4 comments about The Japanese Dream House: How Technology and Tradition Are Shaping New Home Design.

1. I was expecting a coffee table book on pretty Japanese manufactured houses, but was pleasantly surprised it had depth.

   The book begins with a historical look at Japanese housing and the influences of society, aesthetics, and economics on today's housing market. It details the influences of government legislation on the rigid feudal class system; Japanese minimalism of the poor versus the ostentation of the aristocracy; and important events from the Edo period to today's ongoing recession.

   Later on, it details the rise of system housing manufacturers, building techniques, and the sales process a family would undertake to purchase a home. While it does feature a few architectural one-offs, the authors discredits these as something mass market consumers have no interest in (no different than North America). Sidebars go into details on things like roofing materials, shoji screens, tatami matting, to bathroom design.

   This book is the perfect beginning guide to Japanese manufactured system housing. To complain that this book is a sales brochure for Misawa would be like complaining that a book on cars has too many pictures of Cadillacs and Mercedes and not enough Dacias and Ladas. The pictures are very good, but I would have liked to see a wider variety of homes and interiors, but that can be easily done by picking up a Japanese housing consumer magazine like Plus 1 Housing.




2. This book does provide a fairly interesting, if basic, overview of the modern Japanese home but ... it is also an expensive sales brochure for Misawa system built homes. Misawa provided photos for pages 1, 2, 3, 6-10, 25, 30, 31, 32, 33, 36, 38, 39, 41, 43, 44, 45, 48, 49, 50, 56, 57, 60-63, 68, 69, 76, 77, 78, 79, 82, 88, 89, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 104, 105, 106, 107, 110-118, 120-129. And Misawa is used as an example in the text on 12 pages.



3. Because we are in the process of designing and building a Zen Danish (as we call it) new home I purchased this wonderful book in order to get some specific ideas. Of special interest are the Danish and Japanese choices in light hardwood floors, tatami mat floor coverings and window coverings like shoji screens which can be opened for full light during the day and closed for more privacy.

   And the book does an excellent job in showing the value in smaller appliances like dishwashers for small families and the front loading or combo washer-dryer units which also take up less space and use less water. And the beautifully designed skylights.

   The photography is wonderful and there are so many, along with informative texts on why certain elements work well, and what the future holds for design. The homes are so open and airy that they can be smaller and more environmentally friendly, and better than what I call the average American tract home that has so much wasted space.

   I also like the whole sections on furniture and how the outside garden areas when designed well, become rooms that make the interior of the home look bigger as well. There is so much to be said about the way the Japanese blend style, high tech and spiritual into their home design.

   If you are seriously interested in ideas for that one of a kind, high quality home that doesn't have to break the bank then this book may be of great value to you. It is not a book for the person who likes "average."




4. This book is very interesting for the people who want to know the evolution of house style after II world war:
   The evolution of styles from american style to tecnological style.

No comments about Villa Lante, Bagnia.

No comments about Romanesque Architecture.

1 comments about St. Peter's.

1. A photographic pilgrimage to one of the most beautifully ornate cathedrals in Christendom, this standout volume offers close-ups not available to the eye of on-site visitors.

   One marvels again at the genius of Michelangelo, Bernini, and others. If Rome and Vatican city are not in your travel plans, this is almost as good as being there.

1 comments about Utility and Beauty: Robert Wellford and Composition Ornament in America (University of Delaware Press Studies in 17th- and 18th- Century Art and Culture.).

1. UTILITY AND BEAUTY - Robert Wellford and Composition Ornament in America by Mark Reinberger. U. of Delaware Press, Newark, DE/Associated Univesity Presses, London, United Kingdom. 2004. 190 pp. $65.00 hardcover/8-1/2" x 11", ISBN 0-87413-760-8. photographs, illustrations, map, appendices, notes, bibliography, index.
   In the early 1800s in America, composition--or "compo"--was a plaster-like material pressed into intricately carved, detailed ornaments for interior woodwork in homes and buildings, particularly mantelpieces. Robert Wellford (1775-1844) of Philadelphia was the leading maker of compo in the U. S. during this period. The neoclassical flourishes, forms, and mythological and other figures of composition along with patriotic imagery became popular in well-to-do homes along the coast from South Carolina to New Jersey because of the sense of elegance it added to rooms, but also because it was affordable by not having to be imported. Reinberger gives a full account of this American decoration which became prevalent in the early decades of the new nation. His account complemented with many photographs of varying detail deals with the manufacture of the composition, its different styles, the spread of it, and the fading of this "feminine" art form with the coming to favor of the "masculine" style of decoration modeled on the Doric Greek classical style. Wellford's career as a talented and ambitious businessman is also covered. This is a thorough work for architects, decorators, historians, and artists on the relatively brief period of a few decades when compo was the ornamentation of choice in buildings along the East Coast and embodied ideas about high style and desirable expression of the virtues and ideals of the new democracy. Reinberger is an associate professor in the College of the Environment and Design at the U. of Georgia. Historic preservation is one of the courses he teaches.

No comments about Museumsquartier Vienna The Architecture: Edition Architecture Aktuell, Volume 3.

No comments about After the Crash: Architecture in Post-Bubble Japan.

No comments about The History of Architecture in India.

No comments about Colonial Virginia Shrines: A Complete Guide Book To Jamestown, Williamsburg, And Yorktown.

No comments about New York Trends and Traditions.