3 comments about Villa Mairea Aid (Architecture in Detail).

1. Villa Mairea is a very specific home building in Finland. It could be described as an outstanding but descent statue of the golden National Romantic Era, when Alvar Aalto (much alike Frank Lloyd, e.g. in his Fallingwaterhouse) was relatively free hands to plan a house in the "best spirit" of the time.
   
   The house was possessed and occupied by the descendants of the relatively large Ahlström family, which is famous for various industrial activities in Finland. Few people (150 000?) had opportunity to visit the place when it was open for publicity from time to time several years ago, but as a surrogate for such an experience this books gives an excellent overview. The pictures and drawings of the home and its environment are very clear and professionally prepared, and what is most important, the proportionally short introduction to the cultural milieu or atmosphere of the time is covering enough for readers, who have been interested in architecture, but have not yet acknowledged the greatness of Alvar Aalto.



2. This book had great detail i recommend this for Architect students,Interior Design students !!!!!!



3. Weston appears to do a very fine job presenting us with the various perspectives of the Villa -- the large living room, entryways, linear wood use, and of course the extraordinary pool and sauna. The integration of text with pictures makes the book accessible to students just beginning to embark on a study of this great Finnish architect.

No comments about Ideas: Houses (Ideas).

No comments about Concrete Creations: Contemporary Buildings and Interiors (Architecture & Materials).

4 comments about Patterns from the Golden Age of Rustic Design: Park and Recreation Structuires from the 1930's.

1. I thought this would be a book of instruction or patterns for creating rustic furniture. Not even close. It is a book about layouts and some architectural design for parks and campsites. I sold it to a man designing and building his own campground. He loved it.



2. As a professional designer and consultant to the resort development industry, I found this book very informative, with extensive photos and architectural illlustrations, plans and diagrams originating from the early 20th century. A valuable reference book for land planners, architects and developers looking to create "authentic" park and recreational structures for their communities, whether in the mountains or the prairie!
   
   Excellent Book.



3. This guide, originally printed in the 1930s, is an incredibly complete overview of the many structures created in state and national parks from across America. Every kind of structure, and I mean EVERY kind, is represented here with an amazing number of photographs and plans so that you can reproduce them on your own property.
   
   Whether you want to make a simple stone fire pit or a two-story timber-frame visitor's center, this is the book for you. Chapters include fences, signs, administration buildings, drinking fountains, comfort stations, fire lookout towers, trail steps, bridges, picnic shelters, fire pits, outdoor theaters, cabins, bath houses, and lots more. There's even chapters on furnishings and camp layouts.
   
   The book is written in the somewhat flowery tongue of the early 20-century style, but it's quite readable and in some cases truly amusing, especially when discussing the evils of vandalism. A particularly funny passage is found in the chapter about signs:
   
   "Barring an act of God, like a cyclone, or assault by that instrument of Satan, the initial carver, signs like these promise long life... In spite of all the evidence to the contrary, [the initial carver] is a physical, as well as mental, sluggard and is likely to think twice (we flatter him) before he will stand on his head or shinny up a post to accomplish his scandalous, vandalous ends. Twin to the jackknife pest is the souvenir hunter. Signs too appealingly picturesque and easy to get at and carry away fall prey to his pack rat instincts."



4. I always wondered how these incredibly beautiful wood and stone structures were built, everytime we went camping in some state or national park. Now I know!

   Where's my pick, hammer, axe, adze and saw? I can't wait to get started! This book has everything. I hope to be able to buy the rest of Albert H. Good's books on the subject. Fabulous.

1 comments about Alvaro Siza: Private Houses.

1. Alvaro Siza is a true architectural genius and this book does a wonderful job to illustrate his great many talents and vision. The poems placed throughout the book add a special flavor. As an architect, I also appreciated the detailed photos. A must book for architects and Siza's fans!

5 comments about The Geometry of Love: Space, Time, Mystery, and Meaning in an Ordinary Church.

