No comments about Designing Your Natural Home.

1 comments about The Shingle Style and the Stick Style: Architectural Theory and Design from Downing to the Origins of Wright; Revised Edition (Yale Publications in the History of Art).

1. An historical treasure, this book, The Shingle and the Stick Style: form Richardson to the Orgins of Wright, by Vincent Scully is a chest of Architectual masterpieces. Detailed descriptions, interior and exterior photos, and floor plans make this book a wealth of knowledge for anyone interested in Architecture. The book is laid out as most contempory Architecture books. It describes the perticular building, then has the number that corralates to the photo. There are so many historical photographs in this book, and it is all well explained. It takes you step though step from the beginning of the stick stlye to the evoloution to the shingle to the metamorphis of Wright. Ths book is so detailed it even has the architectual sketches of many houses build in Manchester-by-the-Sea at Cape Ann, Mass. For the price this book is a definate buy!

5 comments about One Thousand New York Buildings.

1. This just might be the most awesome book about my hometown of NYC. The artwork is fabulous and this book is put together so well. Its shown me things I never saw. I think being a tourist in your own town is great.



2. I'll disregard the book's one glaring omission--Saarinen's TWA Terminal at JFK is not included--and give it a five. Well written.



3. The title might have been 1,000 of the BEST buildings in New York City. No city in America, and few the world over, contain the mind-boggling ensemble of outstanding urban architecture, both historic and modern, as does New York City. This city is a national and world treasure, and all of Manhattan SHOULD be a UNESCO World Heritage site, but, alas... There's simply no comparison possible. This book is a survey of 1,000 outstanding structures in the city, properly chosen in my opinion, each including a black & white photograph and short descriptive essay. With so much wonderful material from which to choose, the book is a real feast of architectural goodness! Because it isn't as exhaustive as White & Willensky, it is more thorough in coverage of the selected buildings. It's well put together. Good buildings. Nice photography. Well written short essays. Covers the five boroughs well.
   
   America's peninsular cities; San Francisco, New York, Charleston and Boston also happen to contain the best architecture. Hmm...



4. and come back and sit and look at this book.
   
   Bet you missed a lot on each street.
   
   Then go out again and do it all over.
   
   A real treat.



5. Every once in a while I'll walk down a street of my busy city and spot a building that I'd never seen before, or, if I had seen it, never paid it much mind. But something about it--its age or its architecture--tells me that there's a story to be told about it. Judith Dupre, Bill Harris, and photographer Jorg Brockmann in their monumental book, "One Thousand New York Buildings", fill in the gaps left behind in the AIA books.
   
   There are hundreds of buildings that, for whatever reason, have escaped landmark status and/or the attention of New Yorkers. Although "One Thousand New York Buildings" does discuss the familiar structures, like the Empire State Building, the Woolworth Building, and Grand Central Station, it also devotes equal time to those that have been ignored or overlooked. What are those tiny, Colonial style houses on Harrison and Greenwich Streets? How old is that building at 2 White Street? Who lived in those somber buildings at 130-132 MacDougal Street? "One Thousand New York Buildings" answers these and hundreds of other questions. In this sense, this book is much like "New York Streetscapes: Tales of Manhattan's Significant Buidlings and Landmarks" by Christopher Gray and Suzanne Braley, in as much as it pays equal tribute to the famous and not so famous structures.
   
   One last note, this is a solidly put together book. The binding is sturdy, the paper thick and glossy, and the photos are clear and intriguing. It as well constructed as the buildings they pay homage to.

3 comments about The Art of Rockefeller Center.

1. Rockefeller Center is one of the great Art Deco set pieces. It was conceived and built at the depths of the Great Depression, at the height of Art Deco and it's importance to the nation at the time is impossible to quantify. The art of the complex is arguably the most important assemblage of Art Deco artwork in the world. This book is a fantastic tribute to Rockefeller Center and all the artists and craftsman that built it. The text is highly informative, without feeling like an academic dissertation and the images are very well presented, though frankly there could have been more. I highly recommend this book to anyone with any interest in Rockefeller Center or Art Deco.



2. The publishers, in a neat marketing move, issued this book in two editions. The 320 page version and a much smaller pocket-sized paperback that was invaluable when I visited the Center in 2006. Without it I don't think it would have been possible to find all the exterior treasures on the twenty-two acre site or read Roussel's text about them.
   
   This Art book is a vastly expanded comprehensive look at all the exterior and interior public art contained in the fourteen buildings and spaces. It originated with Christine Roussel when her company was commissioned by the Rockefeller Center to restore all the artwork and the excellent contemporary color photos (after any restoration) are by Christine or her designer daughter Dianne. What I particularly like about the book are the historic photos of artists creating the works that you can see today. There are so many of these that I assume the Rockefeller's saw the PR potential of Fine Art in progress and arranged for as much of this as possible to be photographed.
   
