1 comments about Material World 2: Innovative Materials for Architecture and Design.

1. Although this book covers a wide range of materials, the descriptions of the materials are superficial and elementary at best.
   
   The tightly cropped photography obfuscates rather than illuminates, leaving you to decipher what exactly the material may look like.
   
   There aren't any examples of potential applications which would be fine if the writing would create any room for the imagination.
   
   This book is expensive and falls flat in promise considering its price. There are better resources out there to add to your library. It's too bad because I love FRAME magazine...

3 comments about Houses by the Sea: Mexico's Pacific Coast.

1. This is an excellent book. It has something for everyones taste. I highly recommend Villa Vista Magica. It is the one on the cover and is fantastic!



2. I went and visited at one of these houses. It was the most amazing place I had ever been. I recommend anyone to go there. It is heaven and the area is great not yet insanely americanized like Cancun. 5000 a night to rent these places check it out.



3. This book was enough to start me dreaming of retiring to Mexico--or maybe just taking a looong vacation there! The photographs are stunning--really incredible. I also enjoyed the writing style in the sections where they discuss the goals for each house and the owners and architects input toward the whole project.

3 comments about Island Living: Inland Retreats and Shoreside Havens.

1. these are not luxurious oceanfront homes. they are ALL ugly
   plain homes that give no decorating ideas (maybe to my grandma)
   if you are looking for spectacular,check out Florida Design magazine.



2. Very nice layout and graphics and selection of relatively modest but well thought out homes.



3. When I thought of living on an island, my first thought was the tropics. Somewhere down in the Caribbean or perhaps the South Pacific. Here houses would be open to the wind, here it would be necessary to produce your own electricity, your own water supply and so on.
   
   Instead in this book, most of the houses are on islands just off the coast of the US. And as part of the sub-title, there are some that he considers to be Shoreside Havens rather than actually on an island. Further many of these houses are quite far north, off the coast of Maine perhaps or in the area around foggy, rainy Seattle. Here you don't want a wide open house, but one that can be warm and cozy while presenting a view of the storm tossed water.
   
   Here are some twenty-five spectacular homes. These are not the huge mansions often seen in such books, but homes that are only slightly above the mainstream. Here are homes that are made to fit into a site and to reflect the love that the owners have for that site.

2 comments about Julia Morgan, Architect, And the Creation of the Asilomar Conference Grounds.

1. Russell Quacchia, long-time Bay Area architect and active member of the American Society for Aesthetics, has produced a remarkable book on Julia Morgan's Asilomar campus. The previous Amazon reviewer must not have actually read the book as it contains orginal research (for example from Special Collections at the Kennedy Library at Cal Poly) as well as excellent background information on Morgan's life, the Arts and Crafts Movement in California, the histories of Pacific Grove and Asilomar, and a comparison between Asilomar and Morgan's other major work, the Hearst Castle at San Simeon. The last two chapters go into issues of aesthetics, making us aware of the ways in which Morgan anticipated our contemporary interest in site-specificity. Her architectural work at Asilomar is noteworthy for its emphasis on natural materials. Her architectural style was eclectic, but often, as at Asilomar, she followed the Arts and Crafts style of her mentor, Bernard Maybeck. Quacchia is especially insightful in his comment that Morgan sought a flexible balance between rigorous symmetry in building facades and casual asymmetry in the pathways she laid out between buildings. Each of her buildings, as Quacchia observes, was built to have its own feeling, to express a personality. As Quacchia writes, "In arranging buildings at Asilomar, Julia Morgan actively looked after the logistical needs as well as the social and environmental implications" of her work. The book is also well-illustrated with historical photographs. The bibliography is fine, but at eight pages, could hardly be said to form the bulk of the book, contrary again to the previous reviewer.



2. I was looking forward to reading a this book but was quickly disappointed.
   
   I don't think Mr. Quacchia took much time to put together this book. The information is ALL second and third hand. The entire book is other writers accounts and information. The book is mostly a bibliography. Mr. Quacchia put a few narratives between each bit of information but he or his editors might want to use spell and grammar check next time. A college writing course might also be helpful.
   
   I guess anyone can write a book if they do alittle research.
   
   My copy of the book was not put together very well. Many of the pages were either omitted or put in after the index.
   
   Please, think twice about reading this trash. That is where my book is now.

5 comments about Chicago at the Turn of the Century in Photographs: 122 Historic Views from the Collections of the Chicago Historical Society.

1. If you don't believe that Chicago was the world leader in architecture at the end of the 19th century, buy this book - you might just change your mind!
   
   First off, there are maps that show the location of each photograph. If you don't know the city, that helps you get things organized in your mind. If you know the city, you can do your own "then and now" comparison based on your latest visit. Most of these gems are long gone, and were replaced by poor substitutes. The author then does a good job of explaining about the photographs themselves. When and why they were taken, how they were used, the equipment involved, and why these particular negatives were chosen.
   
