1 comments about Contemporary Asian Bathrooms (Contemporary Asian Home Series).

1. This is an undeniably beautiful coffee table book, which shows plenty of photos for bathroom design in Asian countries (Japan, China, Thailand, etc). If what you want is an overview demonstrating how gorgeous a bathroom can be, given an unlimited budget and (often) a lot of space, then you'll probably find this a five-star book.
   
   That wasn't what I was hoping for, however, so I'm personaly a little disappointed. First, when you can buy the finest (such as lots of marble) then it's easy to create something beautiful. For my purposes... as a new homeowner, I've been considering doing one of my bathrooms with an Asian theme. This book didn't give me much in the way of ideas for that. On the other hand, it's so pretty that I don't really mind.

4 comments about Green Building Materials: A Guide to Product Selection and Specification.

1. I love this book. If you are interested in Green Building, I would highly recommend purchasing it. Also, when I found this book on Amazon, I did a lot of searching on the web to see if there was a lower price. There absolutely wasn't. Everywhere I found this book, they were charging $100+ for it. BUY IT FROM AMAZON!! Good Luck and Good Reading!



2. This text was quite basic for what I needed. Although it had a green material selection, no costings of materials were available. Definately not a recommended text for a thesis research.



3. Green materials are definitely an important aspect of green building; however, I think we need to be careful not to fall into the trap of thinking green materials *are* green building. We need to think more holistically - for example, asphalt roofing may not be "green," but it will last 40 years and save me significant money over a sterotypically "green" recycled-tile or slate roof. I can use this money towards green-ing other features of my home. Most of us need to spend our money wisely, so we need to pick and choose green features for homes as best we can. I highly recommend the book "Green Remodeling" as a companion guide to this book that will offer much needed practical remodeling advice and whole-systems thinking.



4. This is an absolute MUST-HAVE addition to the libraries of every firm and organization that deals with designing, constructing, maintaining, or restoring commercial and public buildings. It should be required reading in every architectural school. It also offers much value to residential builders, even though they seldom use the sophisticated specification systems of the commercial building trade.

   For some three decades, articles and books on environmentally-sound architecture have focused on the design side. And most have focused on residential construction. Spiegel & Meadow's new book breaks new ground in two respects, by dealing with the product/material side of (primarily) commercial buildings.

   The specification aspect of green construction -- in which the appropriate materials and products are prescribed -- has been largely unaddressed. This is partly because the commercial building industry, in general, has culturally been behind the curve in terms of concern for the environment, but also because even the most conscientious firms have serious difficulty finding and obtaining green building products.

   There are two reasons for this difficulty of specifying green materials: 1) Few architects receive any meaningful level of training regarding specification in their schooling, preferring to focus on the more glamorous process of design; and, 2) Neither the commercially-available master guide specifications (such as SpecLink and MasterSpec) nor the product catalogs (such as First Source, SpecData, and Sweets) have figured out how to provide a useful and accurate means of helping specifiers compare the greeness of one item over another.

   While Green Building Materials can't solve the industry's lack of useful tools, it provides designers with the first comprehensive education on the specification process as it relates to green building.

   New tools are finally entering the market, such as the LEED system (from the U.S. Green Building Council) for measuring the greeness of a building, which will soon be incorporated into the Construction Specification Institute's new PerSpective software for performance specifying.

   Used in combination with this book, architects and building owners are finally beginning to get what they need to create buildings that are healthy for both their occupants and the world's environment.

   The authors have a level of intimacy with their subject that oozes out of each page. Readers come away with the distinct impression that this book is a product of both passion and deep expertise, and is obviously not some publisher's attempt to quickly plug a serious gap in the literature.

   A rapidly-growing number of public and private owners are requiring a level of greeness to all of their new buildings. Green Building Matierals is the tool the owners need in order to get what they want. It's also what designers and builders need to respond successfully to such demands.

3 comments about Private Landscapes: Modernist Gardens in Southern California.

