No comments about Pathologies of Modern Space: Empty Space, Urban Anxiety, and the Recovery of the Public Self.

No comments about Urban Dwelling Environments: An Elementary Survey of Settlements for the Study of Design Determinants.

No comments about Heat Islands: Understanding and Mitigating Heat in Urban Areas.

1 comments about Architecture Mysticism and Myth.

1. Wonderfully informative, engrossing, overall a worthwhile read. There's a reason all other books on the subject trace back to it.

No comments about The Politics of Park Design: A History of Urban Parks in America.

2 comments about Eden by Design: The 1930 Olmsted-Bartholomew Plan for the Los Angeles Region.

1. It's true that the maps are often too small and would be better in color, as the originals are. However, the reprints are far from illegible, and the text of the Olmsted-Bartholomew proposal is captivating in and of itself.

   I was fascinated to read the astute predictions of these men of vision, and their thoughtful proposals for increasing the quality of life for Angelenos. I remarked at the urgency of their recommendations; they seem to genuinely fear the social consequences of allowing a city to grow with inadequate space reserved for recreation and natural beauty.

   If only we could know what L.A. would have been if the plan had been adopted!




2. This reprint of "The 1930 Olmsted-Bartholemew Plan for the Los Angeles Region" is more exactly a low-quality copy. The maps are so dark they are very difficult to read, and the way they are bound into the book, much of the details are lost into the seams. The original maps were color, so any references to colors in the legends are lost, and the gray scales blended together make the maps even less articulate. It's important that a document such as this is reprinted for all to see, but it seems as if this volume has missed an opportunity of becoming a library keepsake.

No comments about Urban Houses.

No comments about Urban Design Futures.

2 comments about The Tyranny of Taste: The Politics of Architecture and Design in Britain, 1550-1960 (Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in Britis).

1. This work by a professor of art history and architecture at the University of Essex in England constitutes a Great Books course in miniature. From the window of his specialties, Jules Lubbock reviews four centuries of political, economic, and social history, delineating their influences - including those of sumptuary laws, or restrictions upon consumption - upon aesthetic concepts of design and town planning, as well as the effects of theological, moral, and nationalistic ideas on the evolving physical appearance of Britain in general and of London in particular. The reader's familiarity with Plato and Locke, Disraeli and Bevan, Pugin and Inigo Jones, is extended and made vivid. Discourses on the design of everything from buildings, carpets, and furniture to items as seemingly insignificant as an excessively or inappropriately decorated tea cup, cream jug, or gas lamp are brilliantly analyzed for their larger social and moral implications. Although Professor Lubbock's point of view is unmistakably Protestant Episcopalian rather than high-church Anglican Catholic, his nationalism therefore betraying a clear and not atypical though well-compensated bias against absolutism, Roman Catholicism, and Islam, these very British traits nonetheless do not prevent him from depicting and appreciating fully - even celebrating - the ecclesiastical beauty and pervasive influence of classical or Gothic, French (e.g., Pugin) and Italianate art and architecture. The author traces the transfer of power from the landed aristocracy - whose maintenance of magnificent country estates he attributes not to intraclass rivalry but rather to a benign desire and recognized duty to provide hospitality and employment through "housekeeping" by leading a simple, virtuous life at home in the country in preference to residing in the more appealing, sophisticated, and corrupting milieu of London - to the gentrified commercial classes whose ascendancy resulted from the Industrial Revolution and the concomitant increase of international trade. True to his holistic approach, Professor Lubbock makes frequent references to the reflections of these trends of intellectual history in British philosophy and, especially, literature, citing Shakespeare, Milton, Addison and Steele, Pope, Hume, Dickens, and Wordsworth explicitly and novelists such as Fielding, Richardson, Sterne, Smollett, Austen, and Thackeray implicitly - in so doing, incidentally giving the lie to the New Critics' foci upon literature in a vacuum and upon "universal" character development to the exclusion of historical context. The author's own book is filled with handome reproductions and illustrations of the works of art and architecture that he so expertly describes, and it contains amusing parables written by some of the renowned personages into whom he breathes renewed vitality and relevance.



2. This work by a professor of art history and architecture at the University of Essex in England constitutes a Great Books course in miniature. From the window of his specialties, Jules Lubbock reviews four centuries of political, economic, and social history, delineating their influences - including those of sumptuary laws, or restrictions upon consumption - upon aesthetic concepts of design and town planning, as well as the effects of theological, moral, and nationalistic ideas on the evolving physical appearance of Britain in general and of London in particular. The reader's familiarity with Plato and Locke, Disraeli and Bevan, Pugin and Inigo Jones, is extended and made vivid. Discourses on the design of everything from buildings, carpets, and furniture to items as seemingly insignificant as an excessively or inappropriately decorated tea cup, cream jug, or gas lamp are brilliantly analyzed for their larger social and moral implications. Although Professor Lubbock's point of view is unmistakably Protestant Episcopalian rather than high-church Anglican Catholic, his nationalism therefore betraying a clear and not atypical though well-compensated bias against Roman Catholicism and Islam, these very British traits nonetheless do not prevent him from depicting and appreciating fully - even celebrating - the ecclesiastical beauty and pervasive influence of classical or Gothic, French (e.g., Pugin) and Italianate art and architecture. The author traces the transfer of power from the landed aristocracy - whose maintenance of magnificent country estates he attributes not to intraclass rivalry but rather to a benign desire and recognized duty to provide hospitality and employment through "housekeeping" by leading a simple, virtuous life at home in the country in preference to residing in the more appealing, sophisticated, and corrupting milieu of London - to the gentrified commercial classes whose ascendancy resulted from the Industrial Revolution and the concomitant increase of international trade. True to his holistic approach, Professor Lubbock makes frequent references to the reflections of these trends of intellectual history in British philosophy and, especially, literature, citing Shakespeare, Milton, Addison and Steele, Pope, Hume, Dickens, and Wordsworth explicitly and novelists such as Fielding, Richardson, Sterne, Smollett, Austen, and Thackeray implicitly - in so doing, incidentally giving the lie to the New Critics' foci upon literature in a vacuum and upon "universal" character development to the exclusion of historical context. The author's own book is filled with handome reproductions and illustrations of the works of art and architecture that he so expertly describes, and it contains amusing parables written by some of the renowned personages into whom he breathes renewed vitality and relevance.

No comments about Making Planning Work: A Guide to Approaches and Skills.