3 comments about Scandinavian Modern.

1. Purchased this book as a Christmas gift for a mid-century modern furniture dealer. He was thrilled with the contents and thought it would be great resource for his research library.



2. The photos had a detailed description of the pieces in the room and the designers. Good for training your eye in Scandinavian Modern design. Loved the open feel of many of the rooms & appreciation of natural surfaces. Very much what I remembered about travling through Finland. Like the Shakers & Japanese, the outside influences the Scandinavian style. Highly recommend this book.



3. This is very good book about Scandinavian living. It has photographs from the homes of famous Scandinavian designers like Aarnio and Kjaerholm, to name few. I personally love this book because it has information about designers and manufacturers.

1 comments about Simplified Design of Steel Structures (Parker/Ambrose Series of Simplified Design Guides).

1. I am working as a civil engineer in a design office active in constructing light gauge steel structures. I have bought the book to obtain a guide or some kind of a handbook which includes some guidelines or procedures for typical structural steel design applications. But i hava found the book too superficial. I wish the book handled the subjects in a little bit detailed way. And I wish there were flowcharts for designing with steel. The only good thing about the book is the example projects at the end of the book. As a result I do not advise this book to anyone because it is expensive too. Pay half more and buy the Structural Steel Designer's Handbook, which includes all the information in this book and much much more.Do not pay attention to the number of pages written here, since size of the book is nearly the size of a pocket book.

4 comments about Redesigning the American Dream: Gender, Housing, and Family Life.

1. This book touches on a recognized problem, but is just a bunch of complaining and finger pointing without offering up real solutions. instead of pleading with men to change or architects to change, or city planner to change. Why not as the women to change? Marry a man that helps out with the kids and house, have too much to do? Don't have kids. Don't like the way cities / houses are designed? Design them differently. Want to change gender rolls? Raise your son in a way that will effect a change. Of course women are discriminated against, not the first or last group to have this problem, a group never got pulled out of it by someone else, the only way to do it is by yourself. This book should have been 50 pages long.



2. I re-read some of the chapters of this book, hoping to be able let her argument convince me that the way our homes are currently designed and geographically situated are founded on a sexist world view, creating significant detriment to society. I am not certain she was much help though. This is a pretty serious flaw since I am sympathetic to her thesis. Her arguments in support of her thesis are disjointed and use out of date information.
   
   One interesting feature of the book is that, where other authors would at most provide a couple alternatives or one encompassing school of thought as a solution, she briefly traces scores of possible alternatives. Most are only briefly mentioned, enough maybe to urge the reader to search out more information elsewhere.



3. This is the best book about architecture that I ever read. Although I am not a feminist, it revealed to me the relationship between a building and the society that produced it -- a revelation that seven years at architecture schools (Yale and Princeton) did not provide. Any designer who want to design for another person needs to understand the hidden cultural codes that influence their creation of a built environment. Reading this book was the best way for me to understand what impact social biases can have in design.



4. This book reads like a few (mostly mediocre) magazine articles pasted together- one chapter talks about the history of homes (and how every conceivable domestic arrangement ever invented turned out badly for women), another criticizes suburbia for isolating women (not really true now, since suburban women generally have cars), another talks about experiments in infill housing, another criticizes cities for being hostile to women - but I could never figure out exactly what this book was about, or what Hayden liked other than a few small-scale housing experiments here and there.

3 comments about Steel, Concrete, and Composite Design of Tall Buildings.

1. This book is the bible of structural engineering of tall buildings. Every designer should read it and every time you want to design a tower, you should use it. Thanks for hectic effort Prof. Taranth provided to help the structural engineers.



2. This is a great analysis and design book in tall buildings. You will find plenty of examples and discussions. Although the book does not get deep into some of the advanced topics, it is still a great source for structural engineers.



3. It is a very practical book containg material which will be useful to those engaged in the design of tall buildings. The unique thing about this book is the fact Taranath has given details of many important tall buildings,which will guide us before choosing a framework for the new building. He also explains how a structural system can be chosen. It has numerous practical examples. The code clauses are clearly explained.The Design for Wind and Earthquake are given in a nice manner with reference to latest codes of practices.His explanations are very easy to understand. Lateral and gravity systems for steel,concrete and composite constructions are given with numerous drawings in seperate chapters. Analysis techniques are given in an easy to understand fashion with less mathematical complexity. Design methods are also given. Discussion on related items such as damping and cladding systems,Foundation design,seismic design of Diaphragm ,etc. are also included. The data on Structural quantities will be a boon to those who want to have a preliminary estimate of the building, they are going to design. In all, it is a book worth buying and will serve as a reference for a long time. With this book and a proper software, we can design any tall building with ease.

2 comments about Living in Tuscany.

