No comments about The Survival Guide to Architectural Internship and Career Development.

No comments about Frank Lloyd Wright, 1867-1959: Building for Democracy (Taschen Basic Architecture).

5 comments about Courtyards: Aesthetic, Social, and Thermal Delight.

1. This book surpassed all my expectations. I was looking for a book full of photographs of Spanish courtyards, to assist me with constructing my own "patio" at home. I was delighted when I found not only loads of beautiful photographs, but also incredible detail about how to construct a courtyard, which direction it should face, keeping it warm in winter and cool in summer, how courtyard entrances work, thermal sailing, what to plant, and more! I have really enjoyed using this book to plan my own private oasis. I would have loved to have seen more colour photographs (many are black and white, but most are colour), and it would have been ideal if courtyard construction in the southern hemisphere had also been considered (I live in southern Australia, where the climate is very similar to southern Spain), but these minor issues did not interfere with my enjoyment of the book.



2. "Courtyards: Aesthetic, Social, and Thermal Delight" begins with a brief history of courtyards including itemized accounts of such topics as placement within a building, orientation, exposure, and the promotion of temperature conditions within a courtyard.
   
   Over 50 full-color photographs from Spain and Latin America supplement the second section. Temperature charts, solar diagrams, and other key technical data accompany these images.
   
   Finally an extensive section of planning and design guidelines highlighting factors for consideration such as daytime/nighttime temperature ranges, zoning regulations, proportions, and proposals for driveways and use of rainwater.
   
   Architects, landscape architects, and building designers will find useful information for creating or renovating any courtyard. Students will also find this an inclusive reference. This is not a title of tremendous value to the casual reader.



3. I got this book several years ago on an inter-library loan from NDSU. It's a great book. The only problem is that it's relatively expensive -- $60 or so.
   
   I'm not an architect, but over ten years ago I built a geodesic dome on an Indian Reservation with the permission of the local district. Assuming you can afford it, where and how you live is the most important spiritual element of your life.
   
   Professor Reynolds approaches his subject with this sort of wonderment. Someday, I hope to build again using some of his ideas as a base. I've never met him, though I would certainly like to sometime. And, I don't know any of these other reviewers who, like me, seem to be very swayed by his writing. (The only reason I mention this is because of one reviewer who felt that there was a certain intellectual dishonesty in the sameness of the praise for this book.) If you're interested in creating harmonious personal space, then you should fork over the $60 or get it from your local library like I did.



4. Were all the reviews written by the author? Give me a break! The fact that every review sounds the same will keep me from ever purchasing this book. In that case, I guess all the reviews helped!



5. Courtyards is a terrific book, the result of 20+ years of loving research. Oregon Professor John Reynolds is crazy for courtyards and it certainly shows.
   A courtyard is a space surrounded by a building, often surrounded by a house. There are all manner of courtyards, large, small, huge, quiet, loud. Some are open and others are terribly private. But all good courtyards have things in common. In the landscapes most of us in the US are used to, we have a house and the gardens are on the outside and we see them before we see the house. In a sense these landscapes serve mostly as dressing to enhance the outward look of the house. But a fine courtyard garden is different. It is smack in the middle of the house and the house surrounds it. It is not wide open to the world, but instead is a place to get away from it all, a place to be outside, but not to be out in the open. The best courtyards are open to the sky, have water, vines, a multitude of interesting flowers, trees, potted plants. A large number of the very finest courtyard plants are discussed in detail in this excellent book. I was struck by how interesting the numerous photos and designs were. Profusely illustrated, each one serves a definitive purpose. I was struck too, by how many different things go into the making of a well thought out courtyard. What is involved so that it will be warm in the winter and cool in the hot summer. What is involved so that it becomes a place where people want to be. I took many notes as I read this large book and some day I plan to build a house of my own design, and in the middle of it, I'm going to have a courtyard. And in this courtyard, I'll have all the things needed, the ingredients so carefully detailed here, that make the right courtyard a magical place. I'd recommend this book for anyone who ever plans to build their own home, for all landscape designers, for all architects, for anyone with a serious interest in horticulture and design. An excellent book.

No comments about Steven Holl: Architect.

2 comments about St. Paul's Architecture: A History.

1. This book offers a great insight into the history of Saint Paul. Not just the Architecture, but the cities life as a whole.



