5 comments about Deco LAndmarks: Art Deco Gems of Los Angeles.

1. A must own book on the Los Angeles Art Deco era. Fantastic pictures and descriptions of buildings past and present in Los Angeles. You can really tell the author did his homework on this one! Buy it.



2. As a current member of 3 Art Deco Socities (NY, LA and Chicago)and owner of at least 30 books on Art Deco, this book told me nothing new or enlightning. I am not in any way a Deco authority, but it would be nice to read (and see) something new about LA. Most photos are a rehash of already printed material and many need additional shots to explain the architecture. For example: the Wiltern Theatre. The interior is 1000% more fantastic than the one exterior photo used. The Wiltern is one of the best examples of theatre deco ever designed.
   
   But, for those that have never set foot in LA, this book may suffice their deco urge.



3. If you're "into" this sort of thing--and you enjoy marveling at Deco Architecture and sculptural designs--L.A.'s treasures add up to the next most bountiful trove of this type offered by the Three Deco Capitals of the U.S. (the Big Apple and ChiTown lead the way). But clearly the City where the aesthetic entered our collective consciousness by way of its movie product and its film set designs is the obvious place to look. LA's major growth occurred during the heyday of Deco and so much of its urban conceptualization was permeated by that design sense. This author is very informative regarding the artists and designers that created LA's "gems." So it provides an interesting read as well as enthralling eye-candy.



4. This book is a must for lovers of Art Deco architecture (which I am)and for lovers of Los Angeles (which I also am)and for those who are tired of east coast critics who decry Los Angeles as being void of architecture. To say that is so far from the truth and this book illustrates it perfectly.



5. Arnold Schwartzman has taken all the photos in this lovely book and as he says in the introduction he decided to focus mostly on detail rather than a whole building. A wise choice because so much of what he covers is not exactly at eye level. Just flick through the pages and be amazed at the amount of exterior Deco delights still standing and hopefully now preserved.
   
   Hundreds of photos are arranged in these four chapters, Tile & Terrazzo, Glass & Neon, Stone & Plaster and Metal & Wood and as Schwartzman took them the color and compositions have a pleasant evenness throughout the pages and this certainly makes all the detail sparkle.
   
   I particularly liked the chapter on stone and plaster with dozens of photos showing just how creative some stonemasons were decades ago, just look pages 122-123 and see six stunning interpretations of the American Eagle.
   
   If you live in Los Angles this super book will be a useful checklist of what to see (the captions all give the street address) for others, like me, it is a good visual record of the best Art Deco gems in LA.
   
   2007 UPDATE: Schwartzman has published a similar book about Art Deco in London (ISBN 1845132432) lots of photos especially of exterior detailing not really visible from the ground.
   
   ***FOR AN INSIDE LOOK click 'customer images' under the cover.
   
   
   
   
   

No comments about Baillie Scott's Houses & Gardens.

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No comments about Do It Yourself: Home Improvement in 20th-Century America.

No comments about Cathedral & City of Toledo: National Monuments of Spain.

4 comments about International Style: Modernist Architecture from 1925 to 1965 (Taschen's World Architecture).

1. I was hoping to purchase a book that concentrated on the early examples International Style 1919-1939. The focus of this books is post World War Two and more particularly the iconic buildings of the great architects. There is nothing wrong about seeing more examples of the works of Mies, Gropius and Le Corbusier. However, they influenced a great number of other architects who produced some very interesting buildings. A style is a lot more than the creations of a few masters.
   
   I love most of the architecture books published by the German Publishing Company, Taschen. However, this is not one of their better books. I found the text to be superficial and the photos not up to their usual high standards.
   
   For anyone interested in learning more about early modernism and more specifically the International Style, I would recommend another Taschen book, "Architecture in the Twentieth Century" by Peter Gossel and Gabriele Leuthausser.



2. A vivid portrayal of a certain consciousness manifesting itself into films (Lang's Metropolis), paintings, and above all, stunning buildings throughout the world. Mr. Khan delivers this story in clear text and fascinating images.
   Having visited many modernist buildings while living and working in many cities abroad, I feel fortunate to have this book activate my memories into a deeper understanding.
   The hard cover stays in my collection while the paperback makes many a smart gift.



3. ARCHITECTURE IS A VISUAL MEDIUM! This book lets you see it for yourself!

   I thoroughly enjoyed this book, finding the text helpful and the photographs really clear and explanatory. The book is aimed at an interested general reader or to the student of architecture, and discusses the subject with enough reference to antecedents to give a grounding, but also lets the subject "speak". The author gently guides the reader by well-chosen example, rather than by telling him or her what to think.

   Although many of the early buildings presented are well-known, they are also very well-presented, and the (mostly color) photographs are really stunning. Going further, the attention that Hasan-Uddin Khan pays to building examples from the Third World should be of keen interest to students of those areas -- it could be the subject of a further book in itself.

   The comprehensible layout of the chapters and topics aids the reader in following the development of this style of architecture, and the photo captions often give new information, not just a repetition of the text. Last but not least, the brilliant Bauhaus palette of colors used in the endpapers, chapter divisions and dust jacket serve to enhance the reader's pleasure. This is not an expensive book -- very good value -- and would be a useful and enjoyable addition to anyone's library.




4. Almost 70 years after Henry-Russell Hitchcock and Philip Johnson invented the so-called "International Style" to describe the varied avant-garde architecture of Europe and the United States, authors like Hasan-Uddin Khan still regard the term as truth instead of the fiction that it is. This book claims that the architects included in the Museum of Modern Art's 1932 exhibition were working with a "global" approach and "international" outlook, disregarding historical evidence that shows a variety of different social, functional, and formal interests were being pursued by different architects in different locales. The author's approach is reductive and essentializing; he treats architectural history as a series of "isms," and deliberately excludes architects who do not fall under conventional definitions of "modern" architects.