   There are more than a hundred pieces of art from forty artists presented in color and the very comprehensive text puts their work in context and in case you are wondering there is a full explanation about the destruction of Diego Rivera's fresco: Man at the Crossroads, which was to be in a prominent place on the main lobby wall of 30 Rockefeller Plaza. Lee Lawrie contributed most to the Center with fourteen pieces and his Wisdom (Rockefeller Plaza) and Atlas (International Building) are now world famous. There are seven interesting historical photos about the making and positioning of Atlas in the book. Missing, I thought (and maybe as an Appendix) were a few photos showing the various stages of construction of the Center, it take nine years after all and a page or two, with photos, of the various roof gardens.
   
   Rousell's book celebrates the public art of these remarkable New York buildings which are now registered as a National Historic Landmark. The book's production is first class (though unfortunately not sumptuous) with the photos in 175dpi on reasonable art paper. There is a slight editorial annoyance with a back page listing of the artists and technical details of their work, these really should have been presented on the relevant pages so the reader could avoid having to keep flipping back and forth to find out a bit of information.
   
   The perfect complement to this book is Daniel Okrent's Great Fortune: The Epic of Rockefeller Center telling in great detail how the Rockefeller Center was built.
   
   ***FOR AN INSIDE LOOK click 'customer images' under the cover.



3. Built in the middle of the depression, Rockefeller Center became a part of and a symbol of America. The buildings of Rockefeller Center were not designed as the steel and glass monoliths of today. Art from some of the best artists of the day was incorporated into virtually all aspects of the building. The most famous is the statue of Prometheus delivering fire to the mortals of the earth amidst the waters of the Plaza. But there is much much more. There are the bas-relief stone carvings on the facade, there are murals, statues, even specially designed patterns for the carpets.
   
   This book is the first comprehensive study of the art in the center. It is a large format, beautifully printed edition of the art as it is now, and in many cases historical photographs of the artists as it was being produced in the 1930's.
   
   Ms. Roussel is the Archivist of Rockefeller center. To produce the book she had unprecedented access to the records and files of the center.

5 comments about The Harvard Design School Guide to Shopping / Harvard Design School Project on the City 2.

1. no problems, I live in chile and i receipt my books in less than two months, maybe they could improve the bundle (the plastic).
   Serious.
   thats all



2. For a volume that purports to be scholarly research from Harvard University, it incorporates preciously little hard facts or empirical data from the commercial retail industry, aside from the colorful graphics, it represents, at best, an amateurish take on a global economy in the form of bumper stickers rather than any form of serious analysis.

   Mr. Koolhaas' customary "Firehose" approach to editing - massive amount of unedited images and unaccredited charts and information featuring slogans sufficiently amorphous as to allow readers to draw whatever conclusion they want. Harvard GSD (Graduate School of Design) students would tell you that the whole book is a somewhat cynical exercise for Mr. Koolhaas to use his academic assistants to produce "research" that attempted to justify intellectually what he was designing for the Prada stores in NY, LA, etc. (a "cash cow" for Koolhaas' architectural firm according to his chief assistant) But since Koolhaas is an established and bankable star, none of the participants are complaining. In the end, most of the essays managed to emphasize an approach to architecture that happened to coincide with projects by Mr. Koolhaas.

   For example, while the essay "Depato" give a reasonably detail account of the development of Japanese department stores in the Shibuya district of Tokyo, but then it focused on design features such as the "Bunkamura" or cultural village, art galleries and roof gardens that some stores had added in order to attract customers to shore up declining business. (Koolhaas advocated adding lecture hall in Prada stores but was vetoed for taking up too much valuable retail space). The essay never examined, let alone proposed solutions to, the real cause behind the decline of department store sales - the rise of discount shopping during the decade-long economic recession).

   "Captive-Airmall" amiably speculates on the pros and cons of spaces designed for efficiency and what it meant to operate in an highly impersonal environment. However, it failed to mention the real reason that gave rise to such environment - airline de-regulation that began in the United States which eventually turned airports into corporations responsible for generating their own revenues and thus jump-started the airport retail business.

   Much like a fashion product by Prada, this book is very useful if you want to brag about how intellectually curious and, at the same time, up-to-the-minute-Wallpaper-hip you are at home or the office - it's the latest design accessory for the 1990s bubble economy. It is disappointing to see that even a respectable institution such as Harvard has succumbed to the forces of the marketplace.




3. I'll start with the bad first: this book is too long, the essays are of uneven quality, and the layout is poor (if you are trying to read it, that is, and not just look at it). That being said, I think the overall product is excellent. This authors do not seek to answer questions but, instead, to raise them. Why is retail facing a crisis? How will advances in IT affect retail? What is changing about how we buy, what we buy, and why we buy?

   The authors' premise is that shopping is a living entity, one with survival on its mind. Retail, they claim, has evolved as other beings have evolved: Some advances are foreseen while others come through chance, but all advances are in response to external forces. In the case of retail, the dominant relationship is between the shop and the shopper. As the shopper changes, so must the shop evolve, write the authors.

   That this work is not a completed whole, but rather a piece where some assembly is required by the reader, is important in making this book work. The authors do not and cannot answer all their questions. The idea of "ulterior motives" - which teases at the implications of increased use of IT in retail and urban planning - is, to me, the central issue. The authors note the shift from "how does spacial design affect people" to "how does information design affect people". They note the importance of this shift for the future of shopping and present a history of retail as the vocabulary for which readers can begin to discuss these questions.

