1 comments about Pamphlet Architecture 12: Building; Machines (Pamphlet Architecture).

1. Wow! A professor brought this book to class and I had to have it! Featured are early works by Neil Denari--Neil, I love you! (a personal God of mine/director of Sci-Arc) Krueger and Kaplan, Peter Pfau, Wes Jones...a theorists dream! The book is so thin, that I go back and forth in it wishing there were more! A definite must have if you're into theory!

1 comments about Reinventing Los Angeles: Nature and Community in the Global City (Urban and Industrial Environments).

1. Gottlieb is incredible! This easy to read book, was a requirement in one of my classes but honestly no need to require since its like reading a novel. What an awesome book!

5 comments about The New York Apartment Houses of Rosario Candela and James Carpenter.

1. Alpern continues with the format used in his "New York's Fabulous Luxury Apartments", which serves the subject matter well. This new volume is also a worthwhile extension of the earlier work for those interested in New York apartment buildings, with very little overlap. However, considering the fairly high price of this book, it would have been nice to see included current photos of at least some of the apartment buildings as they appear today. This would also have provided another level of the always fascinating "then and now" element already included in the book, where illustrations were included depicting what some of the apartment buildings replaced. This was an excellent opportunity missed, perhaps, to provide an amazing encapsulation of the ever-changing and yet at the same time remarkably un-changing landscape of New York City, without detracting from the intended subject of the book. Overall, though, a very agreeable and interesting reference work.



2. An exquisite book! There are stories about each apartment house and how it came to be. I found the two architects, Candela and Carpenter, to be very interesting characters. The homes they designed are ahead of their time. The floor plans are fascinating. The book also shows, by the floor plans, how people lived and what their needs were. The authors even quote costs of building and tell of the people who lived there. If you like real estate you will find this fascinating.



3. Let me first say that I loved the period black and white photos of the buildings, I also appreciated the fact that all of the buildings mentioned came with requisite photos, that is a must in book of this sort. I really didn't know that much about these buildings nor the architects so this book gave me a real education, I came away more knowledged and very impressed. The attention to detail the architects employed in these buildings is amazing and the fact that so many are still extant is a tribute to the artistry and talent that went into designing and building them and obviously contempory wealthy apartment seekers appreciate these attributes or else we all know these buildings would have been pulled down long ago, just like so many of the Gilded Age mansions they replaced. This publishing house puts out such finely crafted books and this one does not disappoint, I highly recommend it.



4. Candela and Carpenter were two of New York's most noted architects of the inter-war era, specializing in luxury apartment buildings. Architectural historian Andrew Alpern has assembled a reference text of their buildings, organized in geographic sequence. In this book, a typical building has two pages dedicated to it. One page consists of a floor plan, and the facing page has a photo or rendering of the exterior, combined with a one-to-six sentence description. Also, there are several brief essays at the beginning of the book.

   I enjoyed this volume, which Alpern has directed at a very narrow segment of readers, but it's not for everyone. This is a volume for architectural enthusiasts who are intrigued by room arrangements. Others might be better served by a book broader in scope (including some by this same author).




5. Alpern has written several books about New York apartment buildings and this is his best. This time he focuses exclusively on the genius of two ground-breaking designers, James Carpenter and Rosario Candela. If you are not adept at reading floor plans (of which there are many), it might not be immediately obvious what defines the genius of these two architects. It is the innovation of their layouts and the graciousness of their spaces that made apartment house living so desireable, allowing for the migration from town house to apartment building. Regardless, everyone will still enjoy the exterior and interior views of these great New York buildings and get a sense of how the rich really live. Alpern raises our awareness of the apartment house type in the City to a higher level, just as others had focused on the greatness of NYC's commercial structures.
   Each building is described in detail and there is some chatty material about who lived where, who bought what, and maybe a little more of that would have added fun to the book. There is a chronology of all the buildings and I would have liked to have seen thumbnail pictures of the buildings next to the timeline, since the book is organized geographically. It is otherwise an excellent and elegant study of the complete apartment house works of these two great designers.

No comments about Shift: SANAA and the New Museum.

1 comments about Cities: X Lines: Approaches to City and Open Territory Design.

1. This ambitious production presents a well organized and defined typology of urban form. The ten categories comprising the 'x' in the title, are explained by way of a logical progression of contemporary case studies and historical precedents. Each chapter is divided into two parts, a collection of images followed by text. The dynamic CAD imagery and radical spatial diagramming provide in-depth analysis of highly complex architectural projects. The text succinctly draws out the key concepts of each of the projects, and more importantly, locates them in an historical continuum.
   