1. This book is a bit light on for photos. If you are buying it for ideas for a modernist inspired garden you might be disappointed.



2. Although this is mostly a coffee-table book (great pictures and original & later landscaping plans), it does give an unexpectedly generous amount of historical background on the modernist architectural movement in Southern California.
   
   It also focuses on specific examples of modernist houses and gives the background on the thought process of the architects and landscape designers, how they designed the houses and landscapes in relation to the lots and surrounding areas.
   
   I think the best part of this book is how it juxtaposes pictures and plans of each house from the past and how they look in the present day. Thus, you can get an immediate sense of how well the designs have held up over time. Some of it looks dated, but much of it remains relevant (especially with the resurgent interest in mid-century design). Also, you get to see how some of the houses were revised by later architects and designers. You get to see how the original plants have aged as well.
   
   I borrowed this from the library, but I may end up buying it.



3. Kathryn Smith's erudite introduction and the authors' texts add historical resonance to this enticing collection of new and original gardens (including several by Burton) that set off classic houses by Schindler, Neutra, Soriano, and Quincy Jones. The plans and photographs are reminders of how Garrett Eckbo and others led the way in integrating modern architecture with landscape, inspired by Neutra's vision of the house as "a machine in the garden." (Michael Webb is the book reviewer for LA Architect magazine.)

No comments about Freehand Sketching: An Introduction.

5 comments about Arcadian Architecture: Bohlin Cywinski Jackson-12 Houses.

1. The content of this book is wonderful and BCJ are to be commended for their work.
   
   The actual book, however, is VERY poorly put together. The binding on every volume I've purchased has started to disintegrate from the moment I've opened the cover. I've purchased and returned several copies because of this (ultimately having to return the book entirely).
   
   For this reason, I can barely give it a single star in terms of rating. Had it been bound like every other book I own, it would earn a 5-star rating.



2. It is a very nice book and one that my son wants very much to add to his liabrary as he is studying architecture. The book seems to be coming apart, only strings are holding it togehter. It looks like the glue has pulled apart where we have started looking at the book.



3. Bohlin Cywinski Jackson have a long illustrious history stemming from Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, to Seattle, Washington. As such, this beautiful collection of twelve "arcadian" homes represent the tip of the iceberg of their collective work. In these immaculate residences you will find their signature details, many of them by James Cutler, who worked with Peter Bohlin on the Gates Residence and other projects. You will marvel at the romanticism of the Adirondack Retreat on Lake George, New York, with its granite boulder fireplace and natural cedar and fir interiors. Then there is the Endless Mountain House, located in Northeastern Pennsylvania, with its projected balconies atop crumbling fieldstone walls with a towering chimney anchoring one end of this evocative residence. The house appears as though it were built over ancient ruins. Nestled within these idyllic residential projects is the Pacific Rim Estate, co-authored by Bohlin and Cutler for Bill Gates on Lake Washington, near Seattle. It is a stunning work, not so much in its assemblage as in its marvelous kit of parts, from a barrel-vaulted garage buried into the wooded landscape to the beautiful timber connections in the main body of the residential complex. Here we see brute concrete and heavy timber blended naturally into the landscape, making for a surprisingly unassuming compound that incorporated many sustainable design features, including recycled heavy timber posts and beams.



4. This is one of the most well crafted books on a single architect. The scale and quality of the photographs, the packaging, it is the best gift you can offer to someone who has a passion for materials and detail.



5. an absolute treasure. this quite weighty volume covers the top-notch residential work of BCJ in great detail - beautiful drawings and photography all work together to illustrate these wonderful buildings... highly recommended!

5 comments about The Seven Lamps of Architecture.

1. The kessinger edition of this book is a rip off!!! do not buy it!!!
   i received a copy in which the margins on the pages were 2 inches all around and the text was so small. everything seemed to be copied with a fax machine, so there was lots of tiny black dots all over the pages. the images are so unclear. they were black and white with no grayscales and it was so hard to make out what the images were. i returned this book for a refund.
   buy the dover edition instead. its practically the same text except the text fills up the whole page and the pictures are clear. its also less than half the price of the kessinger edition.