1. This could have been a terrific guide to absolutely everything in the fine old Roman church of Sant'Agnese fuori le Mura, but instead it bogs down in mystical meanderings and fifth-rate philosophizing. These aspects of the book might be of interest to those who actually believe such things, but for me it just produced eye-rolling. I found myself skimming page after page and saying impatiently to the author, "Will you please just get on with it!" There's a great guidebook to Sant' Agnese in there somewhere, but the information is buried among all the other pious maundering that bloats the book to over 250 pages. There are enough footnotes and a long enough bibliography that this could almost be a PhD dissertation! The only way it would be of any use as a guide book would be to go through it with a highlighter, and mark the passages of relevance to the church itself, while ignoring the interminable sermonizing.



2. I agree with with the other reviewers about the lack of diagrams and pictures. Since the text is supposed to address the architecture of churches, it needs graphics. Moreover, it lacks rigor in defining how the programmatic elements of a church influence the form of the architecture, and instead focuses on religious history. This book should be in the religious studies section, not architecture.



3. This book is an in-depth discussion of the meaning of church architecture from a laymans (lay woman's, in this case)perspective. As Visser points out, someone on the "inside" of a faith--in her case, Christianity-- does tend to have insights into the meaning of its traditions that an outside observer might not. This book is full of little insights that are just astounding at times. However, Visser tends to wax poetic on the glories of Christianity every third sentence or so, which makes reading this book for the purpose of studying architecture more of a crapshoot and less of a solid learning experience. By all means, if you need a reinforcement of why your Christian faith is so amazing, get this book. If you want a good in-depth discussion of Christian architecture without having to sit through a sermon, this is probably not the book for you.



4. The book's subtitle is oddly inappropriate: Sant'Agnese fuori le Mura in Rome is hardly an "ordinary" chuch, but rather one of Christianity's most historic. It was built in late antiquity over the burial site of St. Agnes, reputedly a 12-year-old martyr executed for refusing to renounce her faith -- ironically, only a few years before Christianity was adopted by the emperor Constantine as the official religion. Among the items of interest are the mosaic in the apse, columns from ancient Roman buildings, statuary, the altar, fragments of wall inscriptions, the crypt holding the remains of Agnes and Emerentiana (a similarly martyred girl), and catacombs.
   
   Margaret Visser has a worthy mission in writing the book. She wants to help us see the objects in Sant'Agnese not in purely artistic or archeological terms, but as aspects of a religious faith that once turned the western world completely around and, she trusts, is a living force today. As she takes us on a guided "tour" through the building and its surroundings, she muses on the philosophical and spiritual implications that they have embodied down through the centuries.
   
   There is no doubt that Visser is both knowledgeable about the history of Christianity and has meditated long over the palimpsest of meanings reflected by practically every surface in the church. For readers (like me) with many gaps in their understanding of traditional Christian iconography, her observations can be striking. It had never occurred to me, for example, that Christianity took over the idea of an altar from earlier religions, with one remarkably humane difference. Before, an altar was always a place where living beings were sacrificed. Christianity abolished that distasteful practice, but kept the altar as a reminder of another kind of sacrifice, that which its founder had made for the sake of humanity. As Visser discusses this momentous change, it is easy to be swept along with her in admiration for one of early Christianity's practices that suggests a deep and powerful love for God's creatures.
   
   Visser is almost certainly a Roman Catholic, though she never explicitly says so, but she is clearly keen to uncover meanings in the church's furnishings that will resonate with all kinds of Christians and non-Christians. Nevertheless, although she discovers many higher octaves of significance that have universal appeal, some fine doctrinal points she lingers over will tire the patience of readers with no taste for theology.
   
   Visser's ruminations about the interior meanings of concepts such as the circle and certain numbers are occasionally obscure, and in her determination to probe every layer of symbolism in each object she can seem to be almost free associating. Most readers will probably find paragraphs or sections that will invite skimming.
   