2. Published in cooperation with The City Of St. Paul Heritage Preservation Commission, St. Paul's Architecture: A History is the collaborative work of cultural historian Jeffrey A. Hess and public historian/historic building consultant Paul Clifford Larson. Beginning with buildings from the founding in the 1840s of St. Paul, Minnesota, through the city's great construction boom of the mid-1880s, to the Period Revival architects of the 1920s and 30s, and the rise of modernism after World War II, the city's distinct history and character as reflected through the architecture of its buildings provides the reader with an historical survey of a rich architectural heritage that concludes with a final chapter on the architecture of present-day St. Paul. Presenting more than 225 notable surviving buildings and the history of several diverse city neighborhoods, St. Paul's Architecture is profusely illustrated with period photography and illustrations, making it a seminal reference for architectural students; admirers of St. Paul's special beauty, charm and history; and a seminal addition to any professional or academic library's Architectural Studies reference collection.

1 comments about Muroji: Rearranging Art And History At A Japanese Buddhist Temple.

1. This is a brilliant book with beautiful pictures and really fascinating writing. The author clearly knows exactly what shes talking about but never bored me. This book is great for anyone interested in art and/or japanese culture.

2 comments about The Building of Manhattan.

1. Donald A. Mackay, an artist and illustrator best known for drawing the evolution of Manhattan, died on Dec. 17 in Frederick, Md., where he retired in 1993. He was 91 and formerly lived in Ossining, N.Y.
   
   The cause was heart disease, his family said.
   
   Mr. Mackay crowned a long career in 1987 with the book "The Building of Manhattan" (Harper & Row). It was a meticulous evocation, in text and drawings and in great detail, of how Manhattan was built from the ground up.
   
   His story progresses from the mastodons, to the Paleo-Indians of about 7,000 years ago, then to the Algonquin-speaking inhabitants of the island when the first Europeans arrived to found New Amsterdam. Eventually it shows how structures like subways and ever-higher buildings gave Manhattan its modern shape.
   
   Chapters detail the work of architects, construction methods and vital city services.
   
   Mr. Mackay was a commercial artist in the 1950's when the excavation of a bank site on Wall Street piqued his interest. He followed its progress in his sketchbook and discovered a new avocation.
   
   "I am a goofer-offer," he told The New York Times in 1988, "and used to make thumbnail sketches of construction work going on nearby." As it happened, he had also been catching up with his forebears, who, he said, had arrived in the city in the 1640's. The two interests merged in the early 80's and, with a lot more research, produced a book.
   
   Paul Goldberger, the architecture critic, called "The Building of Manhattan" a "highly impressive primer for adults, a book that traces the history of building and construction in Manhattan with clear, reasoned good sense." He termed the sections on the construction of the Flatiron and Woolworth buildings and contemporary skyscrapers "better than any textbook."
   
   Born in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Donald Alexander Mackay grew up in Boston and attended the Massachusetts College of Art. He got a designer's job in the plastics division of E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Company but was laid off during the Depression.
   
   Serving in the Army during World War II, he wound up in Europe and, after a year's studies in Biarritz, France, went to work for an art studio in Greenwich Village. He met and married a fellow artist, Stella DaCosta, with whom he went to Mexico to study graphics with Alfredo Zalce; later he also studied lithography and etching at Pratt Institute.
   
   Mr. Mackay worked as a freelancer, contributing drawings to a number of publications and illustrating children's books. His own artwork included a series on space flight, nature subjects and illustrations of the White House and the Metropolitan Opera House.
   
   Mr. Mackay's wife died in 2004. He is survived by their sons, John, of Tarrytown, N.Y., and Neil, of Frederick; and four grandchildren.



2. Mr. MacKay has a winner on his hands with this illustrated narrative of how Manhattan was constructed from the ground up. I have purchased this book many times as gifts for friends. It makes a great coffee table book, often spurring conversation. Packed with interesting facts and technical data (made easy to understand for us novices) the book is a must for any one who has a keen interest in the construction development of Manhattan Island. I grew up across the river from Manhattan and worked in the Empire State Building and the World Trade Center. My only regret is that the book is now out of print.

5 comments about Tiffany's Palm Beach.

