5 comments about Prefab Modern.

1. as a new-to-prefab lay researcher, i loved this book. a friend passed it on to me after we were all chatting about building our "dream houses."
   it gives a basic survey of different types of prefab, from modest to elaborate, and creative diversions in between. i found it an inspirational starting point to daydreaming about fun prefab modern living. the source lists are helpful as well. enjoy!



2. Beautiful book with impressive photos and info on contemporary and cutting edge designs in prefab home. Great sampling of the most modern designs and some info about them. Could have been more detail on the homes.



3. For anyone new to this subject matter this book is a basic starting point. However the more you learn about the topic from other sources the more you realize this book is just lightweight fluff. This was simply opportunistic publishing of a coffee table book while the topic was hot. The author has little expertise in the subject matter (is she a contract writer? - her previous book was about tiles) and the book reads like breathless brochureware. If you want to research the topic for free check out the great web site fabprefab.com which predates this book and is frequently updated. Also there are other great books on prefab such as Colin Davies The Prefabricated Home.



4. This book is incredibly well-written (even poetically written in places), meticulously researched, and beautifully illustrated. It's written by a pro, not someone who just decided to write a book. The book "Prefab" by Alison Arieff was in fact literally written off of (i.e. plagerized) websites and from articles (check the text against the architect's website and you'll see paragraphs and paragraphs were literally lifted directly from the site, likewise articles on those architects.)
   This book is the real thing.



5. I was disappointed with this book. It includes profiles of 15 architectural firms. Seven of those profiles were of firms that have done one-off architect-designed homes made largely of pre-existing materials (usually shipping containers). That is not my definition of a prefab house. To me, a prefab house is one that I can order to be built on my lot. Of the eight firms that offer prefab houses, for three of them only computer-generated images were presented (not photos of real houses). That leaves only five firms offering prefab houses ready for market. Of those, one builds 10 houses per year in Finland. Another is in Australia. Two offer only really small homes (generally intended as second homes).
   
   The book does include (small) design plans and many photos for most of the houses. However, the fact that very few of those homes are available for me to purchase makes the book almost useless.
   [...]

1 comments about New Bar and Club Design.

1. This book is a classy edition to library of any nightclub industry professional and to anyone who enjoys fine design.
   
   A sequel to "Bar and Club Design", a book I have not had the opportunity to view, this second book is reminiscent of the popular photograph books published with works of famous photographers. It is physically weighted, an unusual, square shape with high quality glossy pages. The book is divided by chapters that categorize the types of bars. Starting with bars, the book leads into restaurant bars, hotel bars, and clubs.
   
   It visually captures fifty of the worlds most beautifully designed bars and clubs with detailed text descriptions that tell a story of their own. There are several floor plans that show the uniqueness of each of these clubs, beyond the photograph. Ryder, the books author, is a journalist from London specializing in lifestyle topics and interior design. This explains why each image in the book appears a true work of art.
   
   Visit Coconclub in Moscow, Russia which is described as a "giant termite mound" by the author and as a "four level biomorphic formation like a mountain peppered with caves, suddenly put inside a building with a an eclectic façade" by its architects. The images that follow are an amazing feat of architecture and artwork weaved together.
   
   See how Hajime in Tokyo, Japan has maximized the appearance of a small square footage area using some illumination and shadowing to create the illusion of a much larger space. Or the 2 million dollar color changing XL club in New York. The ideas, creativity and beauty seems endless.
   
   This is a pleasant read and even more pleasant just to thumb through and enjoy the photographic art that it contains. If you own a bar or club, let it inspire you to make changes and differentiate your bar from others. If you just enjoy the nightlife, know that there are fascinating places you can spend your time.

5 comments about Home by Design: Transforming Your House Into Home.

1. I had borrowed this book from the library and loved it for Susanka's creative ideas and beautiful photographs. So I ordered it on Amazon. Unfortunately, as I looked through my copy I noticed that the photos weren't quite as clear. Then I realized that the colors weren't as appealing. Some paint shades I had flagged in the library copy for their warm brown tones look positively green in my edition. Upon comparing the two books, I realized that my copy had been printed in the U.S., the library copy in Singapore. I wish I had known this before ordering--I'd have purchased the book at Border's instead.



2. This is the best book on home design available. It provides guidance on creative ways to use space, light, and order to create a house that really feels like home.
   
   I believe this is one of Susanka's best books, and in my opinion, one of the best introductions to "pop" architecture available. Susanka exposes us little people to the idea of design patterns in architecture, a concept first introduced by Christopher Alexander thirty to forty years ago. In fact, many of the patterns she explores were first uncovered in Alexander's work.
   