   Those reservations aside, I found Visser to be a fine travel companion for visiting Sant'Agnese. She helps us understand what these mementos mean, and how they are reminders that even in a time like that of the late Roman empire, when intolerance and cruelty were standard operating procedure, there were still those who turned toward the light -- and ever since, those who have remembered and honored them.



5. One of the reviews on the back of this book states that every reader will be able to pinpoint at the exact point that s/he becomes hooked by the text. For me, this point wasn't until about halfway through the book, in chapter 5, when I realized that a reading of a church building is not like a reading of a book: the imagination presences itself front-and-center, rather than lurking in the background, masked by a self-proclaimed "objectivity". The religious imagination embodies itself in the artwork, architecture and ceremony that *is* the church.
   
   This book is a thick narrative that works on multiple levels: architectural and artistic, theological and socio-historical. The church building itself is far from static; in letting the church speak of what is timeless, it itself enters into time: ancient altars and recent restorations, classical Byzantine mosaics and Baroque-inspired paintings all inhabit the same space of the church. Each generation, each culture has done something to become a part of the history of the church, and therefore a part of the next generation. The church becomes a shared narrative, so to speak: a structural representating of communion.
   
   The book functions as both an introduction to Christianity, and more specifically Roman Catholicism. Visser situates her text within the larger history of the Roman church, a world filled with saints and mystics, ascetics, martyrs and power struggles, sacraments and quasi-magical popular beliefs. It is a world in which the dead still have a presence in the present, and in which heaven and earth meet at particular times and in particular places - and more in the church than anywhere else.
   
   What appears more than anything else in Visser's work is that of the Roman Catholic imagination. Although certain theologians were largely systematic, the wider history of the Roman Catholic church speaks a different story: sacred time and sacred space, and an experience of the mysterium tremendum. It is within this sense of the sacred, embodied temporally and spatially in the liturgy and the sacraments, and continually witnessed to by the church building, which holds the people whose histories give rise to it, its development and change, restoration and remembering over time.
   
   Visser's work is a brialliant book that will be enriched by those who come with prior knowledge, and will enrich those who pursue more knowledge afterwards. One will learn about Christian theology and history, and its socio-historical imaginings throughout time. Visser's text works outside of simplistic - even if rigorous - textual analyses, and looks to history and its representations in space and time. A brialliant work for those with heart, mind and spirit: imagination.

No comments about Architectural Antiques.

1 comments about Art and Architecture in Italy 1600-1750, Vol. 1: Early Baroque (Yale University Press Pelican History of Art).

1. This is one of the most intelligent book I've ever read about art. It's simple, complete, full of original point-of-views. In asingle word: you can't miss it if you like the Art History!

1 comments about Alphonse Mucha: The Complete Graphic Works.

1. Art lovers around the world recall with delight Mucha's wonderful portraits of Sarah Bernhardt. Mucha single-handedly revolutionized French poster art at the turn of the century with art nouveau advertisements for Moet & Chandon, Job, Nestle's, Benedictine brandy and "the flower of the nineties"; Monaco Monte-Carlo.
   
   Mucha's work was an inspiration to architects and designers who adapted his style of sinuous flowers and plant motifs for designing buildings and furniture. Mucha's harmonious designs, sensitive colors and superb draughtmanship have earned him the reputation as one of the outstanding and influencial graphic artists of Europe.
   
   This stunning and colorful book is the most accurate record of Mucha's work available. Included are 163 full-color plates, some appearing here for the first time since their original publication. A complete catalogue section contains 525 detailed and illustrated entries and an extensive bibliography of books, periodicals and exhibition catalogues.
   
   Marina Henderson's introduction, "Women and Flowers," and Dr. Anna Dvorak's epilogue, "Illustrations for Books and Periodicals," describe with insight Mucha's life, his achievements and his philosophy.
   --- from book's back cover

No comments about Elegance (Architectural Design).