1. There isn't much substance to this book......
   Fun pictures, but nothing much more



2. To almost anyone, Tiffany and Co. and Palm Beach would go hand and hand, analagous like Lalique and Monte Carlo. The concept for this book is very interesting and the author fully realizes how to exploit the two to their most advantagious. The text is highly informative and the images are crisp and beautifully presented. I agree with one of the reviews that this is an expensive coffee table book, but frankly im sure those interested in this sort of thing, will not think twice about the price of admission. Really a wonderful book on a very interesting subject, well done indeed.



3. This book shows that given enough money there is no limit to how young, thin and attractive your wife can be. And apparently there is no limit to the hubris of the rich--designer wine cellars on a hurricane prone barrier island.
   Last I checked there were over 260 homes for sale on Palm Beach with an asking price of $2 million up.
   A great coffee table book. And a pictorial guide to The Season by Ronald Kessler that is sitting on my book shelves awaiting a read.



4. Loved this book. I purchased it merely for inspiration photos for my own construction, but found myself reading each page!! Very interesting read!



5. For most people, this kind of lifestyle is only a dream, but wow, what colourful and beautiful dreams. This book is choc full of stunning photos that reflect the wealth some people luckily or unluckily have. Their houses (or should I say shrines) are treasures in their own rights, but the possesions inside are also gems. The Tiffany theme is reflected in here all the way through and there is some stunning pieces. This is a pricey 'coffee table' book, but it's so beautiful, you'll be glad you treated yourself or someone else.

No comments about Written into the Void: Selected Writings, 1990-2004.

1 comments about Repairing the American Metropolis: Common Place Revisited (Samuel and Althea Stroum Books) (Samuel and Althea Stroum Books).

1. Review by Tigran Hasic (Reproduced by permission from the Nordic Journal of Architectural Research)
   
   Just when you thought that what you are looking at is nothing more than another book on anti-sprawl in America, along comes Douglas Kelbaugh's new book "Repairing the American Metropolis". This refreshing work is written with formidable ease of style, recherché lucidity and academic strength, as well as many years of practical experience. In a nutshell, this book offers a completely new reconsideration of contemporary American architecture, design, planning and policy making, as well as ways how to revitalize and repair our cities. All of this evolves in a metropolitan sustainable vision where cities would be ecologically, socially and spatially acceptable again. Aristotle's axiom that `we come to the cities to live the good life' could not be more correct in the context of this book.
   
   Repairing the American Metropolis is a follow-up to the author's highly successful earlier book Common Place: Toward Neighborhood and Regional Design. This earlier work, illustrated by a number of workshops and charrettes, is a tour-de-force about how we can develop community and create sustainable places in face of fragmented growth and development. Kelbaugh's work on charrettes has been cited and copied around the USA and abroad as a model for community design. The new book continues on the same line of thinking but lifts the whole discussion to an even higher intellectual level, but in an understandable and overwhelmingly logical and persuading manner.
   
   Backdrop for the whole discussion lies in the fact that America is becoming more and more a suburban nation, as portrayed and discussed in the book Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and Decline of American Dream by Andres Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk and Jeff Speck. With more than 50% of population living outside of the city, we are witnessing the breakdown of community and civic life, people-friendly neighbourhoods - cities as we used to know and love them.
   
   It is not surprising that Peter Calthorpe, one of the founders of New Urbanism in America is thinking on the same lines as Kelbaugh. Calthorpe and Kelbaugh wrote the national best seller in urban design in 1998 entitled "The Pedestrian Pocket Book", in which they have argued for walkable neighborhoods, pedestrian communities and transit oriented development (T.O.D.) as well as for bringing back the sense and quality of place. They are not pushing for the disappearance of the automobile but rather for designing livable communities and repairing the old ones, while realizing that too much traffic not only destroys the urban quality of place but also damages the occupant of the car. Many of these ideas were later incorporated into New Urbanism. Along with Andres Duany, Peter Calthorpe and others, Kelbaugh has been one of the pioneers of this movement.
   
   The discourse in this book evolves around the notions of community, sustainability and the role of design. The book is divided into five sections that flow tightly and move all the time from the general to the specific and backwards: suburban sprawl, Critical Regionalism, typology, New Urbanism and public policy. Kelbaugh presents the case of the high costs of sprawl, how Critical Regionalism can be an answer to the growing forces of homogenization, commodification and banalization. It also addresses the importance of architectural typology to sustainable urbanism. He blends all chapters in a historical, architectural, design, planning, policy and sociological discussion that flows together well and that can be read well as separate parts as well as one single work.
   