   Despite the value of the text and imagery in themselves, the physical dislocation of the imagery from the related writing (to the point of presenting unlabeled images) can be annoying at times. One imagines the author intended the images to be experienced first without textual guidance as one might experience a visit to an unfamiliar city. It is an interesting idea, but it encroaches on the overall readability of the book as one is forced to flip back and forth excessively.
   
   The organizational structure of the content extends to the physical design of the book itself. Two types of paper are combined in an elegantly produced object. Unfortunately, the library copy which I borrowed was already losing pages from the middle. In a book less than a year old, this indicates a structural problem with the binding. Nonetheless, this is an exciting project that will leave students, educators, and practitioners with a broader understanding of the nature of urban form.

1 comments about Building Suburbia: Green Fields and Urban Growth, 1820-2000.

1. Building Suburbia is a capable synthesis of historical and recent scholarship on the development of the suburbs in America. Hayden, a professor of architecture and urbanism and professor of American Studies at Yale, knows what she is talking about. It was clear to me that this book is written for a general, rather then specialized audience.

   Hayden's writting style is easy to understand, and she provides multiple in text illustrations and photographs to illuminate the text. The book tracks the historical development of suburbs in time (the subtitle is "Green Fields and Urban Growth 1820-2000.) She starts with "Borderlands", then covers "Picturesque Enclaves", "Streetcar Buildouts", "Mail-Order and Self-Built Suburbs", "Sitcom Subrurbs", "Edge Nodes" and "Rural Fringes". This historical approach is book ended by an introduction with two chapters and a conclusion with two chapters.

   Hayden includes excellent end notes and a selected bibliography that is worthwhile to have on your shelf. Since this book was written in 2003, the bibliography is chock full of RECENT books on urban studies that allow the student or casual reader to follow up in any number of directions.

   Worth checking out.

No comments about Lagos: How It Works.

3 comments about Studio at Large: Architecture in Service of Global Communities.

1. This is a great book for both those people who are interested in learning about or those people who are already familiar with environmentally friendly "green" building pratices used in sustainable architecture. Studio at Large specifically chronicles the achievements of the UW BASIC Initiative program that Sergio Palleroni and his colleagues created in 1995. It is fascinating and moving to see the impact this work has on the local and global levels in society.



2. Prof. Sergio Palleroni teaches the "art-and-science" of "architecture" the old fashion way--with leadership and passion! He's not affraid of rolling up his sleeves, soiling his boot and spending his summer vacations whith his students (the future leaders): teachong design, scheduling and building sustainable communities in the "developing countries."



3. Its good to see that the rural studios work is not unique but rather part of a movement, with other brilliant examples such as the work documented in this book. Beautifully illustrated. Probably the most in depth discussion I've read on the methods and challenges of work among the poor and underserved.
   A great contribution to architectures claim to relevance.

2 comments about Zoned Out: Regulation, Markets, and Choices in Transportation and Metropolitan Land Use.

1. This is an excellent book on zoning practices in the United States. A must-read for anyone interested in transportation and land use policy.



2. In addition to giving specific examples of how zoning has prevented infill development and compact development, Levine actually shows how these policies matter - that is, how zoning alters the market instead of mimicking it. For example:
   
   *Levine shows how rare infill is in single-family zones. Because local politicians rigidly prohibit any attempts to add new housing in already developed single-use zones, single-family neighborhoods are never transformed as a region grows. For example, in Massachusetts only 3 of 351 communities experienced a loss of single-family acres between 1970 and 1999. So as a result, landowners' only way of accommodating new housing demand is to build further out in suburbia.
   
   *Levine discusses surveys of developers showing that government regulation consistently forces them to make development less compact. 78% of developers responded that regulation was a "significant barrier" to more compact development. By contrast, only 35% cited financing as a barrier, and only 26% cited insufficient market interest.
   
   *Levine discusses a survey of renters and homeowners in Boston and Atlanta, asking them to make tradeoffs between space and transit/pedestrian-friendliness. He found that in more sprawling Atlanta, development is actually LESS likely to reflect consumer preferences than in more compact Boston. Among the 25% of people with the most pedestrian-oriented preferences, only 7% lived in the most pedestrian-friendly parts of the metro area (as opposed to 25% in Boston). And of that group, 38% of Atlantans lived in the MOST auto-oriented areas (as opposed to 6% of Bostonians). Why? Perhaps because there is little pre-auto stock in Atlanta- which means that thanks to Atlanta's anti-density zoning, pedestrian-friendly housing has never been built in large enough quantities to meet demand. By contrast, in Boston much of the housing stock was built before zoning, which means there is (or more accurately, was before the 2000s housing bubble) an ample supply of pre-auto housing available to meet demand for pedestrian-friendly development.
   
