No comments about New Glass Architecture.

4 comments about Earth Shelter Technology.

1. This is a comprehensive "high end overview" of the things you need to consider if you're going to design and build an underground house. It is not specific to a particular location or house design. As an engineer this book has provided me with a lot of insight into what I need to think about for my house. If you're looking for finished designs and building instructions this is not the book for you. It has been a great introduction for a house I'll be building in the Sierra foothills in the next few years.



2. (Rating should be about 2.5 stars)

   "Earth Shelter Technology" reads more like a very long abstract than a technical reference itself. There are many (262) references for the 194 pages of text and figures. The book covers the basic ideas of earth sheltering pretty thoroughly, but unless you dig into the references, you're left with very little practical information that you'd need to design an earth-sheltered building.

   I thought that I'd hit real meat with a formula for soil temperature as a function of depth underground and day of the year. Plug in mean temperature and annual temperature swing amplitude, and you're almost there. But this formula includes a constant for thermal diffusivity of the soil. Well, there's a table with thermal and other properties of various materials; BUT the authors left some blanks: the thermal properties for rock, heavy dry soil, or concrete -- precisely the materials of interest when constructing an earth-sheltered structure in dry areas -- are missing.

   There are also many figures with axes labeled but not dimensioned; you can get a qualitative idea of how things relate, but nothing like a quantitative relationship.

   The book is dated (copyright 1987); the references are of course even older, going back to 1949. The book reads as if written a decade earlier, though. The dated impression is partly due to the technology used in the book itself. There are no photographs; instead, there are hand-drawn ink illustrations that surely took quite a long time to produce, but lose much of the detail that a decent photograph would show (example: "Aerial view of the University of Minnesota Bookstore"). Also, the text refers to simulation programs for handheld calculators and for mainframes -- there's nary a mention of a PC.

   There are very few alternative books on this subject, so I'd recommend it for a conceptual overview. But you won't find enough information here to design an earth-sheltered building.




3. This is probably the only book that shows you how to engineer a underground house properly from start to finish. A must for anyone interested in underground building. Lots of illustrations, but no photos.




4. Boyer & Grondzik have pulled together all of the disparate sources of information required to properly design an underground facility.

   Although the book was written in 1987, there are no other books which have pulled together all of the design issues and formulas required to properly design a structure, including heating & ventilation, waterproofing techniques and studies of existing structures.

   While people have been building and using underground housing for thousands of years, most of the published material consists of "how we did it" or analysis of ancient buildings. This is the first book I've found which brings the material required to properly engineer a design into one place.

   The focus of the book is on the engineering aspects, so don't expect much in the line of architectural design. Site selection, including soil types and proper detailing for passive solar heating, load balancing for heating & cooling systems, drainage system design and proper daylighting design are all covered very well.

   This is not the ideal resource, I would like to see a more current book, which would give analysis of exiting structures over a longer time-frame (many of the structures analyzed were built during the "energy crisis" of the 70's & early 80's, and thus only had a decade or so of occupation.)

   Overall, if you are interested in designing an underground home which will provide a safe, secure and low maintenance facility, this is a good reference. Oh, you might find you can easily design a "no-power" dwelling, at least as far as heating/cooling costs. Unless you like paying utility bills....

   This is a technical book, some engineering knowledge is desirable when reading it, but it is not beyond the level of a high school student with some physics.

2 comments about Design for Impact: Fifty Years of Airline Safety Cards.

1. This is an excellent survey of the history and design of safety cards. I thought that the cards selected were an excellent choice and it would have been impossible for it to be comprehensive. Overall, an excellent book.



2. As someone very interested in information design and especially airline safety card design, I was hoping this book would have good samples of what the editorial review termed "the most interesting and imaginative of these safety cards."

   Unfortunately, instead the entire book is apparently merely an only vaguely interesting set of reproductions of cards from Carl's collection -- chosen apparently on the basis of scarcity rather than interest. Thus we get two full pages of reproduction of a card from Air Ceylon which has nothing of interest to recommend it (unless you are really interested in Ceylonese typography).

   The text (what little there is) unfortunately adds nothing to our understanding, as it is almost entirely about the history of the introduction of new airliners and has almost no interface with the actual (and very interesting) history of the development of the modern safety card, or the more general topic of safety and instructional graphics.

   The most interesting aspect of this book for me was the few reproductions of pre-war cards, and comparing styles of commercial illustration -- but you can view better comparisons in almost any average book on the history of poster design.