2. If you are looking for a "practical guide to the
   structures and tools" of architecture, this is NOT
   your book nor your guide.
   For John Ruskin is an art critic, classicist, and
   moralizing aesthetic prophet. He is not an "art for art's
   sake" temporizer or relativist. He not only knows what
   HE believes...but he believes he knows what YOU should
   believe too. If that makes you uncomfortable or makes
   you feel hampered, you might want to pass him by until
   you feel you can accommodate the "insult" and "restrictions"
   on your "free will choices." Otherwise, there is much of
   beauty, wonder, and insight to be gained in these pages.
   Ruskin's point of view is that of a classical Platonist
   mixed with the moralizing tenor of an exhorting (but not
   shrilly so) prophet toward beauty, Truth, and clarity of
   vision...and moral purpose in Art. He also has a wondrous
   prose style which is both clear, compelling, and entrancing.
   This edition published by Dover as a reprint is of the
   second edition of the work from 1880. It also includes
   14 plates of drawings which Ruskin did to illustrate the
   points which he makes in the text.
   Along the way, Ruskin includes shortened Aphorisms
   in the margin which restate the bold face print points
   which he is making in the text. In Chapter 2, titled
   "The Lamp of Truth," Ruskin stands forth most forcefully
   and dynamically (and perhaps to the "modern," most
   tendentiously) as the classical Platonic moralizer
   and aesthetic apostle/prophet/priest. Though raised
   a strict Protestant, Ruskin rebelled and left Christianity
   for a classical Paganism based on beauty, Truth, and clarity.
   Needless to say, this more than tended to alienate him
   and isolate him from the mercenary, industrialized
   Victorian world which was chugging along outside his
   hermetically sealed temple dedicated to Truth, Beauty,
   Goodness, and Clarity. Mercantilism and "practical
   progress" don't exactly exalt those four princples as
   the means or the goals whereby to make money and become
   successful in the eyes of the world or popular opinion.
   But if you want to read about Truth and Beauty and
   read it through the eyes and soul of a lover of those
   qualities -- and read it expressed in most beautiful
   prose and style (which is both poetic and powerful),
   then Ruskin and this work are clearly the choices you
   should make.
   This excerpt from Ruskin tied to Aphorism 29 {"The
   earth is an entail, not a possession.") clearly shows
   that Ruskin's vision and prophetic power extend beyond
   the merely practical realm of architecture into an
   all-encompassing total vision of responsibility and
   reverence: "The idea of self-denial for the sake of
   posterity, of practising present economy for the sake of
   debtors yet unborn, of planting forests that our
   descendants may live under their shade, or of raising
   cities for future nations to inhabit, never, I suppose,
   efficiently takes place among publicly recognized motives
   of exertion. Yet these are not the less our duties; nor
   is our part fitly sustained upon the earth, unless the
   range of our intended and deliberate usefulness include,
   not only the companions, but the successors, of our
   pilgrimage. God has lent us the earth for our life; it
   is a great entail. It belongs as much to those who are
   to come after us, and whose names are already written in
   the book of creation, as to us, and we have no right, by
   any thing that we do or neglect, to involve them in
   unnecessary penalties., or deprive them of benefits which
   it was in our power to bequeath."
   Read...enjoy...benefit...



3. I found that tying in human traits to different styles of architecture was not interesting at all. There is no discussion of building techniques or the practical side of architecture. This would be more for the artist that is trying to project different human feelings into the structure. If you are looking for a techincal guide to architecture this is not it.



4. This book is the origin of virtually every theory held throughout the history of architecture. The arts and crafts movement, Frank Lloyd Wright's organicism, and Corbusier's New Architecture are just a few examples of prominent theories whose foundations lie within the pages of this book. In this book, Ruskin prescribes the essential elements required to make timeless, meaningful architecture. This manifesto is a must for any student interested in the practice and study of architecture.



