No comments about Earth and Cave Architecture.

1 comments about Texas Real Estate Contracts.

1. yes, this book was exactly what I expected. delivery time was accomplished. A good buy.

1 comments about Language of Space.

1. I must admit I haven't read this book, but I recently attended a presentation by Bryan Lawson where he presented these ideas in some detail. He is a good, entertaining speaker and has shown very good writing skills in previous books.
   
   The topic, however, is mostly well-known stuff by designers and architects, who have been interested in how the built environment shapes our behaviour for millenia, literally. The classic studies by Jacobs ("Death and Life of Great American Cities") is a more recent (1960s) example of this concern.
   
   In all (topic + author), I'd recommend this book to readers who are interested in design and architecture topics and are not fully familiar with Jacobs and all the subsequent work in envirmomental behaviour. This is a good place to do some catching-up.
   
   It is also very much recommended to non-design people trying to understand that design is much more than 'styling' or superficial appearance.

No comments about Architect Registration Exam in a Flash: Rapid Review of Key Topics.

1 comments about Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism, 2nd Edition.

1. Already recognized since 1949 as "a masterpiece in scholarship" in its field by several eminent architects, the 173 page tome: ARCHITECTURAL PRINCIPLES IN THE AGE OF HUMANISM, 4th ed. (1971) by Rudolf Wittkower; had, incidentally, also provided an in-depth explanation on proportion and ratio as they differed in usage between architectural procedure and Boethian mathematics.
   Of special importance is part four 'The Problem of Harmonic Proportion in Architecture' (p. 101) where the author made the salient point that "Although the Pythagoreo-Platonic concept of the numerical ratios of the musical scale never disappeared from mediaeval [sic], theological, philosophical, and aesthetic thought, there was no over-riding need to apply them to art and architecture" (p. 159).

   Rudolf Wittkower unknowingly provided in part four the distinction between an elite Quadrivium education containing Boethian "mathematical arts" while "the 'liberal arts' of painting, sculpture, and architecture were regarded as manual occupations" (p. 117). The author explained "That the high Renaissance architects shunned theory" and "that they were practitioners rather than thinkers" (p. 30). And further "Italian architects strove for an easily perceptible ratio between length, height, and depth" (p. 74). So then according to this author, all of the Renaissance architects conception of architecture was based on a "commensurability of ratios" (p. 108).

   Rudolf Wittkower indicated "that the [Renaissance] architect is by no means free to apply to a building a system of ratios of his own choosing, that the ratios have to comply with conceptions of a higher order and that a building should mirror the proportions of the human body" (p. 101). In developing the centrally planned church, Renaissance architects faced the dilemma of the pragmatics of church construction combined with the belief in divinity and the acceptance of Roman Catholic dogma.

   The Church was to provide the "easily perceptible ratio" with the simple logic that "As man is the image of God and the proportions of his body are produced by divine will, so the proportions in architecture have to embrace and express the cosmic order" (p. 101). That cosmic order and harmony are contained in certain numbers Plato explained in his TIMAEUS.

   Assigned to the architects, a Quadrivium trained Roman Catholic friar and musical theorist, Franchino Gaffurio (1451-1522) "in a truly Platonic spirit he regarded this principle of harmony as the basis of macrocosm and microcosm, body and soul, painting, architecture, and medicine" (p. 124). It was under this famous Renaissance musical theorist in 1525 that "the old belief in the mysterious efficacy of certain numbers and ratios was given new impetus" (p. 102). "It was Pythagoras who discovered that tones can be measured in space. What he found was that musical consonances were determined by the ratios of small whole numbers. If two strings are made to vibrate under the same conditions, one being half the length of the other, the pitch of the shorter string will be one octave (diapason) above that of the larger one" (p. 102). "Thus the consonances, on which the Greek musical system was based - octave, fifth, and fourth - can be expressed by the progression 1:2:3:4. One can understand that this staggering discovery made people believe that they had seized upon the mysterious harmony which pervades the universe" (p. 103).

   "The musical consonances are determined by the mean proportionals; for that the three means constitute all the intervals of the musical scale had been shown in the TIMAEUS. Classical writers on musical theory discussed this point at great length. An exhaustive exposition is to be found in Boethius' DE MUSICA, first printed in Venice in 1491-92, and of very great importance for the doctrine of numbers throughout the Middle Ages and during the Renaissance" (p. 111).

