5 comments about Casa Florida: Spanish-Style Houses from Winter Park to Coral Gables.

1. This book has a terrific collection of photos of old Florida, Tuscany-type homes. We've looked all over for a book like this. Hope others enjoy it as much.



2. The first town in the New World was in Florida and it was a Spanish town. Since then the Spanish influence on the arthitecture and culture of Florida has been large.
   
   In this book a selection of buildings has been carefully selected to illustrate the history of Spanish-style structures from across the state. From an age standpoint, there are some quite old (but certainly not run down) homes varying up through some modern homes built using traditional styling. A few commercial buildings such as hotels are also included.
   
   From a style standpoint, the homes of Florida seem to have been influenced more by a Mediterranean, even Moorish, look than the Spanish architecture houses more common in the Western States that have more of a Mexican influence.
   
   Beautiful pictures beautifully printed on a high quality matte finished paper add a warmth to the book that glossy magazine style printing imparts.



3. we are having a new villa style home built and have gotten many wonderful ideas from the camera art in this book. page after page of wonderful spanish/mediterranean homes are pictured in this beautiful volume.



4. In my hunt for more information on Spanish Style homes, (I own a bungalow in California), I have been frustrated at the limited amount of books out there. I work at a Library, and many of the patrons share the same frustrations. In order to be able to find books on these subjects, I have had to self-teach about the many surrounding subjects; ie, tiles, Mexico, Moorish, Morocco, Spain, etc. This book is one of the better ones. It has beautiful pictures on how to decorate and landscape. I learned that air-conditioning changed architecture in a substantive way. I had also never heard about concrete ceilings made to look like wood before, apparently a Florida staple, due to humidity. These houses are oh-my-Gorgeous! The only problem was that the author frequently discussed beautiful rooms and details of the houses, then didn't show pictures. Maybe/hopefully, they're saving those pics for a follow-up book on interiors and details? I agree with the previous reviewer, how about a book now on Florida Spanish bungalows?



5. I have been waiting a long time for a book like this! While the Spanish style homes of California have been documented in numerous books, the large amount of this architecture that was built in Florida during the same period has never gotten the amount of press it deserves. There are books on the architecture of Addison Mizner and a few other noted Florida architects, but nothing comprehensive on the style that was so prevalent during the boom years, and which was used in big cities like Miami and much smaller towns all over the state. This book covers houses from Miami to Winter Park and gives a nice overview of the style. I was very impressed not only by the amazing photographs, but by the histories that went along with each home featured. These histories allow the reader to put the home into its proper context and can be used as guides for people like me that are restoring similar homes. I wasn't as impressed with the newer homes in the back of the book, but there are only three relatively modern houses covered, so it does not take much away from the overall content. Since many of the homes built in this style were smaller bungalows it would have been nice to have seen some of them included, but the homes pictured are stunning! This book is must have.

No comments about Simulation: Presentation Technique and Cognitive Method (Context Architecture).

3 comments about Professional Planting Design: An Architectural and Horticultural Approach for Creating Mixed Bed Plantings.

1. In this singular book, anyone interested in teaching planting design will find a comprehensive guide. My students are required to buy this book and use it throughout their class in Advanced Planting Design. Its full of challenging exercises and analytical guidelines. Thank you Scott Scarfone for producing this clear, comprehensive text.
   Louise Schiller, ASLA



2. Pro: copius details about design principles. Con: lack of color photos -- too many black and white photos



3. In almost every landscape architect's office, you can find two kinds of people: the designers who layout the design and do the color renderings and presentation drawings, and the horticulturists who select the plants. This book will give you a good understanding of both the design and horticultural aspects of planting design, especially the latter.
   
   It is also a very practical book. It'll leave you something useful that you can actually apply in your daily landscape practice after you read it.

1 comments about Lobby Design.

1. The lobby of an industrial building is an interesting place that often is required to fulfill several purposes. First it is a transitory space. It is an area between the outside that is open to anyone, and the inner sanctum where only employees and invited guests may go. It is where the guests are 'screened' for a business reason to enter, their hosts called, paperwork to be filled out, perhaps there are rest rooms for the visitors use, perhaps there are meeting rooms where the visitor may meet with employees without going inside.
   
   The lobby is the first place that a visitor sees, and the area that gives him the first impression of the company he is visiting. This has created in the minds of architects the need to make the lobby area more appealing to the eye and other senses of the visitors and employees.
   
   This is an idea book composed of photographs of advanced lobby designs from around the world. The book is printed on high quality paper and bound using traditional sewn signatures and headbands to produce a long lasting book that can be heavily used by the architect and his clients.

5 comments about Living in Bali (Taschen's Lifestyle).

