No comments about The Curious and the Beautiful: A Memoir History of the Architecture Program at the University of Arkansas.

1 comments about Architectural Woodwork: Details for Construction (Architecture).

1. This book represents a quick fix, an insight bringing a bit of light to a few different areas of construction. Understand however that it is by no means an exhaustive or in-depth resource. This is a book that would best serve in the glove box in the site truck of a general contractor. For that purpose it is a sound resource. Physically the book is like a working copy or rough draft of a manuscript before it goes off to press. It needs more work, more research and much better publication. I could swear my copy was printed on a copy machine at Kinko's or something. As such I would have no trouble throwing it under the seat of my truck along with the dog-eared road atlas. To view this book in that way may well be quite appropriate actually. A resource kept at hand to be used when one is completely lost and needs some sound, simple directions. This book should be called "The Git-R-Done Book of Architectural Woodwork".
   
   The back of the book and the online editorial says, "If you're spending too much time chasing down information on architectural woodwork and its many synthetic counterparts-and still not finding all the answers you need to do the job-you can stop looking now."
   
   Ok, tell you what...keep looking. Save your $80.00 and by 3 or 4 better books from Taunton Press. I don't know, maybe this was used as the basis for a much better book later. Just do not buy this rough draft. I am so glad I didn't pay much.

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No comments about Site Carpentry and Joinery: Construction Competences for Nvq : Common Core : Construction Competences for Nvq Level 2 (The Nvq Construction).

2 comments about Looking for Mies.

1. This book is a jewel. Ricardo Daza examines a picture asking himself where is Mies in the Crown Hall? The deductive process allows us to know who was Mies Van der Rohe and how he thought on Architecture.
   Do not less pass the opportunity and buy this book. Wonderful.



2. As architect I highly recommend this book. And as a friend of Ricardo I have been witness of all the Sherlock Holmesque deductions, presumptions and findings. Leaded by Master Pep Quetglas in Barcelona's Escuela Tecnica de Arquitectura, 'Looking for Mies' is surrounded by a Walter Benjamin theory about the spirit of history its interpretation and how not follow the "History of the Lords" printed in megalomaniac books. This time, one photograph could be the excuse to review a lot of singularities of architect's behavior and his exceptional work.
   Using the facts in a supossed defined place a photo was taken. Through the photographer's eye, our position sense and deductional processes will help us to find no only where was Mies in a building, but a beautiful methodology inspired by John Berger that give to us the opportunity to perform how Mies and his architecture want to be watched and experienced.
   This work would be the first step of a PHD thesis about another one grand: Le Corbusier. Only have to say is Ricardo Daza is a colombian talent to keep eye forward.

No comments about London's Contemporary Architecture: A Visitor's Guide, Third Edition.

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1 comments about The Monumental Impulse: Architecture's Biological Roots.

1. i picked up this title, in part, to locate catherine ingraham's latest historicization of 'life' and 'architecture's indifference to each other, expecting to find some sort of oppositional model of phenomenological essentialism and anologism that naturalizes architecture (as the title proclaims). granted, i'd not expected much, but even at that this is a sorry, sorry, desperate disappointment and excuse for academic writing and architectural theory. first, as anyone in physical and cultural anthro will relate, ascribing human or even chimp behavior to biological lineage or heritage, as opposed to learned, culturally inflected/enabled/motivated behavior, plays into a naturalizing fallacy of genetic/biological determinism. to attribute architectural, symbolic form to biological origin is a radical simplification. even architecture's formal mimesis of recognizable 'natural' (read other) elements is itself a cultural process, loaded with symbolic/semiological importance. so basically, in terms of content and historiographic presumptions, hersey's work is just a series of arbitrary formal analogies made through the reduction of historical/cultural phenomenon to contemporary (yet dehistoricized) biological models. second, in terms of textual problems, the writing is elementary, without any seductive rhetorical flourishes, making it dull, dull, dull to read. his essentializing/eternalizing/naturalizing presumptions can be seen clearly in the accents to the text- the image captions do not include dates of publication and formal structures trump content and context of illustrations. thus, by the third page of the intro, where he compares 2 trees- a 19th century evolutionist visions of animals/man and 19th century evolutionist theories of art (neither of which he locates within 19th century historicism and the anthrocentric telos of man as pinacle)- it's obvious the book is being lead by formal image association, without date, without history, without cultural implicaion. also, his formal analogies make the mistake of pairing, say, a surface drawing of the vaginal lips and a section of the great pyramid, demonstrating the lack of theoretical reflection on both representation and its functions (i.e. the implied difference between surface and slice) as well as then neglecting the spatiality of architecture for mere iconic readings. beyond a slim 'naturalization' intention, the chapters relay on thematic strings of throught, without any particular thesis, argument, nor point- seeming to follow the 15th/16th century model of associative similitude pre- natural history that foucault alligns with, in 'the order of things,' borges's chinese encyclopedia and, in context, works like aldrovandi's 'historia serpentum et draconum.' while, for foucault those other order helped to show the historicity of ours, hersey's antiquated formalism, 19th century evolutionary conceptions, ecclectic models, and facile importation of biology as theoretical structure all reflect poorly on MIT (for publishing this), Yale (his former tenure institution), and himself.
   
   while, i'd recommend the book for a beginning architectural-theory writing seminar (what not to do, how arbitrary structures can detract from useful exegesis, etc.) it's neither worth the time or money to read.

No comments about Virginia Contractor Bld Technical Practice Exam.