   Susanka isn't quite as nutty as Alexander was. She does a better job than Alexander of describing patterns. She demonstrates her patterns with beautiful photography, and describes them so well that you can almost imagine yourself occupying the room as she describes it. She has developed something of a cult following over the past few years, but this book is really worth reading.
   
   My wife and I are planning to build a house soon. We've worked with our designer to incorporate many of the patterns that Susanka describe in Home by Design: varied ceiling heights, lowered soffits, alcoves, light at the end of a tunnel, and more.
   
   Many have given this book a negative review because the houses used to illustrate the patterns are obviously big and/or expensive. That's a valid point. But there is no reason why the patterns can't be applied in smaller and more reasonably priced homes. There is also a lot of repetition in the "Not So Big" series, which includes Home by Design. Most of the books use the same examples, the same or similar photos, and describe the same patterns. If you only buy one Susanka book, this is the one.
   
   The bottom line: if you're building a new house, or remodeling an existing one, buy this book.



3. I have increased respect for Sarah Susanka after reading this book. It is well organized and clearly explains her concepts. But you have to remember when reading this book that the meat is in the text. Make no mistake, this is a beautiful book. Perhaps too much so that some of the reviewers here have mistaken it for a "browse through" book. This is very much a textbook for thinking about houses. The contents are written in plain, lay-person English, but that does not mean that your brain can take the back seat while reading it. You really have to concentrate to take it all in. Also, this is not a so-called "idea book". You will have to proactively use your imagination in order to apply any of the concepts explained in this book to your own house, whether you have lots of money or not. One of the most extravagant examples in this book is a poolhouse built for an obviously very rich client. Yet this spare-no-cost structure has art glass windows on one side of the fireplace and not the other. Also it has no windows in the bathroom. And Susanka takes the time to explain that these things were not oversights. Now, if rich people can do these things on purpose as design statements, there is no shame in a not-so-rich person adopting the ideas to save costs. But you really have to use your brains to do so. Otherwise you will end up saying (like some reviewers have) "This book is useless if you don't have lots of money".



4. GREAT ON UTILIZING SMALL SPACE /NATUAL LIGHT fRANK LLOYD 'S HOUSE'S RICH
   IN EXAMPLES OF SHELTER AROUND ACTIVITY OFTEN A VARIETY OF DIFFERENT HEIGHTS NOT ONLY THINKS OF THE VIEW FROM WITHIN AND OUTSIDE /
   A SEQUENCE OF PLACES /ALL SPACES EVEN THOUGH SEPERATED SHOW THEY CAN WORK TOGETHER IN AN EFFECTIVE WAY .
   SEQUENCE OF SPACE EVEN OUT SIDE DECKS THAT EXTEND INTO A LIVING SPACE
   i GIVE THIS BOOK A 5*****



5. This is a great book. Lots of great ideas with visuals to help you understand the effects of doing something one way or another. Lots of good ideas that can be used in any home. I open it up on a daily basis and keep finding more great ideas.

2 comments about Air Conditioning and Refrigeration Repair.

1. I found the text to be very useful, although it was not the complete and through guide that I was hoping for. That would probably be in the factory shop manual for the central airconditioner that I am attempting to troubleshoot, and those are hard to come by.
   
   Ron



2. This book is an excellent primer for someone that has no prior knowledge of A/C systems. It is very dated and lacks information on the newer systems and refrigerants.

5 comments about The Natural Plaster Book: Earth, Lime, and Gypsum Plasters for Natural Homes (Natural Building Series).

1. I just finished building my strawbale home -- and am very grateful for this book. I have nothing but great things to say about it. This book picks up where others leave off. An absolute must if you plan on using natural materials on your home. One must understand that working with natural materials is hardly a science-- and a fair amount of experementing must be done to get satisfactory results. But the effort will be worth it! Get this book-- you won't be sorry. FYI-- I used an earthen plaster (clay,manure,sand) on the interior and exterior, and finished the interior with an alis and the exterior with a lime plaster and lime wash-- beautiful results!



2. In reading this book you'll find descriptions of the various types of building materials, not just straw bales, these plasters are used on (it is not really a build yourself a house book) and a pretty good overview of the types of plasters themselves.
   I'm not done reading it but don't find enough information to consider it a complete how to guide, more of a starter book. You get some recipes for pigments/ plasters but not much detail about applying the stuff. I've found nothing about measuring the walls to determine just how much material you'll need and I don't think it really tells thickness, just how many coats to apply (not really detailed about that).
   There's an extensive resource guide at the end of the book, you'll need it if you're actually going to build a house of some sort. If you are collecting a set of books on building and finishing a home this one is all right as a starter book. You'll learn just enough to know whether or not this is something you want to be getting yourself into.