1. Since it is legally impossible for foreigners to own real estate on the highly protected island of Bali, this book contains a list of law-breaking millionaires who cannot enjoy beauty unless they own a part of it...



2. Having visited Bali many times over a period of 35 years and being very familiar with life and housing there, it is important to mention that this book is not about living in Bali for the Balinese. The homes in this book are exceptional for Bali and for the most part would be special almost anywhere.
   
   The book covers some breathtakingly beautiful houses and the photography is excellent. Whether one is interested in Bali or not, architects, decorators, and those who appreciate creative design will thoroughly enjoy this collection of gorgeous photos of stunning architectural creativity. Those who do not know Bali will likely be blown away by its natural tropical beauty. For those who know and care about Bali, this work artfully ties all of the above together in a most satisfying volume.



3. Great photography and awesome scenarios. It really brings the feeling of being in Bali. And the decorations show the artistic side of the new interiors of the open living. It inspires my clients when they come inside my furniture store. Of the books I have from Bali, this is certainly the best!



4. Overflowing with inspiring photography, this is a beautiful book! We also love the text appearing in English, German and French as well - it adds to the international appeal of the content. It is an incredible value for the price - we expected to pay twice as much. We have recently visited one of these homes, and the photos actually do it justice!



5. LIVING IN BALI is more than just a pretty picture book, though the lush photography by Reto Guntli is superb. This is a romance with a place few have had the pleasure of experiencing - the tropical paradise still very much in place in Bali.
   
   Author Anita Lococo wisely leaves most of the journey to the level of serenity encountered by the way of life, the state of mind, the natural beauty of the landscape, and the plethora of flowers and exotic foliage to the images that flood the pages of this very beautiful book edited by the always sensitive Angelika Taschen. Here is a mood, a spirit and a place that indeed does exist and the book allows us to enter the secrets of the contemplative life that results from the communal life with nature that rules the homes of Bali.
   
   The writing is informative and gentle and the many full color photographs manage to transport the viewer in time and sensation to a Paradise Available. This is yet another in Taschen's fine collections of books intent on making us open our eyes and minds to the levels we all can achieve - with a little help from books like this. Grady Harp, March 06

5 comments about Frank Lloyd Wright Mid-Century Modern.

1. Comprehensive photos of the interiors and exteriors of Wright's homes.
   One is able to see the materials used, arrangement of furniture and colors he chose. Just what I was looking for. Beautiful book.



2. I approached this book with some trepidation, as I suspected there would be much duplication of the material presented in "Frank Lloyd Wright: The Houses". As approximately 60% of the houses presented here were given to us in the earlier title, these suspicions proved to be correct, yet I am giving this book 4 stars. Why?
   
   This time, unlike what was done in "FLW: Prairie Houses", there has been some effort made to present different views of the repeated houses. However, be advised that there is reuse of the identical photos in many cases. What redeems this book are the seldom published houses that are presented. To those very familiar with Wright the names Buehler, Hughes, Neils, Pearce, Brown, Berger, et al will ring a bell, but may not bring a clear image to mind. Now the images are provided and great images they are. Often full page views of this wonderful architecture.These photos will draw you into serene spaces that are at one with nature. Almost 50 years after his death the artistry of this man still amazes. So, pick up a copy, settle into a comfy chair and prepare to be amazed.



3. Wow what great photographs and the essay's are great too. What really put me off - infact it angered me, the incorrect name used not once but twice for Harold Price - it is listed as Herbert. I just cannot believe that through all the proof readings and all the eyes writing this book that this attrosity was not found. Bad publishing. Other wise the information and photos are great - just wish there was alittle more care put into the proof reading.



4. Very comprehensive with new photos not shown before. As new owner of the Dorothy Turkel House in Detroit I was pleasantly suprised with 6 pages on our house. There is so much interest in Mr Wrights houses i cant believe it. Very timely.



5. The description:
   
   "With lavish, new, previously unpublished color photographs and detailed plans"
   
   is not quite accurate. And while there are some new photographs, there are no detailed plans of any kind. And most of the photographs are really no different in content than can be found in some other books. In additon, there is practically no technical information in any of the photo captions.
   
   It would been nice to have other houses covered in this book that have not appeared in countless other books. Many of the subjects here have been beat to death.

4 comments about Till We Have Built Jerusalem: Architecture, Urbanism, and the Sacred.