   And then, you are allowed to feast your eyes on 122 full-page shots of old Chicago. The focus is on architecture, but you'll see some of the people, the river commerce, the "El", and the bustle of commerce. You do have to live with the photographic constraints of the day, e.g. everything is black and white, and the street scenes contain blurs of motion from people and vehicles, owing to the long exposure times. Some of the negatives are damaged, particularly around the edges, but to the author's credit, there is no attempt at photoshopping to fix the problems. What you see is the best, most accurate presentation possible.
   
   This is a great look at a lost time, and lost architecture. Highly recommended.



2. This deserves 10 stars! A large format book with the finest photo's I have ever seen of Chicago's historical architecture. You will love it!



3. This book contains full page photos, many of which I had never seen before. The clarity of the photographs is comparable to the digital photos we are able to take now. Although the book consists mainly of photos of buildings (of course) there are many which include pedestrians, carriages, automobiles, signs, etc. I think this book would be interesting to anyone studying Chicago, the history of the time period, architecture, clothing or photography, or to anyone who simply loves old photographs. The only complaint I have is that some of the photos were not dated. Very good book!



4. Great look into the "City of Big Shoulders" at the turn of the century. Good aid to understanding of urban America at the beginning of the 20Th Century



5. I have been to Chicago many years since I lived in IL from 1933 to 1963. My mother's people came to Chicago in the 1830's.
   I found the early photos extremely interesting as I am a former teacher of both high school & college history. I reall liked this book as I had seen it before & could not locate another copy until I saw it on Amazon.
   Many Thanks for stocking this item.

No comments about Energy Manual: Sustainable Architecture (Construction Manuals (englisch)).

5 comments about Movie Star Homes: The Famous to the Forgotten.

1. Very interesting although the pictures are small and in most cases you only get a photo of the 'front gate'. I learned a lot. Overall, very good.



2. The images in this book are very poor quality and often VERY small. I was very disappointed, photos are in black and white only, and they look as though they were merely scanned, and not well scanned. Often all that passes for a picture of a "movie star" home is a picture of a bunch of trees (hiding the home completely). If the authors cannot provide a glimpse of a home beyond just the dense vegitation in front of it, then they have failed in their effort.



3. This book is a guilty pleasure, really a fun read. I appreciated that every entry came with a requisite image. Granted most of the entries are star's from yesteryear, many of which i dont have a clue about, but I thoroughly enjoyed the book nonetheless. If you have any interest in this sort of thing, then I highly recommend it.



4. If you love Hollywood, architecture or are just curious about what kind of homes the movie stars live in, you will find this book fascinating. It includes over 350 entries - from silent greats (Garbo, Valentino) to modern day stars (Brad Pitt & Jennifer Anniston) - although the majority of the entries are the classic stars of yester-year. Each entry includes the address, a brief sentence or two about their career and fame followed by a paragraph about the house itself and a black and white photo. The photos are usually good although there are some that are very small and others in which you can only see a fence or a driveway. The captions note that some of the stars only lived in the houses for a few years. You might be surprised at how modest a lot of the homes are! An appendix gives "movie star homes by region" and "theme tours." If you are taking a trip to Hollywood, you will definately want to take this book with you, and it is a fun book to browse even if you are not going there.



5. This is a very good book. I enjoyed all of the photos and interesting information about many different movie stars throughout different time periods. Overall this is a great book that is very fun to read.

2 comments about Civil Surveying Sample Exams for the California Special Civil Engineer Examination, 2nd ed..

1. The problems in this book are not as difficult as those presented on the exam. The exam's problems are much more tedious.
   
   Also, because this book is bound with staples, it is NOT allowed at the Surveying portion of the California State specific Civil PE exam, a fact I discovered today. If you try to take it in, it will be confiscated. While it may not have actually helped me since the test is actually much harder than this, it was very disappointing to have it taken away moments before the big test.



2. I just tooke the Engineering Survey section of the PE Exam two days ago and used this book as a reference. I DEFINITELY would NOT RECOMMEND this book as a reference. It will not help you prepare for the exam and will give you a false impression of how the exam is going to be like. The practice problems that are on the PE are a thousand times harder then what is in this book. If you want to pass the Engineering Survey section this book will not help you at all! The only use I have for this book now is for toilet paper. If Amazon did not require a minimum star rating of 1 star I would have give it zero.

2 comments about Folding Architecture: Spatial, Structural And Organization Diagrams.

1. perhaps i expected a little too much from this book. but personally i just don't think the content is clear at all. sure they provide you a template of how they cut and score the paper but the models don't look like they have carefully designed. even for this low price it still doesn't justify, since you can find most of the stuff from google anyway.



2. this book has helped me wit my architecture work in school. the images are amazing and detailed.

1 comments about Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.

1. This book (no dust jacket but printed cover HB) calls itself the "second and updated edition." However, I don't think the first edition (1994) ever made it here from France. This edition contains some beautiful color photos and a list "principal projects," so that not all of LMvdR's work is included. It is a much smaller tome than the two books produced in 2001 for the exhibits in New York (MoMA and Whitney): "Mies in America" and "Mies in Berlin" although they are not listed in the bibliography. Unfortunately, this volume suffers from the same graphic "design" flaw as the former (but not the latter): the pages are numbered in the edges of the spine, makling them almost impossible to find!