1. I bought this for my wife, after visiting Luca, in Tuscany! This book captures the memories! Excellent book!



2. A very beautiful and detailed book. A place to think about living out the golden years there. Becoming part of the local living.

2 comments about Plan of Chicago.

1. It's hard for me to argue with what was said above. As a student of architectural history, I am as smitten with Burnham's plan as the next person. I do have one caveat with this otherwise fine reproduction: Oftentimes I found the illustrations to be a bit washed out. This gave me great difficulty whilst trying to examine them for a research paper I was assembling. As a result I had to get my hands on an original copy, with the beautiful watercolors still wonderfully intact. As it stands, however, this is a fine volume and worthy of anyone's collection.



2. The most notable aspect of the 1909 Plan of Chicago was that the author's (Daniel Burnham) profession was not exclusively city planning. He was a business man. He viewed his plan for the City of Chicago as the best way to create an exceptional business and civic environment. It worked! Many elements of modern downtown Chicago that make it a truly great, world class city, are a direct result of Burnham's vision. For it is the grand vision that stirs the soul of mankind and allows a "planning document" -- normally a thick document, full of data, which sits on a shelf and collects dust -- to be embraced by an entire community. This is a must read for contemporary city planners, business men and government officials that want to "make it happen" in their communities. MAKE NO SMALL PLANS

5 comments about The Phenomenon of Life: Nature of Order, Book 1: An Essay on the Art of Building and the Nature of the Universe (The Nature of Order).

1. Read 'The Fifteen Properties' excerpted in the 'First Nomination for Book of the Century' customer review, or any other excerpt, and then consider the words of Gordon L. Prescott from 'The Fountainhead':
   
   "The flowing life which comes from the sense of order in chaos, or, if you prefer, from unity in diversity, as well as vice-versa, which is the realization of the contradiction inherent in architecture, is here absolutely absent. I am really trying to express myself as clearly as I can, but it is impossible to present a dialectic state by covering it up with an old fig leaf of logic just for the sake of the mentally lazy layman."
   
   I wish I could give a 'no star' review, but amazon doesn't have that option.



2. Anne Broadbent's review below is completely unjustified. She writes "At the beginning of the first book, Alexander shows a beautiful pagoda - but I still think I wouldn't want to have one near me, in the guise of a shopping centre, school, house, gym, restaurant, bank or whatever: I'd rather see it in its original cultural setting." Alexander agrees completely with this point. His whole theory involves local adaptation following the fundamental properties and transformations that he has outlined in these books. Nowhere does he suggest that we should use the pagoda's form in any other cultural context. If you look at some of the examples he gives from nature you will understand this. He discusses the way sand dunes form following some of the fundamental properties. Does this mean he claims we should create sand dunes in the jungle? Of course not. Examples of buildings, places, and natural phenomena, are used as a means of displaying these fundamental properties and how these properties occur universally in phenomena which the majority of humans, and all other life forms would agree contain the quality of life. Throughout the series of books, Alexander provides hundreds of examples of human creations and natural creations to support his thesis. This may or may not be news to Miss Broadbent, but this is widely acknowledged as good scientific method.



3. I very much enjoyed 'Pattern Language' and had great hopes for this series, however, after finishing book one, I am not sure I will invest in further volumes. I give the author credit for the time and effort spent in trying to develop his 'unified field theory' of good design, but unlike some of the common sense examples in Pattern language, this book moves to a level of metaphysical abstraction that seems to stretch the ideas past their breaking point. Not-Separateness? The Void? Though he makes a valiant effort, I just couldn't shake the fact that I was reading an after-the-fact justification of the authors pre-conceived tastes. Which essentially boil down to: old = good, new = bad.
   Most off-putting also, were the scrawled, barely legible sketches that were meant to illustrate some of the principles. They are so poorly rendered as to be distracting and not very helpful to boot. I would expect more graphic sense from someone purporting to explain the universal secrets of good design. I really wanted to love this book, but I find it simply frustrating.



4. I haven't finshed reading the content of this book - this is more a comment on the delivery medium...
   
   The 'hardcover' book more closely resembles a cardboard cover book. Mine is easily bent and permanently warped in multiple dimensions - makng it much more like your typical large paperback book than a $75 hardback book. It seems harder and harder for publishers to strike that balance between quantity and quality of pictorial content on the one hand, and quality and flashiness of the cover on the other.



5. As a total amateur, I have no design training. I am fascinated by architecture and design, but really only "know what I like". I read "A Pattern Language" when working on object oriented computer systems and find it fascinating - I still re-read it. So, when I saw this book, I was hoping that it would be interesting.
   
   It is way beyond interesting. It completely changed the way I look at the world. It deserves to be read carefully, slowly, savored. Alexander makes his work accessible to both architects and lay people alike.
   
   Bravo.
   
   Even with two kids in college, I am going to spring for book 2. Higher praise could not be given.