1. Architecture is visual. In this book, the emphasis is on the abstract. As such, the subject and its presentation seem disconnected. Granted, the book has illustrations; however, they're generally tiny compared to what one normally sees in a presentation on a visual art. The text also contains numerous tiny footnotes throughout. These footnotes are distracting. The author makes numerous references other writers, coming across as someone who's collected a bunch of interesting quotes and wanted an excuse put them together in a book. It gives something of an intellectual stream of consciousness effect. I've read other books on architecture such as Tom Wolfe's From Our House to Bauhaus, Michael Rose's Ugly as Sin, and Lewis Mumford's Sticks and Stones, and got a lot of enjoyment and insight from them. I thought I'd really like this book but found it so boring and hard to read I gave up before finishing the first chapter.



2. Philip Bess (Professor and Director of Graduate Studies, University of Notre Dame School of Architecture) presents Till We Have Built Jerusalem, a scholarly examination of the relationship between traditional architecture, urbanism, and human flourishing, as well as the types of culture necessary to sustain traditional towns and city neighborhoods. Chapters analyze questionable intellectual assumptions of contemporary architecture, and reveals how the individualist philosophy of modern societies is physically expressed through suburban sprawl, to such an extent that it undercuts urbanism's ability to sustain itself. Till We Have Built Jerusalem concludes that the natural law tradition and communal religion can both provide the needed intellectual and spiritual depth to modern attempts to build new (and revive existing) towns and cities. Urban locales, at their best, help fulfill the human drive for order, beauty, and community, Bess argues, in this fascinating study of old versus new urbanism. Black-and-white and a few color illustrations add a visual touch to this persuasive manifesto of the common links between improving the human condition through better urban architecture and the bonds of shared religion.



3. In this interesting but highly abstract collection of essays, Bess tries to teach cultural and religious conservatives (and indeed, religious people of all political leanings) about the virtues of traditional urbanism and its 21st-century heir, the New Urbanist movement. Bess argues that traditional neighborhoods where churches and other civic institutions are the highest buildings ennoble us by teaching us what we should cherish; by contrast, in 20th-century suburban sprawl churches look no different from Wal-Marts.
   
   One of the best things about this book is its use of quotes. Some of my favorites:
   
   *"To value anything simply because it occurs, is in fact to worship success, like Quislings or men of Vichy." (quoting C.S. Lewis).
   
   *"If a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think little of robbing; and from robbing he comes next to drinking and sabbath-breaking, and from that to incivility and procrastination. Once upon this downward path, you never know when to stop. Many a man has dated his own ruin from some murder or other that perhaps he thought little of at the time." (qutoing Thomas de Quincey)
   
   *"the gratification in climbing consists of the conquering of one's own inert heaviness for the purpose of attaining a high goal- an experience inevitably endowed with symbolic connotations. Climbing is a heroic, liberating act; and height spontaneously symbolizes things of high value." (quoting psychologist Rudolf Arnheim to explain why height and beauty often go together)
   
   *"It is not only insufferable arrogance to think that one can begin theologizing in sovereign disregard of history; it is also extremely uneconomical. It seems rather a waste of time to spend, say, five years working out a position, only to find that it has already been done by a Syrian monk in the fifth century. The very least that a knowledge of religious traditions has to offer is a catalogue of heresies for possible home use." (quoting Peter Berger)
   
   *"The utter failure to create any meaningful pedestrian environment (that is, a rewarding public realm} defines the heart of Atlanta today. Every bad idea in the service of contemporary urban design [has come] together [in Atlanta] with a public attitude that can be summed up as the outside doesn't matter." (quoting James Howard Kunstler)
   
   *And once from William Penn that he (wisely) criticizes: "The country life is to be preferred, for there we see the works of God, but in cities little else but the works of men." As Bess points out, human endeavor, like the natural world, is infused with divine presence.
   
   One possible weakness: Because this is a collection of essays rather than a freestanding book, Bess doesn't engage defenders of the sprawl status quo as thoroughly as I would like.



4. If the following paraphrase is not too crude a summary of Philip Bess' brilliant synthesis in this book, the author believes that we all carry a kind of moral DNA within us which not only urges us not to murder but not to allow urban sprawl to devour our landscape and kill our authentic civic life. How ironic that we Americans hunger for the beauty of European small towns, for example, but don't realize that their "human scale" is related to ancient notions of what cities are for -- to make people good (i.e., excellent). This is not a political nor a polemical tract: Bess takes the reader into serious philosophical waters and his emphasis on virtues-based theories of human behavior mirrors the current work of leading philosophers and psychologists like Alasdair MacIntyre and Martin Seligman.

2 comments about The Face of Home: A New Way to Look at the Outside of Your House.

1. I bought this book online so I never had good look inside before I bought it . There are a few the thoughts fit with my idea of what a nice house is but then there where more ideas where I would be saying huh, what...that does not look so good.
   
   My advice is to get a good look inside the book before you buy it.