3. Not worth the money as a technical reference or how-to book. Otherwise a pleasant read with some inpired pics and a very general overview of the process. Speaks, for the most part, to strawbale contruction as if strawbales are some naturally occurring thing harvested from the wild when are in fact a product of energy intensive industrial agriculture. Fails to provide important technical details such as estimating for coverage, application on masonry, frame and other 'natural' structures, guidelines for plaster preparation. If you already have building experience and skills there are far better reference books available to actually base work upon.



4. Is 'natural plaster home' a euphemism for 'mud hut'?
   
   The following gives a sense of the mood conveyed by the authors:
   
   "Mud Plasters are fun to work with!
   
   Earthen plasters are easy to work with and fun to mix and apply. 'Once you've put your hands in that mud mix you don't feel like doing any other type of plaster'... For adults, working with earthen plaster seems like kid's play, for children it is play!"
   
   At one point, we are advised that 'natural plasters' are low energy building material. The energy required can be measured in terms of granola bars.
   
   I'm sorry: work is work. But, this curious enthusiasm for returning to nature is just a frill. The book has a lot of useful details on foundations, walls, and finish materials. It never gets past the introductory level, but all the key points are covered. Additionally, there is good coverage of design issues, with particular emphasis on avoiding water damage. Finishing walls is given 3 chapters: natural finishes, lime finishes, and gypsum finishes.
   
   I was a bit disappointed in the lack of interest in power-tools, but getting one's hands muddy seems like too much fun to the authors. Additionally, more details on chemistry would have been helpful. At a certain level, I suspect this book is a good introductory lesson for volunteers assembling at a worksite with at least one master builder on hand. Working with mud may be fun, but it takes a large crew to get the whole house, barn or commune done in a single building season.



5. This book was late in coming, but the wait was well worth it! There's nothing like this book on the market today...not even close!

   I especially like how thorough this book is. I really appreciated the clear and detailed explanations of all aspects of plastering -- from the design of homes (so they will be suitable for natural plasters) to wall preparation to testing, mixing, and applying plasters.

   The authors skillfully walk the reader through all of the steps required to plaster a natural home, anticipating mistakes you might make -- and telling you how to avoid them. Although the book focuses on plastering strawbale buildings, there's lots of good advice for plastering numerous other natural homes.

   This book attempts to develop a deep understanding of plasters. To do so, the authors begin by describing the components of plasters -- and what each one does. Knowing that subsoils are different at each building site, the authors give general guidelines for making plasters. They tell you how to test your soils and potential plaster mixes. No, you won't find recipes for plasters...that would be fruitless due to the variability of subsoils. But you will find some examples you can start with and good, solid explanations of the steps you have to take to make plasters using the dirt you have at your site!

   I was also very impressed by the extensive coverage of finish plasters and alises as well as the detailed resource guide and the excellent photos and drawings, although some were a bit small. Sometimes the text seemed a bit repetitive, but in retrospect that helped me memorize the details.

2 comments about Form Based Codes: A Guide for Planners, Urban Designers, Municipalities, and Developers.

1. A good form-based code depends on sophisticated design insights. But the book's reason for being is to explain the job to people without sophisticated design insights. (How else to change an entire built environment in a hurry?) Hence its incredible level of detail, right down to the best typography to use in presenting the proposed code. The book sets a floor: followed faithfully, it can enable diligent but uncreative professionals to produce a better form-based code than they might otherwise. That form-based code in turn will enable diligent but uncreative professionals to produce a better town or neighborhood than they might otherwise. But will that floor over time become a ceiling? Predictable outcomes are what residents want; but creativity isn't predictable.
   
   Full review at http://buildingcommunities.nd.edu/reviews-publications/



2. Form Based Codes provides an excellent ways to understand how design codes works in various stages in urban design field. I think this book guides very clear description in terms of preparing design codes and the management process. The material in this book illustrates excellently relationship between design and planning principles towards high quality environment. As an Urban Designer and Landscape Architect, I would like to express a great appreciation and many thanks to all authors.

5 comments about Key Buildings of the Twentieth Century: Plans, Sections, Elevations.

1. A very helpful book for a student or anyone who has anything to do with architecture. The title really says it all. If you're looking for scaled drawings, you've got one book with most of the major buildings of the 20th century. Personally, I would have added quite a few more structures but, I suppose, there is only this much you can contain in one volume without making it the size of Encyclopaedia Britannica. I'm hoping the publisher will come up with additional volume(s). One downside, not all drawings are included, i.e. there are at most 2 elevations per building.