5. Ruskin is a master in morality and architecture. This combination, which is very nineteenth-century-like, mixes Ruskin with a wonderful mastery of the English language. The Seven Lamps is a must-read for all you folks who have not yet studied architecture in all its facets.

5 comments about The Landscape of Man: Shaping the Environment from Prehistory to the Present Day.

1. My professor introduced this book to us when I took a History of Landscape Architecture course in University of Southern California in Los Angeles. It was only available in hard cover at that time and was very expensive ($98.00). I did not buy the hard cover version and waited many years later and bought the soft cover version at a great price. It has many powerful images to illustrate the gardens and architecture in many different cultures. It'll show you how brilliant human beings can be.
   
   What is a "Landscape of Man"?
   
   "To qualify as a `landscape of man,' an environment must be deliberately shaped at a specific time." "Art is a continuous process..." Sir Geoffrey Jellicoe and his wife Susan wrote, "All design therefore derives from impressions of the past, conscious or subconscious, and in the modern collective landscape, from historic gardens and parks and silhouettes which were created for totally different social reasons..."
   
   "The Landscape of Man: Shaping the Environment from Prehistory to the Present Day" includes 28 sections and they are separated into two parts, Part One is "From Prehistory to the end of the Seventeenth Century." It covers landscape from pre-history to 1700 AD and includes 17 sections covering Origins, the Central Civilization (Western Asia to the Muslim Conquest, Islam in Western Asia, the Western Expansion of Islam: Spain, the Eastern Expansion of Islam: Mughul India), the Eastern Civilization (Ancient India, China, Japan, Pre-Columbian America) and the Western Civilization (Egypt, Greece, the Roman Empire, the Middle Ages in Europe, Italy: the Renaissance, France: Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, Spain, Germany, England, the Netherlands: Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries). The text for each section follows a standard format of Environment, Social History, Philosophy, Expression, Architecture and Landscape. Case studies have striking black-and-white photos, paintings and plans and a brief description.
   
   Part Two of the book is "The Evolution of Modern Landscape." It covers landscape from 1700 AD to present and includes 11 sections covering the Eighteenth Century (Western Classicism, the Chinese School, the English School), the Nineteenth Century (the European Mainland, the British Isles, the United States of America), and the Twentieth Century (Europe, The Americas, the Western Hemisphere: the New World, the Eastern Hemisphere: the Old World), and Worlds Trends in Landscape Design. The text follows a standard format of Environment, History, Social, Economics, Philosophy and Expression for each Century and then a standard format of the Home, Landscape, Comments and case studies for each section.
   
   "The Landscape of Man: Shaping the Environment from Prehistory to the Present Day" has 408 pages, 746 illustrations and 6 maps. It is a great book for architects, landscape architects and urban planners!
   
   Gang Chen, Author of "LEED AP Exam Guide" & "Planting Design Illustrated," LEED AP, AIA



2. The book is great, easy to understand and great images.



3. Beautiful gardens and parks don't simply settle themselves on sites. They are planned, developed and planted by caring human beings. Those of us who are amateur gardeners and landscapers are influenced by the great public gardens and parks of the world. And the public gardens and parks didn't just appear out of thin air. All of what we find beautiful was influenced by something older or from somewhere else. And this wonderful book takes us back in time and on the highways and byways to times and places where man first came upon natural scenes and imagined the possibility of recreating at least the impression of what his eye beheld.
   
   This beautiful volume with its fine black and white photographs and drawings makes everything seem simple. It takes us down two main roads, the formal and informal. What could be more basic? Yet over half a century or more of shaping the land around half a dozen houses and reading dozens of books, some very useful and beautiful, I do not recall seeing an explanation of how these two main roads came to be trod. But in The Landscape of Man, it is all here from the beginning, from the time when farmers gathered on the banks of the Tigris and the Euphrates gazed upon the fields spreading before them and other such early independent beginnings.
   
