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 Architecture in Education.

No comments about Architectural Perspective Grids: An Easy Method of Three Dimensional Design and Perspective Construction.

No comments about Aspects of Building Design Management.

No comments about Sketching and Rendering for Design Presentations.

No comments about General Structures 1.

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 Design Dimensioning and Tolerancing.

1. Bruce Wilson has developed a volume which explains the ASME Y14.5M-1994 drawing standards in a more accessible format. This book is an ideal companion to the official drawing standards, or if you don't want to shell out a hundred bucks for the ASME book.

   Extensive examples and a well-formed index also contribute to the effectiveness of this work. My only complaint is that the entire book is slanted toward machined parts, so people who work a lot with plastics or complex-surface parts may find themselves wondering how to apply certain dimensions.




2. GD&T is thoroughly explained in easy to understand terms. Explanations build from simple applications to those that require extension of the principles currently defined by the national standard. All material is in agreement with the current national standard, ASME Y14.5M-1994. Design dimensioning and Tolerancing is written such that it will be a good resource for engineering, manufacturing, and quality assurance organizations. Exercises contained at the end of each chapter make it useful for classroom use. The study guide and solutions manual are helpful for the classroom or self-study.

No comments about Structures of Our Time: 31 Buildings That Changed Modern Life.