2 comments about Residential Housing & Interiors.

1. This is a college textbook, but it is a great book for anyone interested in the nuts and bolts of interior design. Very informative, up-to-date, and a great place to start your education in the profession of interior design.



2. This book is perfect for a homeowner that is considering designing their own home. Beginning students of architecture will find this book excellent leading to an overall understanding of the aspects necessary for a good residential home design.

   This book provides the basics that will allow easy progression to specialized books in architectural design, residential structural engineering, construction and interior design. I read this book after I had read other design and architectural books, but wished I had read this book first. For example, read Residential Housing and Interiors then read Architecture: Residential Drawing and Design.

   The explanations of design and construction concepts are well written, and the graphics and photos are outstanding.

1 comments about Crit - An Architectural Student's Handbook (Architectural Students Handbooks).

1. Nearly every student in the making disciplines - architecture, and design, fine art, and applied - sees the crit as a difficult experience. Whether it involves a project during study or the final presentation for a degree, the crit is a central aspect of an education in these fields. Understanding how to make best use of the crit will help design scholars in every field.

   This book is a useable, well-written guide to the crit. Directed to students, it will also help teachers and research supervisors. While many fields of design research make no use of the crit, nearly every design student and design teacher will take part in a crit or review at some point. This book offers helpful suggestions and benchmarks. It is also useful for professional presentations.

   Despite its value as a practical guide, this book is less satisfactory in scholarship. It is seasoned with useful quotes and citations that are poorly sourced. It is unacceptable to cite a single fact or a one-sentence quote from a 257-page by casually referring to author and year. The scholar's work involves organizing sources and making them useful. When architecture and design professors make claims to scholarship, the standards of good scholarship apply.

   Good scholarship also involves critical attention to historical fact. The authors claim that the crit began with the eighteenth-century tripos of Cambridge University. Their dates are off by over a thousand years.

   The crit is rooted in two traditions, the guild tradition, and the academic tradition. When guild apprentices sought journeyman status, they were required to submit a piece of work to a board of masters. The jury of masters reviewed the journeyman piece and conducted an oral examination on technique, craft knowledge, and professional ethics. After passing this crit, an apprentice advanced to journeyman and was allowed to work freelance. A similar examination took place when a journeyman submitted his masterpiece for advancement to master standing. These traditions are probably rooted in ancient history. Some aspects of these traditions go back to the ancient crafts of the Middle East. These customs were clearly in place among European guilds by the Middle Ages.

   The academic tradition of public debate to defend a scholarly thesis began more than two thousand years ago with the philosophers and rhetoricians of classical Greece. The medieval universities established the custom of public lectures, debates or defense of a thesis by the 1200s. Public presentation was required for the inceptio that inaugurated a candidate into the body of masters or doctors.

   The authors of this well structured book on educational and professional practice should have restricted themselves to what they know. They attempted to spice the book with learning, enhancing its authority with scholarship and history. When designers, architects, and artists make scholarly claims, they must respect the requirements of scholarship. These include proper sourcing and critical investigation of factual claims. KF

   Book review published in Design Research News, Volume 6, Number 8, Aug 2001 ISSN 1473-3862.

2 comments about Electrical Engineering: License Review.

1. Missing information, poor layout of topics, difficult to read. Recommend instead the EE Review Manual, or for more detailed review use Fundamentals of EE by Bobrow, for circuit theory and electronics, and Power Systems Analysis by Grainger for the power module.



2. This book has SEVERAL errors in it. Formulas are written incorrectly - some topics are totally absent! One particular passage tells the reader to "refer to a textbook on classical control" to review a certain topic. I thought that was the reason for purchasing the book!?! It is faster for me to read an entire chapter in the textbook than to go through a one-page review in this book. Wading through the botched formulas and skipped topics is a waste of the reader's time.

No comments about Structural Engineering: License Review Problems & Solutions (Pe Exam Preparation).

No comments about Civil Engineering: Building Structures Review (Civil Engineering (Engineering Press)).

No comments about Programming, Planning & Practice: Are Sample Problems and Practice Exam.

1 comments about Peterson's Graduate Programs in Arts and Architecture 2001 (Peterson's Graduate Programs in Arts and Architecture, 2001).

1. although it's pretty rare to find any specific information on graduate schools for architecture, i was pretty disappointed with this book. if you're looking for gradute schools for fine arts i think you would be more pleased. i could find much more information on the web about architecture schools than in this guide. the information in pretty limited and i don't think it mentions all of the schools. also, it would have been more helpful if the authors included a ranking of schools.

No comments about Building Technology, 2007 Edition.

1 comments about Histaormina: Workshop 2001.

1. After making so much effort in conducting a workshop of this type, this book only delivers some alusive images of the process of the student work. I was really expecting more deep information on what exctly conducted the results of this workshop. I was really disappointed, though is easy reading... about 15 minutes, about a dollar for minute!!!!!!! I recommend other books of Lebbeus Woods who is a great theorist and architect.

2 comments about Civil Engineering: Water & Wastewater Treatment Review (Civil Engineering (Engineering Press)).

1. Don't get this for the PE exam, it blows.



2. This is not a very detail review I feel. It is also the exact same text from the full Civil Engineering License Review book (the big book by Donald G. Newman). I returned this item since I already had the big book. It would be a good companion to have if you are not willing to purchase the big book and are planning on taking the Civil PE Exam.