1 comments about Mediterranean Modern (Design House).

1. This book is a spectacular example of the classic modern style of homes that are so pleasing to the palette. The very homes whose clean lines melt right into the surrounding milieu inviting you to come join in this union of nature and man-made. Make this master of texts a great addition to your library. I'm very glad that I did!

4 comments about The Image of the City.

1. Given that this book was written in the 1950's, it is still relevent to current urban design thinking. It must have been very innovative in the 1950's.
   
   Once the reader gets past the unusual layout of the book and the out of date language, there are many useful urban design concepts to be found in this little book.
   
   Pathways, boundaries, disconnects and nodes are all discussed from varying points of view, using notable USA cities as examples.
   
   One point of relevance is the statement that there is not one city in the USA that could be considered a great example of urban design (as stated in the 1950's). As an Australian, I could say the same of Australian cities. The Australian cities of Sydney and Brisbane are terrible examples of urban sprawl. The north-south spread of Greater Sydney now covers almost 200 kilometres.
   
   The principles stated in this book are still relevant to urban designers today.



2. The urban setting is a composition of nodes, landmarks, paths, edges and districts, accorsing to Lynch. This physical summary of urban landscape may not be satisfactory for some. However, for others, including me, this book is a great help in forming a design perspective at the city level. It does not matter at all if you have just started forming your perspective or working on the final details. The book should be in your library, and the design guidelines should be in your mind, not only when designing a peace of urban space, but also when you are just wondering around.



3. This book describes mental maps obtained from residents in several cities such as Boston, Los Angeles and Jersey City. The mental maps were materialized on paper through an interview process and combined with maps from many individuals. And the results are surprising. Each map is a composite image of the city (and hence, the book's title) that reveals not only the character of the place, but gives you a feeling for it. In Boston for example, the streets are very disorganized, so people give directions by using landmarks almost exclusively. On the other hand, in Jersey City, with extremely uniform architecture, directions are given by street number and points of the compass. An unusual discovery concerns very long streets in Boston. They appear on the map with missing sections - these sections are totally invisible to the people interviewed. In many cases individuals were unaware that Washington street in one neighborhood is a continuation of Washington Street in another neighborhood. These blind spots affect how people move around, it affects the directions they give to others and it contributes or reinforces fears they may have about certain neighborhoods. The book moves from these maps and observations and tries to develop rules of thumb for urban design. People feel more comfortable and perhaps more anchored if they know where they are in space and in relation to visible landmarks. Some cities provide this comfort level more effectively than others - this book tries to find root causes. It's no wonder this is a classic.



4. Kevin Lynch descibes the visual attributes of cities and towns, paying special attention to how we find our way around, how we build a mental image of these places. It is not only relevant to city dwellers, but to anyone interested in the subject of creating communities, real or virtual. A truly wonderful book, with lots of insightful drawings and images. Highly recommended.

No comments about Great Houses of Chicago, 1871-1921 (Urban Domestic Architecture Series) (Urban Domestic Architecture Series) (Urban Domestic Architecture Series).

5 comments about In Detail: Building Skins (In Detail (englisch)).

1. I cannot say enough about the quality of this entire series, and this book is among the best of the set. Few architecture books are of this high quality; one usually expects some level of editorial compromise; either we get lightweight analysis and documentation with beautiful photographs, or you get overly complex, teched out stuff that doesn't understand the fundamental concepts. Or it's just bad architecture. But this entire series, from the quality of the writing, the great beauty and clarity of the drawings, and finally to the aptness and excellence of the finished architecture; it represents the new state of the art. Buy the whole series, but start with this one and "Building Simply", which I'll rave about separately.



2. A must have for all architects and those interested in how buildings come together and the importance the skin plays. As specially when trying new materials.



3. There was a time when there was no question as to what the outside skin of a building was going to be, glass alternating with metal panels. Something monolithic looking like the UN building.
   
   Now significant advances in materials, architectural design, creative use of conventional materials like shingles, concrete, or sprayed on foam are producing building where the skin becomes more than just what you see.
   
   The book is organized into two main sections. The first third or so is used to describe the general changes that have been taking place in the general area of building skins.
   
   The last two thirds show where various treatments have been used in actual buildings. The buildings vary from tiny, micro houses to athletic stadiums, stores to factories.
   
