copiously illustrated, highly instructive, intuitive, and a quick read. Also, a lot of the art in it is just great to look at. I can't give this book enough praise. It's really made a difference in the way I set up my shots.



5. This book is a great beginner book or review for anyone wanting to understand what it takes to plan and execute an engaging painting. The concise textual ideas are amply illustrated with many examples from actual paintings in progress. The ideas are easy to understand and apply. The presentation of design concepts is spiced up with excellently chosen graphics and diagrams. The author gives psychologically sound explanations as to why certain design ideas work, and others do not.
   If you were an art major, and lost all your texts, you could start and end your library replacement right here. If you wish you had been an art major, but do not know where to start, this book is your answer. The author's words early on in the pages are quite true: "This book is intended to be read quickly, and referred back to often."

3 comments about Design for the Other 90%.

1. I was already familiar with the catalog, but needed additional copies. I was pleasantly surprised to find the Amazon selling price was even lower than at the venue. The catalog contains links and resources to follow-up on all the displayed items and their authors.
   
   The shipping time was relatively long, but express shipment outside the US would have been too expensive.



2. "Design for the Other 90%" was published for the exhibition of the same name at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum at the Smithsonian. More like a review of an exhibition than a definitive text, the book is a nice brief review of some very interesting designs that are useful all over our planet. The book does not seem to be intended to teach you how to build, but rather to inspire you to think about building differently.
   
   The book contains a collection of inventions - most of them quite simple. Examples are a "pot-in-pot" cooler which uses evaporative cooling to keep food from spoiling, a portable water filter for drinking water, a communal solar-powered kitchen, a gravity-powered drip irrigation system, and small-scale photovoltaic lighting. There are many more interesting ideas within these pages.
   
   You won't learn the details of construction from this book, but you will be stimulated to think more broadly about designs that are useful for the majority of humans on our planet.



3. Excellent book. Besides many, many good ideas, the concept of Designing for the other 90% of the population is inspiring. If you've ever seen how people in developing nations live, you know how important and needed innovative ideas like these are.
   
   In the lines of "Poverty is our greatest common enemy", if people started designing products like these to help improve the lot of the rest of the world, the larger part of the world's problems would be solved.
   
   The only thing I'd like to see in this book is more good ideas..

2 comments about Design Hotels Yearbook 2008.

1. I ordered a new book, but the book I got looks a used one.
   Even though it is acturally a "new" book, the book is technically too worn out and even some part of a page is torn.
   
   I was almost close to return the book.



2. It is probably the best publishing of trends in hotel design today. It is a must on table of every hotel designer, architect and developer.

5 comments about In Detail: Building Skins (In Detail (englisch)).

1. This books contains mostly low rise building, stadium, and stores in Europe that shows exordinary variety of materials used in exterior skins. A eye opener that give a glimps of the recent development of curtain wall design and the creativity involved in solving various problems. Each case contains at least horizontal and vertical sections drawings with materials table and background introduction of its functions, and some has enlarged photo of particular features which is useful to study how it was constructed. While in some cases I wish more close-up pictures were given, but at least for the most part it was more useful than most of architectual books which only offer overall view of the building and it liveup the name 'in detail' which I was looking for.



2. I cannot say enough about the quality of this entire series, and this book is among the best of the set. Few architecture books are of this high quality; one usually expects some level of editorial compromise; either we get lightweight analysis and documentation with beautiful photographs, or you get overly complex, teched out stuff that doesn't understand the fundamental concepts. Or it's just bad architecture. But this entire series, from the quality of the writing, the great beauty and clarity of the drawings, and finally to the aptness and excellence of the finished architecture; it represents the new state of the art. Buy the whole series, but start with this one and "Building Simply", which I'll rave about separately.



3. A must have for all architects and those interested in how buildings come together and the importance the skin plays. As specially when trying new materials.



4. There was a time when there was no question as to what the outside skin of a building was going to be, glass alternating with metal panels. Something monolithic looking like the UN building.
   
   Now significant advances in materials, architectural design, creative use of conventional materials like shingles, concrete, or sprayed on foam are producing building where the skin becomes more than just what you see.
   
   The book is organized into two main sections. The first third or so is used to describe the general changes that have been taking place in the general area of building skins.
   