   *Levine demolishes the argument that smart-growth planners are forcing people into higher densities. He asserts that this is simply impossible: that planners can mandate high density, but developers can always avoid such a mandate by building elsewhere. By contrast, low-density mandates can't be avoided so easily: developers would rather turn a profit building to (low) allowable densities than not build at all, and low-density zoning is so widespread as to be unavoidable.

5 comments about Community By Design: New Urbanism for Suburbs and Small Communities.

1. I like this book because it suggests ways to make our communities better. I really like books that talk about how we can improve the status quo and/or better alternatives to the status quo.



2. This is an excellent introduction to how the philosophy of New Urbanism can be applied to suburbs. It would be very helpful to people serving on Zoning & Planning Commissions or City Councils.



3. The suburban landscape of the United States is the subject of this book, advertised as "the first practical guide to creating communities that truly are communities-not merely enclaves near off-ramps." Guided by the principles of the Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU), the book uses excerpts from that organization's Charter to illuminate its advocacy of more connected development patterns. The book's scope extends beyond the commercial strip to include the major building blocks of towns and suburbs, such as apartment complexes, schools, parks and office campuses.
   
   Hall and Porterfield includes passages of fist-thumping suburbia-bashing similar to James Howard Kunstler's Home From Nowhere (1998, Touchstone Books) or Jane Holtz Kay's Asphalt Nation (1997, Crown). They also include graphic material, much of it adapted their earlier book, A Concise Guide to Community Planning (1994, McGraw-Hill).
   
   Readers knowledgeable about New Urbanism will find few surprises here, other than a few glaring factual errors, like a reference to "Tyson's Corners, Virginia, one of the largest metropolitan areas in the United States" (p. 7) and a claim that Edge Cities and urban villages are "two names for essentially the same thing" (p. 210). Good points crop up here and there, but recommendations are so limited in scope that it can be difficult to discern whether the sample site designs are intended to be good or bad examples, which limits the book's usefulness pedagogically. The lack of dimensions on most of the drawings also severely limits the book's utility as a practical reference. Hall and Porterfield contrast "conventional suburban development" and "Traditional Neighborhood Development" options for site plans, but the comparisons sometimes seem forced and nearly always ignore the larger regional issues so critical to the debate.
   
   One ideal audience for this book might suburban planning commissioners, who need guidance from designers in order to understand the differences between conventional suburban development pods and walkable, human-scaled neighborhoods.



4. Community by Design is an introduction to the basics of community design and New Urbanism. It's useful if that's what you're after, but not an interesting read if you're anything but a novice on the the topic. It reads like a texbook for a freshman-level course in urban design. Used for that purpose, I'm certain it would be more than successful. As a source of new, insightful commentary on the subject of New Urbanism it falls more than a little short.



5. I wanted to take the opportunity to recommend this book to anyone who has wondered why every place in America looks like everywhere else. There's a funny line in the Rocky and Bullwinkle movie where "our heros" are traveling by car across America in a race against time to foil the plan of the arch villan. As they pass the same gas station and fast food franchise again and again Bullwinkle says, "Haven't we been here before?" That was the same reaction my seven-year old had this summer when we were on our family vacation. We were in Richmond, Virginia and he said we've been here before because I remember that place over there. I had to explain to him what franchise architecture was and how just about every town in America has one of those types of buildings. This is a sad commentary on the American landscape that we as consumers expect the to see the familiar sign of our favorite business. This is one reason why I wrote this book; to let folks know that there's a better way. In fact, we used to do it better. The types of places that capture our attention and long to live are the places that were built prior to World War II. The small towns that so many families idealize as the place they'd rather raise their kids are the same places that couldn't be built today because of "modern" zoning ordinances. And the sad thing is today's generation is the first to be raised totally in a suburban environment that requires owning an automobile just to survive. If you're intersted in how this could change and what the alternatives are Community by Design is your book! There's 250 illustrations and photos that show you what's possible right now. The book helps you understand why community can and should be designed and lets you see some places where it has been. If you ask me this is a great book. ...