2. This book delivers as its title promises, Plans, Sections, and Elevations. However, there are few (only one per building) pictures of the spaces in each building.



3. This is a very good reference that will appeal to practicing architects as well as students of architecture. The CD that comes with the book contains plans, elevations and sections of these key buildings and this is perhaps one of the main reasons for purchasing it. This 'strength' is also perhaps also one of the books major weeknesses as all drawings are in dxf and postscript formats, which means they are displayed in a single colour inside your CAD program and/or Photoshop. Given the size and complexity of some of the buildings in this book, having all lines as a single colour is at times very confusing for the eye. The dxf files do not contain any text, so it's a matter of looking at the drawings in both the book and on the screen at the same time; though the text in the book is also a bit on the 'light' side; and genreally you're often left to your own devices in determining the function of many rooms. All drawings are reasonably well executed but have an unfinished feel that I found quite annoying. That said, Key Buildings of the Twentieth Century is a valuable reference source for anyone wishing to study these key buildings. I don't think too many purchasers will be dissapointed with what they find inside its covers.



4. Not pretty enough for a coffee table book and definitely not informative enough as a resource for an architecture student.



5. I am a current architecture student in college and found this book to be a wondrful resource. So often, as students, we are urged to look at precedents to learn how other architects have solved problems, or designed for a certain climate, or what materials they used for different projects. This book provides a good insight to many famous projects by many different architects and is a good read. It also comes with scaled drawings of each project on a CD-ROM which is also a nice bonus.

5 comments about Collage City.

1. I am a second-generation Rowe disciple, I guess. I studied with a Rowe acolyte in graduate school and worked with co-author Fred Koetter in an urban design studio. Without the efforts these teachers have made to bring Rowe's ideas to urban design students, they may well have been neglected, because Collage City is a mess. It is badly marred by dense thickets of poorly-edited, idiosyncratic prose. It was one of the more frustrating books I had to read in school, but I'm glad it was required, because the close readings uncovered real gems of theory. Rowe reintroduced the complexities and possibilities of art into urban design right at the peak of Modernism's influence. Architecture was still in the thrall of La Ville Radieuse and socialist-utopian projects that aimed to simplify and disinfect cities. Jane Jacobs saw the social perils of these projects, Colin Rowe saw the architectural perils. His critique of the Modern project was among the most powerful, and among the least cogent. Still, though it requires some serious digging in prose-mud, the gems are there and worth the search. I recommend this book for graduate-level urban theorists or serious urban design students.
   
   But there are more accessible urban design primers: Aldo Rossi, et al, The Architecture of the City, for example, covers much of the same ground Rowe so spottily tilled [except where Eisenman is involved in the book: he is a worse prose-stylist than Rowe]. For non-specialists I also recommend Witold Rybczynski's City Life as a thoughtful and LUCID introduction to American urbanism, along with a critique of the last few decades of urban "development".



2. Does not contribute much to the discussion, written in a lengthy, self-important, arrogant manner.



3. This book is the most pompous garbage I have ever seen. It is unreadable drivel that has no point and adds nothing to the search for solutions to our urban problems. What were the authors thinking? They deserve the "Emperor has no clothes" award for this trash. Save your money and buy "A Pattern Language," "Edge City," "Changing Places," "Home from Nowhere," or any of many meaningful books that say something relevant.



4. Colin Rowe proposes a form of inclusive urbanism that meshes the modern city with the traditional city.



5. Rowe and Koetter's brilliant excursus of urban design theory via the texts and contexts of intellectual history.

2 comments about Immaterial/Ultramaterial: Architecture, Design, and Materials (Millennium Matters).

1. Toshiko Mori has sadly fallen into the trap of confusing the practice of architecture with merely writing about it. This once-talented architect has now become a parody of herself, a self-important academic smugly satisfied with the sound of her own rhetoric. As for the book, it documents new materials and systems. But the presentation is dry, more in the form of an industrial catalog, and lacks any substantive commentary on architecture itself. And I can't help wondering how many trees might have been saved if Mori and her clique edited out the repetitive and cliched use of words like "challenging", "distorting", "alienating" etc. Architectura and materials evolve; the first use of them, however experimental, is not always good. Like Mori's work, it is stylish, but not classic. Faddish, but not timeless. Pass this one up before it becomes embarrassing to have it on your bookshelf.



2. some very interesting projects by Harvard Design School students. projects are critically approached, its not just eye candy. seem to be on the cutting edge of this kind of exploration. and some interesting interviews of practioners

No comments about Construction Safety and Health.