   The last two thirds show where various treatments have been used in actual buildings. The buildings vary from tiny, micro houses to athletic stadiums, stores to factories.
   
   This is European publication. Most of the buildings are in Europe, with a few from Japan. They represent the most significant advances in design I have seen in a long time.



5. Great examples of innovative building skins with good details.
   Highly recommended for architects and architecture lovers.

5 comments about The Very Small Home: Japanese Ideas for Living Well in Limited Space.

1. I LOVE this book! I don't think I could live in most of these houses... But, oh wow, would I love to spend a weekend.
   
   In the truest Japanese tradition, these very, very small homes are morsels of perfection. No detail is too small; no corner neglected.
   
   Somehow, ancient Japanese design seems modern. So these "modern" homes, in the Japanese context, carry on tradition.
   
   My favorite house may be the little gem squeezed into what was a long, narrow driveway. It manages to be private, spacious, light filled and warm, AND incorporate a charming courtyard between the kitchen and traditional bathhouse.
   
   There are so many ingenious ideas packed between the covers of this book. If you love architecture or small houses or big houses or live in a house or apartment or refrigerator box (especially the box--it's roughly the size of some of these houses) you may enjoy this book.
   
   My main objection to these designs, is that I would require more privacy for the master bedroom. Many of them were open loft types, many of them barely segmented from the children's space. But, I still marveled at these tiny wonders. Some had the aura of cathedrals.
   
   
   
   Highly recommended.



2. it is obvious that someone was thinking when they created this book!
   I am very happy with the content and graphics.
   Lots of great ideas for building a new, more efficient house.



3. For those considering a smaller home, this book will challenge your sense of size. Most of the featured homes are under 500 sq ft. While this may work well in urban Japan, I think most Americans would be very hard pressed to fit two people into anything under 700-800 square ft.
   
   That said, many of the design solutions are elegant with clever ideas for spatial layouts, storage, light, and movement.
   
   Brown does a very nice job illustrating each of the selected houses with a 2 page spread of photos. The photos are followed by another 2 page spread that clearly illustrates the floor plans in lovely, hand-rendered, axonometric views. Accompanying text describes the drawings and the key innovation / "big idea" of the design. The final section of the book discusses "small" design principles for specific areas of the house.
   
   I would have given this one 5 stars, but I found myself really missing an additional 2 pages of pictures for each house so that I could really understand the spaces better.



4. I bought this book to research small space architecture as we are finishing our basement and planning expansion to our small home. The full page and collage photo spreads are gorgeous throughout this book. It contains much inspiration and thoughtful commentary on each of the featured homes.
   
   
   The primary focus of the book is contemporary architecture throughout Japan. There is very little coverage of traditional, fuedal or colonial architectural styles I was hoping to find. Still, the space saving innovations shared by the featured designers and firms are a great resource for anyone planning small area multipurpose, or contemporary Japanese, home building.
   
   Great as a reference and as a coffee table book. Beutiful and informative. If there's ever a revised printing, I'd request more fine grain detail on the space savers.



5. Interesting book well written, good details and good pictures, an insperation to those who seek some good ideas in looking as space saving ideas.

5 comments about How Buildings Learn: What Happens After They're Built.

1. A great review, from the experience, of the dynamics of buildings. A change in the paradigm of how we think of buildings. Professionals of the building sector can't miss it!!



2. This is a book someone foisted upon me unawares and I devoured. I write software for a living and I found this book has a lot to say about software that Brand probably doesn't realize he's saying. His constant return to Christopher Alexander is a dead giveaway: The pattern-language movement Alexander started took the software world by storm in the mid 90's. It is now generally assumed that the pattern-language movement in software is still unfolding. The authors of the first major pattern-language texts are heavily involved in the kind of "Agile" design processes that one associates with what Brand advocates in this book: the idea that the end is the beginning and understanding your work must be an evolutionary process where if it's done right, a building and a system is never finished and never perfect but always improving.



3. I am an acoustical and systems design consultant who specializes in worship and performing arts facilities, and use this book regularly in my practice. I have found no better resource for introducing the facility planning "layperson" to the enormous blind-spot that many in the architectural design and construction profession have regarding the relevance of buildings to the functional needs that should define their design, as well as the ongoing process of maintaining this relevance over time.
   