   In summary, get this book only if you want some nice reproductions of pretty average to poor safety cards from some small countries and short-lived airlines. I can spend at least 30 minutes each airline flight examining different aspects of the safety card, but this book didn't even hold my attention for an hour.

3 comments about The City Reader.

1. This book is a very interesting collection of essays from prominent intellectuals who have shown concern over the development of cities in various aspects, whether it be economics, sociology, or other fields.
   
   Excellent for anyone interested in urbanism, it's problems, it's development, it's future.
   
   The book focuses heavily on U.S. cities, particularly Los Angeles and New York. It would have been nice if the book would had included articles on other large cities in the world.
   
   Despite this, the book is an excellent read which encourages the reader to rethink the way he/she sees the city.



2. As a first year Urban Planner, this book was on the required readings list for our course. This book gave me the edge to all my fellow students because it provided a detailed sample through a historical and progressive manner. It provides the fundamentals of the great thinkers in Urban Planning. It also covered and introduced me to further research on areas such as design and sociology, promoting further personal research.

   As a second year student, this book can always be seen in my bibliography, and is always the first thing I head towards for a brief history on any concepts that are raised in my lecturers.

   This book can be seen as THE general summary of Urban Planning.




3. Legates and Stout do an excellent job of compiling and briefly explaining many seminal writings on cities. There is a lot to read here and I'm not yet finished. But this heavy book is full of informative, interesting and fun writings and provides an excellent introduction to the study of cities. This is essential reading for students of Urban Form, Architecture, and the Social Sciences. Includes Le Corbusier, Patrick Geddes, Jane Jacobs, Lewis Mumford, J.B. Jackson, Witold Rybczynski and many others.

No comments about Restroom Design (Design Bks.).

No comments about Henri Lefebvre : A Critical Introduction.

No comments about The Louisville Guide.

No comments about Re: CP.

2 comments about The Houses of Key West.

1. Excellent pictures of great Key West houses including addresses. No interior pictures. Book fell apart at binding after very little viewing.



2. I love this book. If you enjoy the unique look of Key West Conch architecture you will enjoy this book. Color full page and full page plus photographs fill the book. Most pictures are full close-ups of the front of the house. It is a nice reminder of time spent in Key West. If you are interested in architecture it contains examples of the various unique Key West styles used. I enjoyed looking at picture of the famous houses and reading about why they are famous. Almost forgot it, contains the addresses of the houses in case you want to see them for yourself.

5 comments about San Francisco Architecture: An Illustrated Guide to the Outstanding Buildings, Public Artworks, and Parks in the Bay Area of California.

1. If you want an AIA-style guide to the Bay Area architecture, this is the book to buy (despite another reviewer's claim to the contrary). While still somewhat selective, the building sample is exactly what it should be. Most of your favorites will be in here, particularly if you like San Francisco's classical tradition. There are small but effective black & white photographs with almost every entry (but not all). The descriptions with each entry range in length: Some are quite long (maybe 500 words) while others are absent altogether. There's nice coverage of Palo Alto, San Jose, Berkeley and Sonoma too. Oakland gets a few pages that are not nearly enough to do justice to its important architecture, and there's more than a few important structures along Van Ness (back in San Francisco) that are conspicuously absent. There's an emphasis on public buildings, so residential architecture gets something of the short end.
   
   A really comprehensive guide to San Francisco and the Bay Area doesn't exist (yet). This is your best choice until someone chooses to take up that project.
   
   Caution! My copy arrived with typsetting errors, printing errors, missing pages and blank pages. This is a quality control issue that customers (and Amazon) should know about.



2. This book will be handy for walking and biking around SF as we always want to know the details and history of all the buildings we pass by!



3. Not the average tourist guide.
   
   Instead of pages wasted on Fisherman's Wharf (which is as much San Francisco as the Wax Museum), you are guided through small streets and crannies of the City.
   
   Because of the fire of 1906, the architecture is vastly different neighborhood by neighboorhood and this guide decribes them plainly and with grace.
   
   Reading the book a week before a trip out will educate you and create more excitement than any Fodor's or Mobile can do



4. Although I've lived here 30 years, I didn't know how much I was unaware of about San Francisco. This little guide let's you see the history and its architecture in a delightful way.



5. The very best and most comprehensive guide to San Francisco Bay Area architecture. Informative for anyone who is interested in architecture. A wonderful way to see the city - have lived in this city 40 years but there was still much to discover with this guide in hand.