   Though he begins the narrative by claiming the international style as "marked by an optimistic belief that the new technologies of industrialization . . . would produce a qualitatively better world," and he describes Hitchcock and Johnson's definition as being based entirely on formal descriptions of the buildings, the author fails to question this transition from the progressive social and functional concerns of the 1920s to a reactionary definition that erased all social meaning and goals of the architects in question. The author also fails to question the arbitrariness of Hitchcock and Johnson's selections.

   The photographs are excellent; it makes a nice coffee-table book.

1 comments about West Coast Victorians: A Nineteenth-Century Legacy.

1. As Naversen points out in his introduction, the "Victorian Era" in architecture coincided exactly with the booming, ballooning expansion of that part of the country most of us think about when we think about "the West"--the lands that lay beyond the Missouri River jump-off towns of Westport, Independence, St. Joseph and Kansas City. Here he has concentrated on houses in the Pacific Tier, from Washington down through Oregon to California, travelling from Seattle to San Diego with stops in lumber towns, Mother Lode camps, military installations, heads of navigation, and even major cities like Portland. (It's rather a pity he didn't venture into some of the other Western states, where thousands more such treasures must lie in obscurity, but perhaps a future volume will mend the oversight.) Using the same double-spread format as in the companion volume, "East Coast Victorians," he studies everything from the prefabricated Frisbie-Walsh House, erected in Benicia, CA, about 1849, to the towered Queen Anne Sherwood House, built in Coquille, OR, more than 50 years later. Large houses and small, elaborate and simple, white and multicolored, all are here, some commissioned by Western robber barons, others built for the common middle-class family. Most are of 1880 vintage and later, but if you're a fan of Victorian housing, all are enough to set you drooling.

5 comments about AMERICAN COUNTRY BUILDING DESIGN: Rediscovered Plans For 19th-Century American Farmhouses, Cottages, Landscapes, Barns, Carriage Houses & Outbuildings.

1. If you have an interest in house plans from times gone by (perhaps you'd like to build a modern home with old plans to get that special quality that only old fashioned houses possess) this book is a great resource. I have read the majority of the victorian era (1840-1900) house plan books which are available (Bicknell's Victorian Buildings, etc) and found the plans in those other books to be so fanciful and so devoid of useful details (i.e. dimensions, materials lists, etc) that they were of no use except as inspiration. This book still does not offer the level of detail that you would need to build a modern home from the old plans, but the plans it provides are more practical and were created by everyday folks who wanted to build a comfortable, smoothly-functioning home that still possessed style and grace. If you are looking for the reason why old homes seem so comfortable, this book will provide the practical explanations of why those old designs still work today (i.e. hallways centrally located provide efficiency and ventilation). This book is a good buy.



2. There was a nice range of different types and styles of buildings, but VERY sketchy information. Just wasn't quite what I was looking for.



3. This is a cool book. My wife and I are buying a 10 acre farmette with an abandoned 1880's style farmhouse, that believe me is in very rough condition. We are planning to renovate the house and construct an additional second story/wing.
   
   This book compiles many different architectural floor plans from the early to mid 1800s. By reading this book, we have a better appreciation for why the house was designed the way it is. For example, the small room off the kitchen on the main floor we determined was actually a "birthing" room (or nursery). Most of the bedrooms were upstairs but this room was on the main floor not only for easy access during the day, but also for warmth (the kitchen generally being the warmest room in the house). You will also note as you peruse through the various plans that room layout was constrained by the need to have access to the chimney/fireplace in selected rooms.
   
   It makes truly fascinating reading. There are several narrative descriptions of the room layouts as they were published in the mid-1800s, giving the viewpoint of the layout in terms of life in that era. One thing that could improve the book is additional narrative for some of the plans from their original published magazines (and why I give it only 4 stars).
   
   Our house did not have a bathroom when it was built, and most of the floor plans in this book do not either. This is not a book for those who are looking for a "new" plan that has an "old" look to it. Most of these plans would just not work well in this day and age (who needs the dairy table room and the ice house off the kitchen anymore?). But it may give you ideas on how rooms were traditionally laid out more than 100 years ago. It is more of a "fun" book than a "working" book, but for our purposes, as we delve into our restoration, it really makes enjoyable reading as it gives a window on architectural design at the turn of the century.



4. I was very disappointed in this book. Ever since I learned that the house I grew up in was built in 1752, I've been fascinated with early American architecture, particularly old farmhouses, outbuildings and barns. I was hoping to discover the original floorplans for some of these sprawling farmsteads I've seen through the northeast and midwest. None of the houses included in this book look like any of the farmhouses I've seen. What about the huge two-story farmhouses meant to hold the dozen or so children farm families had in order to work the farm? Most had a large central hall at the entrance with a large staircase. Some had the kitchen in an ell so the whole house wouldn't be heated by the wood cook stove in the summer, or even had a separate summer kitchen. There is no mention of saltboxes or sprawling capecods with the sheds that connected to the barn. Plus every barn shown has the animals housed on a floor below ground level! Most of the old barns I've seen house the animals on the main level and have a loft for the hay. If you're looking for original floorplans of old houses you're familiar with, look elsewhere!



5. This was exactly what I was searching for....a history lesson on how to properly plan a site for a home with ancillary buildings on anything over an acre.

No comments about Backyard Brickwork: How to Build Walls, Paths, Patios, and Barbecues.

No comments about New Southern Classicism: The Residential Architecture of Barry Fox.