   Yet Boethius's DE MUSICA was de-emphasized by Renaissance architects in recognition that the "harmony of the universe which Plato had described in the TIMAEUS on the basis of Pythagora's discovery of the ratios of musical consonances" prompted the "application of Pythagoreo-Platonic system of harmonic ratios directly to architecture" (p. 125). As it turned out (not surprisingly) "Gafurio [sic] was regarded by his contemporaries as a critic in architectural matters" (p. 125).

   The author of ARCHITECTURAL PRINCIPLES IN THE AGE OF HUMANISM provided the evidence that although the Quadrivium of the mathematical arts of music, astronomy, geometry, and Boethian proportion and ratio, was known to the Renaissance high architects, they preferred the 'harmonic proportion'; 'proportion of excess'; and the 'proportio proportionum'; derived directly from Plato's TIMAEUS and Pythagoras's three means (arithmetic, geometric, and the harmonic) over Boethius's DE MUSICA, though it was a substantial part of friar Gaffurio's ecclesiastical education. This resulted in "proportionally integrated 'spatial mathematics', which we have recognized as a distinguishing feature of humanist Renaissance architecture" (p. 26).

   In comparison, for the practical application of Boethian proportion and ratios, please read: THE PHILOSOPHER'S GAME (2001) by Dr. Ann E. Moyer, where the rules of Boethian proportion found in rithmomachia, had been clearly defined, though inadvertently, by Rudolf Wittkower.

1 comments about Expressive Details: Materials, Selection, Use.

1. I will admit there is some interesting stuff in the book but most of it I found to be quite boring. Also the book is in black and white with poor quality photographs. The book did introduce me to two interesting people, Bart Prince and William Eckerman, check out their web sites.

1 comments about Self-Sufficient Housing: 1st Advanced Architecture Contest.

1. This hand-sized publication chronicles the results of the 1st Advanced Architecture Contest sponsored by the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia (IAAC). With the goal of stimulating social, technical and cultural progress, the international competition's intention was to be a precursor to more extensive research to be performed at the IAAC on the theme of the Self-Sufficient House.
   
   As you can imagine, attracting 529 participants from 6 continents, the entries demonstrate an impressive diversity of ideas and development. The editors managed to locate each entry ideologically within the eight categories of 'Bio and Bug', 'Blow and Form', 'Common and Related', 'Modulated and Cost', 'Position and Site', 'Territorial and Community', 'Theory' and 'Wrapped'. Admittedly, the categories are nebulous at times and this may be due partly to the fact that many entries simply straddle multiple ideas and defy categorization.
   
   The format and layout is easy-to-use and predictable with each entry presented on two pages with several entries earning additional pages where warranted. What is impressive about the work as a whole is the level of sophistication of the majority of the entries. Some are very diagrammatically and ideologically well-developed while others delve into the reality of the assembly and fabrication of the proposed systems. Because of the compact size of the publication and limited pages dedicated to each work, you sometimes get the impression that you're not seeing the entire picture as it relates to each work individually.
   
   There are a wealth of ideas to be discovered here and IAAC should be commended on the quality of their dissemination of the information. Now, if only all competitions resulted in similar publications.

3 comments about Glass Construction Manual (Construction Manuals (englisch)).

1. This is a complete compendium of engineering information for the most typical use of glass--as a window. Everything needed to analyze a building's energy budget--at least for the German climate--is presented and well explained, as is daylighting. Atria and double leaf facades are discussed at the end to summarize the principles. There is also a comprehensive section on the mechanical properties of glass: resistance to wind loads, how to attach it, etc.
   Only downside is the quality of the translation (I assume), which results in an occasional unusual sentence: "As no energy can be lost from the total system, the balance of the incident energy must be able to be resolved mathematically."
   Nothing that impairs understanding though.



2. This is one of the better books that I have seen on the topic of curtain wall design. It is full of very accurate amd well explained techincal information as well labeled details. The project section is a comprehensive study of some of the most complex curtain walls built. This section is full of detail drawings and color images of the built details. This is a MUST HAVE book for anyone working on complex wall systems, or anyone interested in the state of the art in curtain wall design.



3. This is one of the better books that I have seen on the topic of curtain wall design. It is full of very accurate amd well explained techincal information as well labeled details. The project section is a comprehensive study of some of the most complex curtain walls built. This section is full of detail drawings and color images of the built details. This is a MUST HAVE book for anyone working on complex wall systems, or anyone interested in the state of the art in curtain wall design.

No comments about Distinguishing Digital Architecture: 6th Far Eastern International Digital Architectural Design Award.

No comments about Gaudi X Gaudi.