No comments about Baumschlager & Eberle: Hous-ing.

No comments about Realms of Impossibility: Water (Architectural Fragile Earth).

1 comments about Dream Homes Chicago: An Exclusive Showcase of Chicago's Finest Architects (Dream Homes).

1. Great book showing the work of local Chicago area architects. This is a great resource if you're looking for an Architect or just great ideas. The photographs are fantastic and it gives contact information if needed. Perfect gift for the person who has everything.

1 comments about Corporate Interiors No.3.

1. Corporate Interiors No. 3 unfolds the highly dynamic interplay of spatial transformation through some very exciting projects, varying from the classically conservative office space to the more blatantly modern conceptions. It highlights the brilliance of the Design firms by focusing on the innovative solutions through each of the 150 projects that comprise it. The photographs add to the visual stimulation, increasing its value far beyond the paper and the ink. A definate must to have around while studying, working or otherwise!

No comments about Haunted Castles & Houses Of Scotland.

3 comments about The Mosque: History, Architectural Development & Regional Diversity.

1. THIS BOOK HAS REALLY NICE PHOTOS OF DIFFERENT MOSQUES IN THE WORLD OF ISLAM. MOST OF WHICH ARE VERY BEAUTIFUL. ONE CAN SORT OF EXPERIENCE THE PASSION THAT THE PEOPLE MUST HAVE FOR THEIR RELIGION AND LIFESTYLE BY VIEWING THE ARCHITECTURAL BEAUTY OF THESE MOSQUES.



2. The title is right and the books gives you a lot of not very deep information. But good as kind of catalogue. Authors missed a lot of regions. They took only well known to westeners. Somw great monuments are missed as well. But in general I would recommend to buy it for people who are interested in architecture and/or Islamic culture. Good photos.



3. On opening "The Mosque", most readers are likely to wonder that such a book has not been attempted earlier, for the topic is so obviously suitable for comparative study. The editors and their fourteen collaborators explain the mosque as an expression of Islam, analyse the characteristic styles of nine regions ranging from West Africa to China, and then report on the contemporary scene.

   The last topic may be the most original and important, for Westerners are far more familiar with the celebrated mosques of the pre-modern period than with those of the twentieth century. Oleg Grabar and Mohammed Arkoun provide typically brilliant insights while Khan surveys the architectural variances ranging from the pseudo-classicism of the Islamic Center Mosque in Washington, D.C. to the astonishing modernism of the Sherefuddin Mosque in Bosnia.

   Too often, in a specialized field such as Middle Eastern studies, a reviewer finds himself lamenting the excessive prices of books. How refreshing, then, to be able to compliment Thames and Hudson for including 378 illustrations, 170 of them in color, and yet charging very little more than the average scholarly book. This pricing decision brings The Mosque within the means of individual purchasers-and even pressures them to buy the book to prove that moderate prices do in fact lead to larger sales.

   Middle East Quarterly, March 1995

No comments about Chile: Crypt and House (O'Neil Ford Duograph).

1 comments about Public Transportation: On the Move 1.

1. First.. this book is wrongly credited to Roger Yee. The actual editor is Marc Wortman, PhD.
   
   Are you in the market for a commuter bus?
   Do you design, buy or influence decisions for municipal transit systems for a living?
   Are you a transit equipment geek?
   
   If so, you might like this coffee table book of U.S. light rail trains, busses & transit facility projects. It is organized alphabetically by vendor (e.g., Sasaki & Associates, Inc., Siemens Transportation Systems, Inc.,.. etc.,) and is filled with examples of mid late '90's/early 2000's transit stuff... but only in the United States (with only one exception that I saw, a train in the U.K.)
   
   If you're looking for a more global assessment on transit or a book of urban transit theory or of contemporary transit case studies, you might look elsewhere, like Robert Cervero's The Transit Metropolis: A Global Inquiry or Hank Dittmar's The New Transit Town: Best Practices In Transit-Oriented Development. That is not to say the book does not have its place. It just was not exactly what I expected when ordering it.
   
   "On the Move" is more like a big sales brochure for the companies included in the book, which makes sense since editor Marc Wortman is described on the dust jacket as marketing and communications consultant "for several leading architecture and planning firms."
   
   Here's the breakdown of what's included::
   -Early 21st century U.S. (not North American, just United States) transit equipment & vendors. Is this a full list? I don't know.
   -Good general but brief descriptions of the features of the products/designs included.
   -Fairly good color pictures throughout.. some obviously slick professional marketing shots (even one including John Madden in front of his MCI bus).. a few are grainy or amateurish and should have been replaced with better shots.
   -There are some conceptual drawings, renderings and plan drawings from the design firms, but not a lot.
   -A couple of odd additions are a description of a highway bridge and interior design of shops in a train station.
   
   This is a book to be flipped through to see some interesting U.S. transit equipment and projects and read a bit about them, but because it is organized alphabetically by vendor, and not by topic, you jump from busses to light rail engineering firms to transit system designers, back to busses, etc.
   It would have been better to organize by topic.

1 comments about Modern Plumbing.

1. Whether you are a pro or a do-it-yourselfer, this book is an absolute must have for everything that has to do with plumbing. It takes you from design to implementation seemlessly and in plain english. Get yourself a copy and you'll never be in the dark about the how's and why's of all aspects of plumbing. Hope you enjoy as much as I did...

No comments about A Republic for the Ages: The United States Capitol and the Political Culture of the Early Republic (Perspectives on the American Revolution).