   We are the descendants of those who sought beauty and consolation in gardens large and small in the great civilizations of the past. Each of these, over great time frames, came to influence and cross pollinate with one another. And the Jellicoes trace all of these rivulets and streams from their headwaters down to the well established gardens of the world to which we are heirs. The writing is simple and direct, the photos illuminate their points, and their site drawings are clear and useful.
   
   This is a book for gardeners to enjoy over the winter so that they may dream about how they might shape their little spaces and understand a little more of the shoulders on which we all stand as we place our first trees and shrubs in the bare ground before us. It is a great book, and I recommend it not just for professionals but for those whose gardens lie far in the future. It is the best book I have ever come across in explaining the history and possibilities of landscaping.
   
   I have owned my copy for years. Hundreds of sentences are highlighted and notes fill the margins. I should have reviewed this fine work many years ago.



4. This book as a classic. It is not only for those who want to study our changing perceptions of our landscape and our moves to define it over the past few millennia, but also to architects who build 'buildings'. This tome takes us through man's history, and outlines our aesthetic evolution with our landscape as a changing canvas that represent our different social conditions. A must-have if you are a student, an architect, or just a person who wants to see how we became what we are!



5. The original edition, hardcover with beautiful dust jacket, was printed in 1975 in England. It is one of my favorite all-time photo books, since in includes shots of Borobudur, the Ziggurat, the Red Fort in Delhi, Angkor Wat, Ctesiphon in Iraq - lots of photos hard to find even on the net. History all the way to the opera house in Sydney. A most fascinating book. Large: 9 1/4 x 11 3/4, 383 pages, a sound minimal text with each plate numbered and easily referenced - to me this is one of the great books. Everyone who has travelled, or who wants to travel, will enjoy this tremendously. (Many of the areas shown are difficult and often dangerous to visit, now.) Try it. You'll like it.

No comments about Energy Manual: Sustainable Architecture (Construction Manuals (englisch)).

4 comments about The Luminous Ground: The Nature of Order, Book 4.

1. This book is a free, original expression of nonduality, or non-separation, which is to say nothing is separate from existence. If you love art, architecture, color, light, inner light, incorporation of the tears and sadness of "the cares of the world," living a natural and open life, this book will show you how that love meets up with the truth of your existence.
   
   How can you "feel" non-separation or nonduality? By knowing that you exist. This is your sense of "I" that Alexander speaks of throughout this book. Or call it "I Am." Since everyone can know that they exist, their most fundamental nature is this "I" or "I Am." Valuing that you exist, valuing this "I" brings a sense of unity with all people, their creations, their appreciations, their failures, sadness and tears. It brings a sense of union with humanity.
   
   This feeling of existence is the crux of this book. It's not just feeling existence, but valuing existence. It almost sounds silly: "valuing existence." Such valuing leads to wonder that never ends and all works being done as a gift of existence to existence, or to God. It makes you focus on existence so that you create something that communicates multiple layers of meaning, the totality of existence, in a building or an artwork.
   
   Religion, art, physics, quantum theory, and mostly the "I," the true you, come together in this unusual, delightful, beautiful to hold and read, art book full of vibrant color photographs, pictures, and illustrations.
   
   If there is another edition or another volume, perhaps some of the more direct teachings of nonduality can be included. For example, the words of the great Indian sage Ramana Maharshi turn one toward a disposition most favorable for the understanding, absorbing, and integrating of Alexander's confessions about art and existence: "Existence or Consciousness is the only reality. If you enquire 'Who am I?' the mind will return to its source (or where it issued from). The thought which arose will also submerge. As you practice like this more and more, the power of the mind to remain as its source is increased."
   
   Jerry Katz
   One: Essential Writings on Nonduality



2. Alexander's Pattern Language series was/is a great accomplishment. It made the mysteries of good architectural design accessible to everyone. It attempted to liberate home- and town-building from the arrogant priesthood of professional architects and exposed the bankrupt values behind so much of contemporary building. It offered a deeply human alternative much more in tune with the way we really live.
   