   Andres Duany, one of the founders and spiritual leaders of the New Urbanism movement could not put it more correctly when he says that this book is "The most sophisticated critical presentation of the New Urbanism to be found anywhere." What he was actually referring to is a highlight of the whole book, Chapter 4, New Urbanism vs. Everyday Urbanism and Post Urbanism. Much less critical and openly assertive than some other proponents of New Urbanism, Kelbaugh nonetheless gives a sophisticated and strong critique of CIAM and failures of The Modernist architecture and planning principles that destroyed good urbanism and created zoned and fragmented communities dominated by vehicles and inhumane urban design. That notwithstanding, he comes up with a brilliant critique on New Urbanism, restating its principles in a highly intelligent way. At the same time he defends New Urbanism. Vicious attacks on modern architecture as failing on multiple levels - human, aesthetic, social and environmental - are not to be found here, but rather a lucid and realistic analysis of the state of the city.
   
   It is unquestionable (even the worst critics of New Urbanism cannot deny it) that the movement has revived enthusiasm for the city's potential and possibilities. It represents the antithesis (despite occasional lapses into gated communities) of community isolation, alienation, and spatial fragmentation, all in favor of livable places. Finally in Chapter 4 he presents the Three Paradigms: New Urbanism, Everyday Urbanism and Post Urbanism. Basically what Kelbaugh argues very convincingly is that New Urbanism ("idealistic, civic and structuralist") is not the "only game in town". There are "competing emerging urbanist paradigms" that have gained momentum at this moment in history. Aside from New Urbanism and the conventional suburban development that continues to enwrap the American metropolis - Everyday Urbanism ("informal, populist and non-structuralist") and Post Urbanism ("heterotopian, sensational and structuralist") exist in parallel, side by side.
   
   In the final chapter (Chapter 5) on Public Policy, Kelbaugh sets out a new metropolitan agenda where he points to a need for new and reformulated public policy. He presents seven policy initiatives for immediate action in America: (1) Get development priorities right; (2) Get automobiles under control; (3) Get transit on track; (4) Get planning; (5) Get more granny flats and live-work units (6) Get funding and taxing right; and (7) Get governance right. These are ready-made nostrums that, if adopted, would stop urban sprawl, create environmentally sustainable cities, public life, calm traffic and regenerate the urban, social and cultural realm. Instead he sees them as `enabling strategies' that could help local government to address problems and seize opportunities.
   
   The American project since WWII has been to opt for mobility and freedom while the European ideal has been place and urbanity. Unfortunately the European suburbs are not testimony to that fact. Although this book has not focused on the international context, it still has relevance to the European situation. The European metropolis will also have to go through a number of revitalizations (especially in the suburbs) as a consequence of all the eradications and negative changes left behind after the WWII. Kelbaugh's book represents an important primer in that respect.
   
   At times written in an overwhelmingly provocative, compelling and convincing style, this book reminds one of the colossal and influential work on urbanism and town planning, Jane Jacobs The Death and Life of Great American Cities. Kelbaugh's reasoning and ideas places him in the forefront of the current American and international urbanism debate. Repairing the American Metropolis is certainly one of the finest books on the subject that has come out in the last decade, written in a crisp, readable style accessible to architects, planners, urban designers, decision makers, real estate developers and laypersons alike.
   
   Douglas Kelbaugh is the Dean of the Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning at the University of Michigan, and former principal in Kelbaugh, Calthorpe & Associates in Seattle and in Kelbaugh & Lee in Princeton, New Jersey. In the foreword, Alex Krieger of Harvard Graduate School of Design describes it as "a fundamental reconsideration of contemporary American architecture and planning." Professor Kelbaugh's, in many respects dialectical work shows a person who understands today's realities, the constraints that we are faced with in our cities, options we have, and the need to proactively return to the authentic qualities of community and dwelling. He sums it up well by saying at the end of his book:
   
   These changes and reforms are essential because the alternatives are stark, and the consequences of inaction are apocalyptic. It will be worth both our grittiest and noblest efforts. And as we repair and revitalize our architecture, neighbourhoods, cities, and regions, we may build common places for ourselves along the way.