   While highly specialized rooms such as auditoria do not usually lend themselves to significant modification over time, or to strategies such as "loose fit," Brand's advice about the risk of architectural experimentation in the fundamental form of most buildings is spot on. This book is an extremely engaging read, and also serves as an excellent introduction to other key literature on architectural programming, scenario planning, the evolution of the architectural profession, and so forth.
   
   As other reviewers have suggested, anyone who lives or works in a building can profit from reading this book. I would add that anyone who works in the construction or facility management industries, or who expects to be involved in planning a building project from the perspective of the owner or user, has a duty to seek out the sort of education that this book provides.



4. Stewart Brand has identified the core that makes a building supremely good at what it does: the twin traits of being underspecialized and highly adaptable, possibly two names for the same thing. This brilliant, readable, and richly ilustrated book makes the same point again and again, in every architectural idiom that's lasted and especially in the ones that haven't. Longevity implies adaptation to changing uses. That includes configurable and customizable interior spaces, as well as walls that can be knocked down easily for expansion and new construction. Between renovations, the building must also be kept alive; the things that make its systems easy to modify also make the building easy to care for and repair. In other words, success means all the things that modern "architected" buildings aren't. Once you've really understood this wise book, just about every construction that fails in its purpose without actually falling down can be understood, and those failures predicted. MIT's misconceived Stata Center fits the failure pattern perfectly, being unmaintainable, unmodifiable, and unwilling or unable to address a future different from its present. Ironically, the very failure of that MIT building cuild have been averted using the lessons Brand learned during his residence at MIT's Media Lab.
   
   If you love buildings, you'll see what makes them lovable. If you've lived through at least one renovation, you'll see spelled out much of what you learned the hard way. And if you have a building that just isn't working, no matter how, you must read this book to understand why. This is a fitting companions to Christopher Alexander's book on design for living and for purpose. It covers the other decades or centuries of a building's life after initial design: the living redesign as it's repurposed, or its spiritual if not physical death, when purpose changes but the building can't.
   
   -- wiredweird



5. It is no surprise that the creator of the Whole Earth Catalogue decided to take a close look at buildings; because how we live shapes -- and is shaped by -- the what and where of our living spaces. Brand's driving idea here is that buildings are never static. Far from being the unchanging "given" we often suppose it to embody, architecture flows. The goal is to figure out which buildings are most adaptive over the longest spans and use that new knowledge to build for change. One of the most important pointers is to spend more on basic Structure, and less on finishing. Finish changes with taste and necessity -- last century's factory remade as a postwar office building to become a 70s artists' co-op and now a mini-mall with boutiques and a Starbucks. Substantial structures can and will learn new functions. Most radical of all is the suggestion to eschew a mortgage. Sixty percent of the final cost of a building is interest paid to a bank. Why not build a small, finished core building or a large but rudimentary building, using what would usually be considered down-payment money? Absent mortgage payments there will then be cash available to continue building -- and a chance to see what might develop. Every new owner sees projects-in-waiting immediately after moving in -- why not plan for that? (This is my own advice to would-be "alternative" householders, but there is no reason it shouldn't apply to commercial builders as well as homesteaders.) The overall lesson one draws from the photos, plans and text in this comprehensive work is this: buildings exist in and morph through time. The ones that last -- that we love to inhabit, to look at, to feel -- have learned and been encouraged to learn. Teach your buildings well. Brand's sendoff is appropriate for this review: "What about the building you see when you look up from this book? Go do something timely to it."

2 comments about Green BIM: Successful Sustainable Design with Building Information Modeling.

1. The best book for anyone wants to integrate BIM and Sustainability in their work practice, mainly designers.
   Good for both students and professionals. a step by step procedure to achieve Green Design using BIM technology, with real life examples, procedures, calculations, etc...
   The main program discussed is Autodesks's Revit, wish they used more than one application.



2. This is a groundbreaking exploration of what you can do TODAY with BIM to make your buildings sustainable. Its got a lot of pictures and graphics that neatly explain the concepts. You can tell from reading the first few chapters that these guys really know what they are talking about.

5 comments about Compact Houses: Architecture for the Environment.