   Not surprisingly it did very little to change professional practices. Even the few architects who are sympathetic to his viewpoint largely dismiss his ideas and methods as economically impractical, except for wealthy clients who can afford the time and money needed to build a home with such individual attention to every idiosyncratic detail. The one area Alexander has had a major influence on is computer program design -- there economic factors are not a constraint and his notions about recursive patterns and sequences have been taken seriously and had a lasting effect.
   
   Having made hardly a dent in his chosen profession, Alexander now appears to have turned his attention elsewhere - to the future and to his own posterity. In The Nature of Order, and especially in the final Book 4, he babbles on and on about his Holy Grail - an "astounding" new world view that will supposedly revolutionize civilization (and vindicate Alexander as a Prophet crying in the modern Wilderness), in which Science and Art, object and subject, ornament and function, beauty and practicality will at last be seen as One Living Whole, inextricably bound together in mystical union like the interwoven threads of the Turkish prayer rugs he is so enamored of. Then and only then will buildings express the True Self and Blaze with Spirit and Inner Light and Centers and Beings and "I-stuff", blah, blah, blah.
   
   The art history illustrations are lovely (by comparison, most of Alexander's own paintings and drawings look rather second-rate), but the half-baked metaphysical ramblings, dressed up as pseudo-science, are very tedious, overly intellectual, and hardly new. The 2500-year-old Buddhist canon and many other spiritual traditions, like Sufism, Taoism, the Hindu Upanishads or Native American and Aboriginal religious cosmologies, have all expressed this vision far more eloquently and effectively. Alexander gives these venerable traditions barely a nod of acknowledgment, except as visual evidence supporting his own vague and untestable theories - since they make no claims to Scientific Truth, as Alexander does relentlessly, he just ignores or co-opts their immense contributions.
   
   Give Alexander credit for his emphasis on personal feeling, but educating our feeling to make ever more accurate side-by-side discriminations between "degrees of life" can take us only so far as an aesthetic method. Being an artist is more a matter of life-long discipline and *practice* - above all, learning how to cultivate the right state of mind - natural and open, free from fixed concepts, beyond even the most refined intellectual judgments of good and bad, beautiful and ugly. It's not something to rattle on about for page after repetitive page, it's something to do - to discover how to do through doing, through direct experience. In my own work, books like John Daido Loori's Zen and Creativity and Chogyam Trungpa's Dharma Art, or Suzuki Roshi's Not Always So have been much more helpful and to the point.



3. I'm not an architect, though I do paint a bit and presume to teach. A friend from Ohio undertook one of Alexander's architectural courses, 20 years ago, and posted me notes on Alexander's colour theory. I've used them ever since. But the articulation of this guru's understanding of the experience world & how we process it & make art in and for it, has become keener, more subtle & concise over the years. This is a very, very profound teaching without any messianic overdrive. Indeed, its the patience and humility of Alexander's process of discovering essential rules & roles for making art, that are most profound and the enduring feature of his presentation. And the book's own look exemplifies his quest for the beautiful.I'm not so taken with the reproductions of his own painting, however. I can't quibble with the twentieth century masters he reproduces as evidence for enduring beauty. A fabulous book!



4. *** Original review: May 20, 2004 ***
   
   Those who know me know that I am not prone to making either quick judgements or vacuous statements, so my friends (at least) will know that both the title of this mini-review and the few words that follow are far from whimsical: Alexander's Nature of Order, and in particular this fourth volume which I have recently received and simply cannot put down, are in my humble opinion, destined to rank as one of this *world's* great literary/philosophical achievements. What Alexander has produced is nothing short of a brilliant vision for the transcendent reality that lies beneath and beyond conventional categories. I write this as a Ph.D. physicist, with two graduate-level mathematical physics texts under my belt (both on complex systems), and semi-pro photographer with 30 years of experience of trying to capture "beauty" in nature. Alexander's work has provided a tentative -- but oh so deep -- glimpse of an answer to my own philosophical struggles as scientist and artist: physics and art are but two sides of a vastly richer coin, and are merely pointers to an infinitely rich *life* that pervades this universe; indeed, the life that *is* this universe. Every human being who has ever sincerely pondered the question "Why?" when looking up at the sky, while admiring a pretty flower, or looking into a mirror, can do no better than to curl up by a fireplace with a hot cup of tea, open up volume four of this incredible set of books and start using the musings lovingly offered here to look within for answers. Truly a remarkable achievement. I have never met Christopher Alexander, but can honestly say that I have been deeply touched by this preternaturally wise soul.
   
