No comments about Medieval Allegory and the Building of the New Jerusalem.

5 comments about Country Houses and Seaside Cottages of the Victorian Era (Dover Books on Architecture).

1. A nice little book on the subject. Gives the reader a basic covering on a variety of dwellings of the period but unfortunately rarely gives more than one or two floors of a design that uas three or four without providing a full set. Also doesn't provide scale for some designs.



2. Though these houses purport to be "country houses and seaside cottages," there's little reason they couldn't have been built in any Victorian small town. They range from a tiny three-room structure to a rambling 10-bedroom Dutch Gambrel mansion (called in those days a "villa") to a "club house" (easily altered to private use), a lakeside pavilion, a Baptist chapel, a "stone rectory in Iowa," and a couple of apartment blocks, one of which eerily reminds me of a building not far from my former home. These buildings are primarily of the Eastlake or Queen Anne style, the original book having appeared in 1883, an era when the front stair-hall was often as big as any other room and used as such. You'll need a magnifier to make out some of the details, but if you have any interest at all in late-Victorian domestic architecture, you need to have this volume on your shelves.



3. Is a great visually informative book. It gives the reader a better idea of the way homes were built in the late 19th century. The book covers a wide variety of victorian styles and includes plans, perspective views and elevations from a small 4 room cottage, to a huge 36+ room mansion in the Caribbean. I recomend this book to anybody interested in late 19th century victorian architecture.



4. is a wonderful book that shows how homes were designed and built in the late 19th century. It covers a variety of victorian styles and has floorplans along with perspective views and elevations from a small 3 room cottage to a 36+ room mansion. This is a great way to learn about victorian architecture.



5. This book has great illistrations and floor plans with elevations. It's a great way to learn about the way homes were built in the late 19th century. It also includes specifications for the builder. It contains many plans of many differt styles of victorian architecture from a simple 3 room home, to a 36+ room mansion.

1 comments about The Architecture of Rasem Badran: Narratives on People and Place.

1. The Architecture of Rasem Badran:
   Narratives on People and Place
   By James Steele
   Large format, 256 pages, with over 360 illustrations, 348 in color
   ISBN: 0-500-34206-7, hardcover, £ 36.00, $ 60.00
   
   Review by Besim S. Hakim
   
   This book by James Steele on the work of architect Rasem Badran of Jordan is a wonderful contribution to architectural literature and a valuable documentation of the work of one of the most talented Arab architects of the current period. I know both the author and the architect, and it is indeed a pleasure to see the hard work of James Steele, over many years, brought to fruition.
   What are most refreshing in this book are not only the photos and discussion of Badran's built projects but the unique style of his sketches that were used to establish the design concepts and their subsequent development. The sketches are reproduced in their original color and some can be classified as works of art in their own right.
   The book starts with an introduction, followed by seven chapters, a chronology of Badran's work, notes, bibliography, a glossary of terms, and an index. The chapter titles sequentially are: 1. A narrative on people, place and culture, 2. Creative heritage and the return to the east, 3. Houses and housing, 4. The fourth dimension is the spirit, 5. Preserving a living history, 6. An earthly paradise, 7. Rediscovering the Islamic city.
   Chapter two is a testament to how important it is to understand one's background, such as Badran's, in shaping his views and outlook on how he uses his skills in forging forward with an architecture that is an important contribution to his region and the world at large.
   It is only by a careful reading of this book and examining its illustrations, that one can truly appreciate Badran's distinctive design process and the sensitivity of his architecture. Issues regarding the theoretical implications of Badran's architecture is beyond the scope of this review and might be gleaned from Steele's analysis and interpretations.

1 comments about Isamu Noguchi: A Study of Space.

1. Noguchi is, unfortunately, not as well known by the public as the major artist that he was. This book does a good job of showing the relationship between conception and the final realization of his major public spaces and public sculptures (the intention of the book), but a full understanding of Noguchi requires seeing his other works, such as his furniture and stage designs. The major drawback of the book is that the illustrations are entirely in black and white. While Noguchi's works were primarily about shape and their relationships and distribution through space, it would have been nice to see the photographs of the finished spaces and sculptures in color to get a better sense of their ambience. This book is appropriate for sculptors, environmental artists, architects, larger public libraries, and libraries in academic institutions with art programs that include instructors open to a broad range of ideas inart....

1 comments about 4dspace: Interactive Architecture (Architectural Design).

1. This book was recommended to me by a trusted source. However once I got it, the material in the book is a out of date remix of many existing sources already available online listed under the topic of media architecture. It may also suffer from an affliction many of these types of books have which is once they are published they are already out of date. Also, for the price I expected a more comprehensive view.

No comments about African American Historic Places.

No comments about Skyline: The Narcissistic City (Cultural Memory in the Present).

No comments about Ornament and the Grotesque: Fantastical Decoration from Antiquity to Art Nouveau.

No comments about The Plan of St. Gall: In Brief. An Overview Based on the Three-Volume Work by Walter Horn and Ernest Born; Including Selected Facsimile Illustrations in ... in Color Photography, of the Reconstr.

1 comments about Cities and People: A Social and Architectural History.

1. Cities and People: A Social and Architectural History is not about cities throughout the world, it does not begin with the start of urbanization thousands of years ago, nor does it examine any one city from its origin to the present. Instead the book is a social-architectural history of European urbanization over the past thousand years. The last century and a half occurs in the U.S. The story never lingers long on any city, but shifts as changes in transportation, manufacturing and commerce alter the leading edge of urban development. What Cities and People does do, it does superbly well. Its large format (8x11) and glossy paper with pictures on nearly every page make this book a pleasure to read and view. The hundreds of reproductions of paintings, drawings, and maps plus numerous pictures of surviving building bring to life the story presented in the text. The focus on building and other structures is not on architecture as such, but on structures as physical manifestations of and clues to urban life, the work and leisure of people. The book enables readers to begin "seeing" the past in surviving landscape features. The author's graceful and confident writing style nicely complements the well-chosen graphics and makes this book a most informative and enjoyable read.