   This is European publication. Most of the buildings are in Europe, with a few from Japan. They represent the most significant advances in design I have seen in a long time.



4. Great examples of innovative building skins with good details.
   Highly recommended for architects and architecture lovers.



5. The book describes simple and neat building enclosure design in detail and palette. The book should be applicable to architects or designers who aspire to work in minimalism or modernism and who desire to improve the building enclosure design to be more insighfully creative and blight. Through the publication good samples are reviewed to support reader's imagination and to confirm the practicality of use.

3 comments about Great Gardens of the World: In Search of Paradise.

1. A wonderful book, with beautiful and inspiring pictures. Always a pleasure to go back again and again at its pages.



2. Gardens are meant to be paradise on earth. The idea of paradise as a garden has a long history, even before the Garden of Eden was presented in the Bible. What the paradise looks like, there is hardly specific description. The description of the Garden of Eden was not very specific either, yet it gave the garden designer some ideas.
   
   In every culture, garden designers seek paradise through their own creative ways. Penelope Hobhouse, one of the most talented garden writers of our time, started her tour of paradise on earth in Asia: the serene naturalistic gardens and symbolism in China, and the Zen gardens and tea gardens in Japan. She then took us to continental Europe: the hilly regions of Italy where lavish gardens are balanced with the use of axes and symmetry, and gardens in Germany, Netherlands and Russia, as well as the climax of formal gardens, the French gardens.
   
   Penelope Hobhouse's next stop is England. She discussed in detail the naturalistic Landscape Gardens, the Cottage-style Gardens, and the Eclectic Gardens. She also explored Mediterranean gardens and gardens in America: European influences and naturalistic gardens.
   
   Last but not least, Penelope Hobhouse discuss today's gardens: water in gardens, gardens and nature, selecting right plants for right sites, reclaiming and revitalizing, and roof gardens, etc.
   
   To Penelope, an ideal garden is "at the balance point between human control and untamed nature."
   
   "Great Gardens of the World: In Search of Paradise" has 240 pages and many beautiful interior color photos. It is a fine garden book that every garden lovers should have.



3. 
   
   
   
   The ideal garden we are given to understand is a paradise - "a haven of comfort, abundance, and beauty." Many of us try to achieve that paradigm in our own way, as have countless others before us. Now gathered in one gorgeous volume are the results of those endeavors gleaned from diverse cultures and climes.
   
   We begin our armchair tour with "Gardens Through the Centuries," a journey covering four thousand years beginning with the earliest gardens alive in the deserts of the Middle East. The first Mughal Emperor Babur (1483 - 1530) had a number of gardens including the Garden of Fidelity which was divided into four parts with a central pool.
   
   Of course, the gardens designed in China and Japan expressed a respect for nature, evidenced in vast areas where the placement of each stone had meaning. Places for contemplation, stroll and moss gardens were found in Japan.
   
   For this reader what can compare with the gardens of Italy? Hadrian's Villa near Tivoli boasts open porticoes, enclosed atriums, fountains, basins, statuary. It is a wonder. La Mortola on the Italian Riviera is a place for dreaming with a steep slope to the sea rich in agaves, aloes, white roses, salvias and citrus trees. A virtual Eden on earth.
   
   Ms. Hobhouse continues our tour with a look at modern garden design as represented by such designers as Roberto Burle Marx, Fernando Caruncho, and Beth Chatto.
   
   "In Search of Paradise" holds 240 pages and 200 illustrations all in glorious color contributed by the world's foremost garden photographers.
   
   The is a volume to be savored and returned to again and again.
   
   - Gail Cooke

2 comments about Robert A. M. Stern: Houses and Gardens.

1. I thoroughly loved his first residential book "Houses." With the amount of work he has done I expected this book to focus on new work but many of the same projects and pictures from the first book were used in this one.



2. This book on Robert Stern, the latest in a series, is very well executed. Mr. Stern really has a knack for anachronistic grand homes, they are a throw back to another time, but with all the modern luxuries money can buy. Stern has a real feel for the kind of gardens that complement each type of home, and the interaction between the two is often quite breathtaking. The images in this book are first rate and the homes are amazing. If you appreciate excellent photography, elegant architecture, and spectacular homes and gardens then you will love this book

5 comments about Atlas of Novel Tectonics.

1. get it... that's all i have to say. there's no reason not to own it.