   ***** Musings added Sep 1, 2005 *******
   
   Having now read the entire opus (I-IV), and currently on my 3rd reading of volume I, I am fully convinced that Alexander's Nature of Order is an absolutely stunning achievement of the highest caliber. I also concur with a quote that appears on the inner flap of the books, to the effect that while very few (if any) philosophical/conceptual works (and their authors) are likely to be remembered 500 years hence, there is a strong possibility that Alexander's Opus WILL be remembered as a precursor to what our present day (only partially overlapping fields of) "science" & "art" will have evolved to in 500 years (a unified, wholistic body of "Sci-Art" in which the schism between objective & subjective / inner & outer no longer exists).
   
   What Alexander presents in these books is a tentative first stab at a magnificent new CONCEPT; not a mathematical or physical theory (though rudiments of what might go into a more formal description are also discussed). Although many of Alexander's ideas are quite subtle and require thoughtful reflection to fully comprehend and integrate into (ironically) a whole (new worldview), the basic thesis is original and profound: EVERYTHING that exists contains "life", and the degree (lesser or greater) to which life is manifest in "X" can be *objectively* determined by probing one's *subjective* (inner) world. Nature is seen, in this view, simply as the totality of life, continually unfolding; and beauty (as generated by local life-forms such as humans), as a resonance between outwardly objective forms and (the very deepest) subjective inner feelings.
   
   Western science's longstanding divide between "what's out there in the world" and "what is in here, in our hearts and souls" is exchanged for a new worldview in which our understanding of the cosmos is predicated on an active unity between objectivity and subjectivity; between dispassionate form and intensely personal beauty; between "eye" and "I"; between the deepest inner feeling and continually unfolding outer life. If this sounds radical (and perhaps even a bit strange), that is because it IS radical; Alexander is proposing a sweeping idea that is both revolutionary and (only in hindsight, after having read his extraordinary Opus) obvious! For it really cannot be any other way! Every thinking -- no, every FEELING -- creature who wants to know our cosmos and his/her unique role in it needs to read these books. They are truly remarkable! The next great strides in art and science will be made (simultaneously) when, one day, an EINSTein-Alexander appears and uses the ideas expressed in these books to develop (using a mathematics not yet created) a rigorous new theory of "Sci-Art-Beauty-Life". These are ostensibly books on "architecture"; but they far -- FAR -- transcend that field; they speak, collectively, about everything that exists.

3 comments about Watercolor Basics - Perspective Secrets (Watercolor Basics).

1. If you are a student or a teacher of the arts, this book is a must. It is divided into sections and you can practice and teach yourself each lesson. Very easy to follow and understand.



2. I don't work in watercolors, I quilt, and I've found this book invaluable as a guide to understanding perspective.



3. North Light, the publishers of the Watercolor Basics series has hit paydirt once again with Phil Metzgers' Perspective Secrets. In direct simple and engaging language Metzger takes you through the many types of perspective without terrifying you with wordy rules and procedures. It is all covered in this handy and educational volume. You move through beautiful examples of putting space and the illusion of air in your paintings to the subtle issues of close-up perspective such as with bricks. There is also some information on perspective dealing with stairs and inclines all supported by Mr. Metzger's handsome paintings. As with other volumes in this series the subject matter is gone into both more deeply and with more approachable and beautiful artwork. This is a must have for any budding painter.