1. This is basically just a coffee table book - plenty of nice pictures but light on substance. If you want detailed (even semi detailed) information on compact design, space saving ideas and the like than look elsewhere.



2. As a member of the Small House Society I love this book. The houses are small and to the point without all the clutter some small houses tend to have. And as the title says its Compact Houses: Architecture for the Environment. And in an era of McMansions its so refreshing to see small homes that use small lots to make the best use of the land and provide for the most open and airy feeling home. Or for those who like myself love the idea of a 500-800 square foot home in an open field that is environmentally sound but also simple and minimalist this is a great book.



3. I enjoyed the wide variety of projects presented. I'm a visual person, so thought there could have been more photos per home to orientate oneself with the accompanying floor plans.
   
   Overall, I return to this book (amongst others of its genre in my collection) because of the celebration of small project design.
   
   This is not for those who dislike modern, minimilistic elevations.



4. Empty square boxes; cold and modern. The flat roofs would never work in the northern climate.



5. I review a lot of architecture books, and this one more than most makes me want to go out and build a new house. The subject of the book is small houses. It consists of pictures and the story of some fifty houses, all of which are less than 1,300 square feet. Many of them are much less than 1,300 feet, indeed down into the 300-400 square foot size.
   
   I live in a small house -- 900 square feet or so -- that's about a hundred years old. But compared to the layout, the beauty the simplicity of design, mine's a dump. I'm getting the urge to go visit a realtor friend. One thing about these houses is that many of them are on what would be considered hard to build on lots. And such lots tend to be cheap. There's a new architect in town that's fresh out of school and may have more originality than the older guys. Maybe if I give her this book, with a few houses marked. Hmmmmm!
   
   One thing I didn't like, most of the bed rooms are on the second floor. I was in a house once that had a fire. The amount of smoke generated in just a minute or two was incredible. I don't want a bed room upstairs, if necessary I want to be able to close the door to keep the smoke out and get out through a wondow or emergency door.
   
   Other than that, this is a great idea book. The pictures are beautiful. There's not as much detail as I would like, but adding detail would have to mean either fewer houses or bigger book, so I guess it's a nice balance.

No comments about M. F. K. Fisher among the Pots and Pans: Celebrating Her Kitchens (California Studies in Food and Culture).

5 comments about Tudor Style: Tudor Revival Houses in America from 1890 to the Present.

1. This book offered plenty of ideas in my restoration and planning process of my tudor home. Great buy for the $$$



2. This is a very good book, the houses chosen are first rate and the text well researched and informative. The images are very well done, they are crisp and well presented. Some of the houses chose are amazing, frankly Tudor is not my favorite of the Eccletic styles, I really prefer Beaux Art and Georgian, but this book made me appreciate the beauty of the Tudor. I highly recommend this book, it made me fan of the style.



3. The photos and houses shown in this book are fantastic, both the old and modern dwellings. I have many books on Manor houses and old english houses but the photos shown in this book are the best I've seen. I was very interested to see the modern tudor style houses that have been built in the USA like the one shown on the cover. I bought this book from Amazon and it was delivered to Australia in top condition. A great buy and people visiting my place have picked it up and had a read because it captures the eye.



4. I caught a glance of the book on my architect's desk, and immediately ordered it the next day. I was not disappointed.
   
   Tudor Style gives an excellent overview of the English Tudor influence on architecture in the United States. I particularly enjoyed the narrative that accompanied the pictures throughout the book - very well written and researched! The picturesque neighborhoods and historic homes featured were inspiring examples of what truly draws people toward this style even today.
   
   An excellent book for anyone who appreciates timeless architecture and european-influenced design.



5. This book is long overdue. There's really no exclusive published works in print on American Tudor Revival architecture, except for this. It is a beautifully photographed and organized book, with nice fonts and well-balanced photographs. There are a few holes, though. Styles and geographic concentrations aren't focused on well enough. The section on Philadelphia Tudor Revival ingores a rich and very diverse Tudor variety in favor of a few French country houses. Also, the 1950s and 1970s mixes of ranches and split-levels with Tudor sensibilities are ignored, either out of distaste or pretension. The modern Tudor section is dominated by one very large McMansion with mock Tudor references. In all, the book is unfit for study but is basically a very pretty coffee table book.