   Because the authors have taken on the task of teaching the language of retail, readers may feel as if they are back in grade school English class - slogging through page after page of seemingly useless information that is not neccessarily connected to the next bit of information. However, if you spend some time playing with this information - looking at each bit of knowledge as building blocks that can be moved about and repositioned next to other bits of knowledge to uncover new and different patterns - this book comes alive.




4. Having leafed through this book and "Great Leap Forward," I find myself bemused as to what all the fuss is about. Koolhaas is apparently oh so cool! according to a recent Newsweek. There is little that is new here unless one considers placing an escalator inside Le Corbusier's Dom-ino skeleton novel. It seems that Koolhaas and his chums have once again had great fun cutting and pasting from the past and present, to create a virtual tour through their cluttered minds of consumerist fantasies.



5. It arrived just when i was needing it. Malls, shopping, consumerism, no-spaces, junk-spaces, the artificial-scape...finnaly Venturi&Brown met Koolhaas..(as i already suggested) but, despite all these, i still find it hard to pay such a thrilling money just because they didn't take the work of selecting the material. It seems to me lately that information grows endlessly and nobody is paying care to the "old customed" thing of selecting, choosing what's really important. IF THE BOOK WERE HALF ITS SIZE IT WOULD BE WORTH. As it is not, i must blame the authors for their happy "cut and paste and get the money" editorial strategy. I'm sad to say that i had to read it all and swallow even the most unmature essays to get to this conclusion. I suggest a combined reading of it with "No Logo" to get to an ecstasyc state of annoyment and claustrophobia.

No comments about The Project of Autonomy: Politics and Architecture Within and Against Capitalism (FORuM Project Publications).

No comments about Children's Spaces.

2 comments about The Designer's Atlas of Sustainability: Charting the Conceptual Landscape through Economy, Ecology, and Culture.

1. Issues of sustainability are key to many different kinds of designers, from architects to graphic designers - and this title is designed to cross genres to appeal not only to designers but to the consumers using their services. Chapters provide a fine introduction to blending sustainability concerns throughout the design process: college-level collections in design as well as general-interest libraries catering to consumers need Designer's Atlas of Sustainability, a key to public policies, consumer needs, and basic sustainability issues.
   
   Diane C. Donovan
   California Bookwatch



2. There are many books now on sustainability with most being page-after-page of lengthy, often-dry academic dissertation. Some of these books will not likely appeal to the design professional who demands more visual inspiration and smart, graphic layout in a book. Well, this book meets those needs and is a fine contribution to the topic.
   
   This book is not a "how-to" book with lists or formulas for making products more sustainable in their design and use. Rather, it explores the many dimensions of sustainability (ecological, social, economic) and lets the reader glean inspiration for core concepts and many brief but interesting examples.
   
   Ms. Thorpe approaches the problems of unsustainable industrialization with a keen perceptivity that intices the reader to think broadly and creatively about the world we live in and how to reimage it. In addition to traditional design priorities of function, form and cost, Ann Thorpe illustrates how all effective designs must now go through the additional "lens" of sustainability thinking to anticipate its impact now and though the product's life.
   
   Every page is colorful with pictures, creative graphic layout that makes learning new things about this topic more enjoyable. The writing is quite philosophical in its approach (which may be a bit too much for some wanting more 1-2-3 steps). Also, more detailed case studies would have driven home the concepts better as would a more integrated, direct writing style.
   
   But, Thorpes' approach is to teach one how to think and not what to think. It gives designers a new lens to evaluate the how design impacts human/ecological well being as well as the increasingly limited resources of our planet. But, this highly visual book was a nice change from many other, purely academic books I have read on sustainability. 4 stars overall.

No comments about Architectural Details: Spain And the Mediterannean.

2 comments about Dream Homes Colorado (Dream Homes).

1. With a plethora of building sites offering truly spectacular settings, as well as a busy metropolitian area, relatively low building costs, and resort areas to attract the rich and famous, Colorado offers a collection of 'Dream Homes' unlikely to be found anywhere else in the world. In putting this book the authors could choose from the best of the best and they did. Both the houses and the background settings are spectacular. There's something about a huge mansion, sitting by a lake, with snow capped mountains in the background that creates a picture worth remembering.
   
   Of course the houses are outstanding in their own right. Most of the houses, especially those remote from the city of Denver, carry a western motif, there's something about being in the west that calls for big wooden beams, log cabin construction, and wrought iron inside. Still, as you would expect, there is room for other architectural style, whatever the customer wants: tudor, French, modern - anything goes. The one common characteristic is that these homes all fill every aspect of being a dream home.



2. Dream Homes of Colorado is a "Must Have" Coffee Table Book.
   It is truly one of the finest compilations of magnificent photography of the finest examples of the achitectural, design, and building talents used to produce the most outstanding homes in the State of Colorado. It showcases where almost everyone would live, if only they could.