No comments about The Creative City: A Toolkit for Urban Innovators.

2 comments about Affordable Home Design: Innovations and Renovations.

1. This book says almost nothing about affordable home design. In fact, it says almost nothing at all. Most of the book is dedicated to large photos, some of which are grainy in quality. The written descriptions of the houses include, at most, a sentence or two about some "affordable" feature, while most of the noteworthy features of the houses look quite expensive. It's as if the publisher decided to make another book about mostly modern houses, then put the word "affordable" in the title just to sell more books. If you want a book on this subject, buy another one instead.



2. Affordable Home Design; Innovations And Renovations is packed with solutions to appeal to designers on a budget who want to keep quality without high expense. Here are projects which focus on budget-saving ideas and sustainable designs, covering both new construction and renovation projects from single family homes to apartments. Energy saving ideas are a big part of Affordable Home Design, with discussions revolving around originally commissioned idea versus finished project considerations. Martha Torres received a degree in architecture in Venezuela and has coordinated a number of design projects: her expertise lends to a fine set of ideas.

3 comments about San Francisco Victorians.

1. San Francisco Victorians is a wonderful little book, especially for the homesick like me. The book is full of great pictures reflecting the cultural heritage of Frisco, with a historian's essay telling the history along the way. Excellent companion for a long stroll in the city; for delightful discoveries.



2. I've seen this photographers' work before and he's done another impeccable job documenting some of the most originally restored homes I've seen in twenty years.



3. I love this book. The pictures are beautiful and the text is very informative. If you love artful buildings and wonderful pictures of them, you will be very glad to have this book.

5 comments about Dynamic Anatomy.

1. The exagerated human forms in theis book really helps the artist draw the human body without the naked person drawing classes.



2. Hogarth has a lot of history/words that really do not matter to me, and can be found almost anyplace else in art history. Many drawings are in his other books. I think this is a good book but seems more a cameleon of his other books all combined together with some 66 pages of history. I would pass on this if you need raw meat to learn his techniques, and order his other anatomy books.



3. As an aspiring illustrator/artist/graphic designer/film maker/whatever I felt I had a grasp on drawing the human figure. I could more or less draw what I saw or if I could plan something well enough in my head I could put that to paper.
   
   However therein I came up against a limitation. I could only plan so well. My understanding of the human body - its proportions and limits of motion only reached a certain point. My figures always looked static and never seemed to leap off the page in the way that I intended.
   
   There's a multitude of conflicting information that I've read through before coming across this book - the human is six heads high, no, wait, seven, no eight and a half... if you've suffered this problem then I suggest you read this book. It gives you a base, or rather, flexible rules to work from. Reading it you feel the only step beyond it would be actually going to study life drawing at University.
   
   I strongly recommend this book for anyone who wants to add a sense of 'life' to their figure drawings, be they cartoonish or realistic styles. Especially if you've suffered the 'conflicting advice problem' as I have. It also aids in being able to invent dynamic figures rather than just understanding what you're seeing.



4. the book met all my expectations regarding its detail and content.
   the pictures show the human body in all its musculature glory.
   some of the bigtures are repeated throughtout when describing the human form and that was rather disappointing but overall the deatil and particular style of anatomy drawing is dynamic as the title suggests. buy this and a standard science text book and you will have enough source material to work from



5. Definetely a must have. Wonderfful drawings, perfectly explained. You will learn anatomy in the most romantic way you can imagine. I love it!

No comments about Office Interiors.

2 comments about Mazes and Labyrinths: Their History and Development.

1. This was the first book I bought on labyrinths many years ago. Now I have over a dozen on the subject. I still refer back to this book for it's images. It is a good value for it's cost. I highly recommend it as a reference book.



2. This book on mazes and labyrinths by Matthews is one of a kind. It is one of the ONLY books that gives you such broad yet detailed information on such a fascinating subject. The book includes everything ranging from Egyption labyrinths to Hedge mazes.

No comments about The Building of Renaissance Florence: An Economic and Social History.

1 comments about Country and Suburban Houses of the Twenties: With Photographs and Floor Plans (Dover Books on Architecture).

1. Like most of Dover's reprints, this book is 8-1/2" by 11" so the print and even the wee tiny font is easy to read. It showcases 80 "charming American country homes" and includes everything from sprawling California ranches to massive Colonial Revival homes with more than 3,000 square feet of living area. For the 1920s, that's a big house. This book shows a diverse blend of houses, but the clear majority are the Dutch Colonial and the center-hallway Colonial Revival.
   
   The five-page preface doesn't have much info of substance, but it offers some ideas on how to choose a good lot, a good plan and a good architect. The best part: The architect is defined as, "a sympathetic and knowledgeable person." Hmmmmm...
   
   The purpose of this book (page VII) is to "establish strong roots of domestic tranquility."
   
   Lest we forget, this was a very common theme in the early 1900s. Look at the 1947 movie, "It's A Wonderful Life." In the scene where George is in "Pottersville" and he meets up with Ernie the cab driver, he learns that Ernie is not living with his wife and a kid in the nice brick home in Bailey Park. No, in this alternate sans-George world, Ernie's been reduced to living in a crummy rental house and his wife "ran off three years ago and took the kid."
   