2. First, I should say that Jeremiah Eck is my favorite architect. If I ever build a house (which is hard, because I live in Boston where there are essentially no lots), I'll probably use him as an architect. So I should love this book, and I mostly do. Ideally, I'd like an architecture book to:
   
   1) have lots of great pictures and floor plans of wonderful houses
   2) have interesting ideas to convey
   3) have good prose to read
   
   I'd say this book scores very well on the first two points, and less so on the third. The photography is excellent, with lots of great houses. Mr. Eck is trying to convey some important ideas about the exterior of a house. Ideally, he things the exterior of a house should have a style that follows from other elements of the design, rather than being superficial decoration. So on the strength of those reasons alone, you should buy it. But for some reason I find his prose hard going. I can't quite put my finger on what bothers me, but it doesn't pull you forward. I found this to be true of his first book, "The Distinctive Home" as well. I'm very pleased I read it anyway.

2 comments about The Mathematics of the Ideal Villa and Other Essays.

1. Colin Rowe's essays are exceptionally insightful and truly enlightening. These essays were written decades ago but they're still enormously valuable and still very fresh. The first essay, from which the book takes its title and probably Rowe's most famous, is an analysis of the geometrical and proportional similarities between Le Corbusier's villa at Garches and Palladio's Villa Malcontenta. A brief but dense tour de force. Perhaps his next most famous essay is "Transparency: Literal and Phenomenal," written with Robert Slutzky. Also a real eye-opener. In other essays he discusses the curious relationship between the Chicago frame and modern architecture; neo-classicism and modern architecture; mannerism and modern architecture; La Tourette; 19th century thinking about architectural character and composition; and the architecture of utopia. These essays make you think, look at things differently, look at things you hadn't noticed, and they ultimately enlarge your understanding of architecture and your architectural field of vision. I'm grateful to Colin Rowe for that. After reading this book I bought his three-volume collection of essays, "As I Was Saying." I just had to have more. The essays in this book put your mind to work but Rowe's writing is also quite engaging. He's a genuinely independent thinker and a rigorous one too. These are wonderful essays and the book is highly recommended.



2. This collection of essays by Prof. Colin Rowe is considered to be among the most important analytical essays on architecture in this century. Prof. Rowe has won the Gold Medal in Architecture from Queen Elizabeth and was Professor of Architecture at Cornell for over 25 years.

5 comments about Lost Chicago.

1. This superb collection shows now-gone buildings and architectural treasures of our beloved city's past. These remarkable black-and-white photos show famous vanished bridges, churches, buildings and arenas, including the Colesium (nominating site of four Presidents). The City's downtown and surrounding areas were rebuildt after the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, in the largest building boom in U.S. history. Wood gave way to brick, steel, and concrete - the fire led to strict building codes - and many structures rose as the city expanded from 320,000 people in 1871 to 3.4 million by 1930. Readers learn about our city's history, plus the valuable contributions from world-famous architects and planners like Frank Lloyd Wright, Louis Sullivan, Miles Van De Roh, Mortimer Adler, and Daniel Burham. Today, many call Chicago the nation's architectural marvel - yet we also lost many famous structures as this superb book shows.
   
   I'd have liked more photos of rail structures (Chicago was and probably remains the world's railroad capital), but it's a minor flaw. This is a superb book about a great city and its architectural past.



2. The well written story and photos of Chicago are great. It was amazing the number of outstanding architectural building that were built and torn down in such a short number of years.
   Having grown up in Chicagoland during the 40' & 50's, I found myself depressed to see such destruction - only to be replaced by glass and aluminum boxes. Even efforts to save the outstanding and much beloved main lobby at the Chicago and Northwestern station failed in the name of the almighty dollar!



3. First of all...Mr. Lowe obviously has a deep rooted love for our wonderful city of Chicago. Most importantly...he is ensuring future generations and historians the ability to reference so many facts. This simply said...is an incredible work of love and a dedicated effort.
   Thank You Mr. Lowe...my children's children will know what an important part that Chicago has played as our nation grew and prospered.
   
   L. Curt Erler Author of "Southside Kid"



4. Stunning photos of a beautiful city. This book is truly a step back to a time when buildings were built to withstand centuries, although tragically these examples did not. Chicago has some of the most impressive examples of architecture in the country and this book is a powerful archive of not only what the city was, but what it is today. I wish there was a similar book on the buildings of Detroit, many of which are sadly slipping into oblivion.



5. 
   
   There is much to enjoy here even if one does not have a special interest in architecture. As a lifelong Chicagoan, I especially liked the photo of St. Stanislaus Kostka Church (p. 79) which occurs in the formerly Polish neighborhood that I grew up in. I also enjoyed the old maps of the Chicago area from the 1600's.