2. Reiser and Umemoto (henceforth R&U) have put together a wonderful role model of a textbook in a field that erroneously prides itself on having NO textbooks -- that is, by having far too many "must-read" books that remain disconnected and often irrelevant to the problem of learning HOW TO GO ABOUT wrapping one's head around this thing called Architecture. Without turgidity, mysticism, pedantry, or pretentious narcissism, the authors elegantly demonstrate one version of architectural head-wrapping: THEIRS. But make no mistake: to call it 'theirs' is only to specify the site of the (unavoidable)subjectivity that propels this kind of demonstration. And the clarity with which this demostration is done is yet another demonstration of the refinement of their subjectivity.
   
   This book, along with those by George L. Hersey, is one of the very few books in the field that can actually help one in reducing the confusion in trying to understand what Architecture as a DISCIPLINE really deals with, so overcrowded it is today with so many extra-architectural issues/agendas. After all, it was never Architecture as such that was confusing or difficult to understand. People with clubby exclusionary motives, aided and abetted by academic survivalists -- the small sort of people Dryden derided as 'criticules'(teeny weeny critics) -- have made the topic into the unnecessarily convoluted intestine that it is today. And given the paucity of well-paying or creatively challenging work for architects in the real world, this nefarious practice of obfuscation will likely continue since "all forms of power are always accompanied by some form of mysticism."
   But I digress.
   
   I mentioned George L. Hersey's books earlier as exemplars of clarity. I was thinking of his `Architecture and Geometry in the Age of the Baroque'. There you see what actually qualified AS an architectural problem for architects like Borromini and Guarini. You also see the INTENSITY and COMPLEXITY in the SIMPLICITY of the problems they chose to deal with. This kind of architectural cathexis (focus of interest) is something that got lost a while ago with people wasting their vital fluids arguing over possibly important but ultimately extra-architectural issues like low-income housing, importance of having porches, evils of capitalism, etc -- issues that are really a matter of political will, compassion, self-control, and/or common sense.
   
   Enter R&U:
   Knowledgeable admirers of the Baroque that they are, they remind us what it really means to "play ball" in Architecture: ripped-pantyhose mediations on Heraclitus be damned, Architecture, like Baseball, has its internally generated/regulated rules that demand consistency with how Nature designs; and playing a great game regardless of all external factors (politics, ideology, economy, management, the weather, etc) is really all that counts in the end.
   
   In five sections, R&U demonstrate the very thing they profess to practice - strategies of ordering - by crystallizing the perennial topics of Architecture. The five headings are:
   1. Geometry
   2. Matter
   3. Operating
   4. Common Errors to Avoid
   5. The World
   
   Under those five headings, Reiser and Umemoto present short discussions based on themes that are often paired into their basic Yin & Yang. Some examples:
   Difference in Kind / Difference in Degree
   Variety vs. Variation
   Selection / Classification
   Classical Body / Impersonal Individuation
   Exact / Anexact-yet-rigorous
   Continuity / Discontinuity
   Intensive / Extensive
   
   No doubt there are ways of looking that go beyond the binary but I agree with this manner of presentation for the clarity it can offer to the student who needs to first get his conceptual house in order anyway.
   With their confident yet quiet presentation, R&U steer clear from trying to be clever or pointlessly esoteric. Every illustration serves to enhance the point they are trying to get across. And the point is always and consistently ABOUT HOW ONE MIGHT GO ABOUT DOING this thing called Architecture which essentially operates - without necessarily being delimited thereby in its possibilities - as a finite set of limits within a SYSTEM - a coherent system of desire and sensibility, as opposed to a smorgasbord of personal whims, tastes, styles, and personal baggage.
   
   Discussion of each topic is accompanied by quirky but spot-on illustrations ranging from stress diagrams to engravings of Solomon's Temple from Villapando to Max Ernst collages to selections from their own projects. (Whether, if, and how well R&U actually applied these very principles to their own design work is a matter outside the scope of this review.)
   
   Being teachers as well as practicing architects, R&U thoughtfully included a section (Section 4) that should be particularly useful for most architecture students who often end up getting the short end of the stick after going from one teacher to another without there being any rhyme or reason to the arbitrary sequence in which they are exposed to ideas.
   