   Literature of this day made the strong point that the way to establish stability in marriages, families, communities and even cities, was to get people into a home of their own.
   
   Back to "Country and Suburban Houses" - one nice feature of this book is that it features real photos and the reproduction quality is very good. One downside, most of the houses are shown with mature landscaping and on some of the photos, there are plenty of trees and shrubs in front of the house to block the view. Ick. Under each photo, the architect's name is listed, as well as the name of the homeowner who's home is featured. It also lists a city and a state. From a geneological point of view alone, this could be of interest to many.
   
   The houses are interesting and I really enjoy just thumbing through the pages and studying the architecture. These were fine homes, built by the doctors, lawyers and CEOs of the day.

No comments about Water-Works: The Architecture and Engineering of the New York City Water Supply.

5 comments about The Old Way of Seeing: How Architecture Lost Its Magic - And How to Get It Back.

1. The first several pages of this book were good, and showed
   comparisons of old and new buildings, and reinforced his premise
   that missing regulating lines and the lack of attention to the
   arrangement of elements are responsible for much of the
   decline in architectural quality.
   
   However, much of the rest of the book devolves into a disjointed
   grabbag of architectural topics, along with comparisons of how
   the human face or maple trees match the golden section with very
   little concrete in the way of design guidance or examples.
   
   I'm sure Hale is a good architect, and I would hire him in an instant,
   (especially after my architect put windows randomly all over our house
   and didn't understand why I didn't want 4 styles of windows),
   but this book is poorly organized, doesn't make his point properly,
   and wanders far off topic.



2. I have six shelves filled with books on architecture, design, urban planning, and proportion, including several books by Christopher Alexander, Andres Duany, Jim Kunstler, Philip Langdon, Peter Katz, and Jane Holz Kay. This one's my favorite. It's the most accessible and useful. What differentiates it is that it provides abundant photos, with lines overlaying them, that very clearly illustrate the author's point. His writing style is easy and generous. It's been a while since I read it, but I'm pretty sure Hale does not advocate brutal Le Corbusier-inspired design. He might have used one picture to illustrate that these ancient principles can also be used in modern architecture.
   
   Hale focuses on illustrating things like the proportion of individual windows and how their proportion and placement do or do not harmonize with the side of the house they're on. I believe the principles Hale explains perfectly complement those that Andres Duany writes about. The biggest difference is that Duany focuses on design issues at the larger scale of street widths, building heights, and walking distances. I think if Duany added design harmony at the building level, one very coherent, unified theory would be the result.
   
   One take-away of this book for me is this: You're looking at a house or building and something about it pleases you, but you can't put your finger on exactly what. He clearly illustrates what those things are for you, which satisfies your logical left brain. On the other hand, he strongly encourages designers to use their intuitive right brain, which instinctively knows what proportions and details are pleasing in a building. In the end, you design with the right brain by letting it loose to play with form, and then you can fine tune using the regulating lines the left brain loves so much.
   
   Far from advocating the "architect as auteur," Hale reminds us that almost no old houses were built using architects. Ordinary people, like farmers, built things of great beauty just by using the wise right brain to "eyeball" things like proportion, balance, harmony, and placement.



3. I purchased this book on the recommendation of a woodworking magazine writer I have come to respect. Though the book is on architecture I can see how many of the principles apply to furniture making as well. I understand what this author is saying, but sometimes thought that his geometric "hidden" relationships were somewhat stretched. I think I could probably do the same thing with any building if I looked at it long enough. It sometimes felt like a real tough read for me (it certainly helped me go to sleep many nights). Given this book appears out of print and he hefty price I paid for it, I would certainly look elsewhere if you are coming from the same direction I came from on the purchase. An understanding of the golden ratio, shadow lines and looking at some classic pieces (shaker, federal, etc.) will probably yield equal or better benefit to your own furniture design making. Though out of my league, I would stretch to say the same exact thing to an architect.



4. This book is quite good and contains some surprising revelations on why buildings look the way they do. It's an excellent book but can be vague in some areas as the author attempts to convey some very theoretical concepts.



5. Jonathan Hale's book so truly reveals the source of the hidden 'feel' in older buildings as also described by Christopher Alexander in 'A Timeless Way of Building', and which also draws parallels to other aspects of life.

   Hale cites the turning point in society away from the honoring our human 'intuition' to the honoring of 'rational' or 'calculating' thinking which so drastically altered the 'feel' and look of architecture, and he puts this date around 1830. Alexis de Tocqueville also described the 'calculating' way of thinking in America which he encountered after that time..and who is also cited by Hale.

   Truly worth the read, and it will probably change not only the way you look at buildings from now on, but also the way 'calculating' thinking dominates so many aspects of life now. I personally find when I get back into situations where the people and their decisions operate more from the basis of intuition, I feel a lot more human and natural, and no longer feel obliged to say the 'accepted' things which so many of us find ourselves saying, but not really believing. Hale's book has helped me understand why this is, and made me feel more comfortable with being natural and intuitive.