2 comments about Lofts DesignSource.

1. Definitively not 5 star material just because size of the book, it's very heavy and sametime small. Hard to flip thru cause its bulky feel. Overall photography is good but some extra photographs are small and you really have to concentrate to see "what's inside the small pics". Selection of lofts are in my opinion also good, interesting places but i think i've seen some of them allready in other loft books (must contain classic lofts almost every book does nowadays).
   
   It's nice addition to my shelf and will look good on there. Cover is beautiful!



2. This book is a visual feast for the eyes, with countess examples of creative material usage. Containing only breif decriptive captions, this is not the book for you if you are interested in the literary asspect of design research! However, if you are a visual learner, as I am, what this book lacks in words, it more than makes up for in pictures. I had a hard time laying the book down!

5 comments about Interior Design with Feng Shui: New and Expanded.

1. This book is wonderful for those that would like to know the setup of Feng Shui. It's well written and easy to understand. It doesnt really tell you about placement within the bague, however it gives you understanding of feng shui in a different light. It's very informative and helps you understand how the placement of your home effects your energy. All in all, a good choice.



2. 
   This book on Feng Shui covers only topics related to interior design, but is a must have reference, since is filled with practical information, and detailed description with examples of different possible room shapes that you most certainly will encounter at home. Each case scenario is accompanied with diagrams and figures to help understand even better how the placement of a mirror, a bed, or a fish tank can affect the mood, luck, prosperity, or even the health of each family member.
   
   "Interior Design with Feng Shui" teaches how to re-arrange your home to be in complete harmony with nature and with the surrounding environment, optimizing the energy flowing through your house.
   
   This book is for everyone, not only for interior designers or architects, since it is written in a readable and clear way, including fundamental concepts of Feng Shui, and a glossary for the beginner.



3. Another great book by Sarah Rossbach; extremely informative and well written. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who would like to improve their lot in life with Feng Shui. Also check out her other book regarding Feng Shui and colour, co-written with Master Lin Yun.



4. I've read a number of Feng Shui books, so when this one was recommended and sent to me by a good friend, everything fell into place!!! all the missing information, the little details, everything I read before was fully understood once I had this marvel in my hand.
   
   After reading 18 books of Feng Shui I can totally recommend this one...Thank You Sarah!!!



5. I'd had this book recommended to me as a good one with which to begin to understand Feng Shui. While I will agree that aspects of it were clear and full of practical application (the examples of room layouts, etc.), in general I found the book to be poorly organized and certainly not enough in and of itself to gain a basic understanding of Feng Shui.

   I found that I learned enough to be interested further, and got some practical advice about furniture placement. Not where I would send a beginner, however.

5 comments about J.l.C. Field Guide to Residential Construction, Vol. 1: A Manual of Best Practice.

1. This is great. I recommend getting this and the outdoor Field Guide. The Journal of Light Construction is a mainstay to anyone wanting to do the job right. These books cover just about anything you could run into or need to know.



2. Good resource on a large variety of subjects. It will not let you just go build, but gives the basics you need to know. If you are hiring a contractor it will help you know what they are doing. If you are a contractor, it provides a reference. Well worth the time and money.



3. The book was well worth the money and the TIME IT TOOK TO GET IT.It has got to be one of the best referance books for construction out there.



4. It's a good thing they used a heavy grade of paper with some kind of vinyl cloth cover (the thing feels waterproof). I use this book so often that I would have worn it out if it was constructed otherwise.



5. I ordered this in hopes it was Volume I but knowing it was a gamble. Indeed, I was shipped volume II which deals with Electrical, Plumbing, HVAC, etc. The ISBN which Amazon lists is correct for this volume, so Volume II is what you should expect in spite of a previous reviewers experience.
   
   The book itself, though sealed in plastic was damaged. The book is spiral bound to open flat with tabbed sections. Each tab was creased and folded back into the book. One tab was unbound and loose in the book.
   
   Content wise, I gave the book three stars. The individual chapters are necessarily short and somewhat superficial. There are numerous, helpful tables with pertinent data. But for detailed best practices I found "Wiring a House" by Rex Cauldwell and "Plumbing a House" by Peter Hemp (both from Tautons For Pros by Pros) or "Best Practices Guide to Residential Construction" by Steven Bliss (who used to be on JLC's staff) to be far superior. They have both theory and practical examples that include those really tough situations we encounter in real houses, not the simple, perfectly square, etc. fantasy situations popular on HGTV and introductory guides. The JLC Guide chapter with design information for kitchen and bath has some useful ideas, but again, I'd go with a more detailed guide. "Kitchen Idea Book" by Joanne Bouknight was especially useful in the kitchen remodel I just completed.
   
   All in all, it's an okay guide that made me wanting more detail and back searching Amazon.