   The value of this book lies in its status as an exemplar of clarity in terms of its strategy of perception/observation, not necessarily in its enormity of scope, exhaustiveness, logical throroughness, or profundity in the application of Deleuze's or DeLanda's ideas -- which in this case is not really an issue.
   As an exemplar, this book points a way possibly toward a New Architecture (again) but more importantly, a New Honesty/Modesty/Clarity in speaking/writing about Architecture.



3. This book gets lots of play right now in (big "A") Architecture schools. I'm a firm believer that if your thoughts are clear, your writing is clear. This book embarks on many dialectical examples that are explained with too much "difficult writing" for its own good. Grad students of the world, beware the three DDDs that inspire some of this writing: Deleuze, Derrida and Delanda. They plow enormous fields in complicated patterns and only yield a kernel or two. Ironically, I admire Reiser + Umemoto as architects and am looking forward to a book on their more recent work.



4. An unxpectedly fine book on architectural theory that's rooted not in politics or aesthetics or lit-crit theory, but in the worlds of physics and engineering-- a look at architecture and architectural possibilities based on the sinews of buildings rather than the ideology of architects. I'm an historian by training, and an aficionado of architecture and design theory. Reiser + Umemoto have created a small book that offers a view of postmodern architecture seen through the lens of the physically possible. Anyone who wants to imagine new cities and new styles of building needs to consider the sheer physical constraints of design, and this book is a fine place to start.



5. Must read lexicon of architectural forays and methodologies for any critical architect or designer.

5 comments about You Are Here: Personal Geographies and Other Maps of the Imagination.

1. This book was not what I was expecting but it is interesting nonetheless. It is a collection of (mostly) unconventional maps with a few paragraphs written about each. In addition there are some articles on topics loosely related to cartography and the mind. It is more of a picture book than a reference volume and provides food for thought on mapping and identity.



2. This is a great collection of eccentric, unique and brilliant conceptual maps. It is one of those books that will take you places you never imagined.



3. This is a wonderful and thoughtful and visually stunning collection of artist maps. I LOVE it!!! If you're interested in environmental art, it's a must have for your book collection.



4. This book is useful for science people, geographers, visual arts and so poets. Im cartographer, its very useful for teaching, the book have a lot of examples for understanding the philosophy of a map. Higly recommended. Tonatiuh Suarez-Meaney



5. What a great book! This is an unusual look at the notion of maps, from the aesthetic to the scientific. I have found inspiration as an artist and highly recommend this interesting resource.

1 comments about Frank Gehry in Pop-Up.

1. The beauty and excitement of Mr. Gehry's work really "pops" up to you in the informative and fun book. Anyone interest in architecture will love this book.

5 comments about The Disney Mountains: Imagineering At Its Peak.

1. This book is awesome! I love all the concept art and stories behind all the attractions. Very good buy!!



2. I really enjoyed this book. This the third book Jason Surrell has written about rides in the disney parks and although it isn't the most detailed of the three, it's still excelent in it's own right. His first two books,
   The Haunted Mansion: From the Magic Kingdom to the Movies &
   Pirates of the Caribbean: From the Magic Kindom to the Movies (Welcome Book)
   are excelent very detailed stories of each ride at the various parks. The only reason The Disney Mountains comes in 3rd, is because it covers ten different rides (One of which, never came to be) and obviously cannot fit the same amount of detail in a book the same length as the previous two. Still though, a great read and fun for people that love the Disney Parks.



3. The book list the "mountains" that have been build inside the Disney theme parks. Most thrill rides in these parks are located in mountains. SpaceMountain, SplashMountain etc.
   Disadvantage is that the book mainly focus is on the American Disney Parks, HongKong, Tokio and Paris are hardly mentioned.
   The book contains nice artist impressions of the Disney imagineers. However the technical drawings that are also interesting are missing.
   
   Conclusion nice coffee table book, that you probably will read just once.



4. If you are Disney Theme Park Fan. A fan who loves the mountain ranges of Disneyland, then this book is for you. A lavish book that covers all the Mountain Ranges in all the Parks. Amazing drawings and explanations of all these fantastic mountain based rides in the Disney Theme Parks. This is a great behind the scenes look at some of the best Disney Thrill Coasters and a complete look and how they were designed and built. Excellent!



5. I thoroughly enjoyed the book. It was an easy read, but had a lot of detailed information on how the Imagineers took Walt's original ideas and made them into reality. It has a lot of great original concept art as well as photos of the original models that were constructed of each project. If you are a Disney 'Geek', you will love this book.