No comments about Energy Simulation in Building Design, Second Edition.

1 comments about Exposed Concrete: Technology and Design.

1. I purchased this book because I specifiy concrete and architectural concrete. 85% of this book were projects that have concrete in them, but nothing specific, just basic overall pictures and no information about concrete. The 15% that had to do with formwork and concrete was basically useless to me because it was basically a translation of German to English, using German and European standards, nothing that we can use here in the US.
   I was disappointed never the less and have returned the book. If Amazon had said something about this book was intended for Germans who read English, I would have not purchased it.

1 comments about Houses On Difficult Sites.

1. I found this book disappointing. Homes from all over the world are illustrated. I live in the US and am considering building a house on a difficult site. This book did not help much in designing a home.
   
   First, almost all the homes are ultra-contemporary inside and out, and do not look all that inviting to view or live in. Many of the homes are shown from a distance and you can see neighboring homes. If someone built one of the homes featured in the book next to me, I would be very angry at the architect for designing a house that so clashes with the neiborghood home styles. I got the impression that these homes are good to look out FROM, but those looking AT these homes would not be as equally impressed.
   
   The book has many colored pictures and a few good drawings. There are lots of crossectional views but little discussion of how the homes were built. You are lucky to get 3 paragraphs of written text on each home. This book may be fine for the coffee table, but not very useful in understanding the house beneath the table.

No comments about Sustainability at the Cutting Edge: Emerging Technologies for Low Energy Buildings.

1 comments about Architectural Model as Machine: A new view of models from antiquity to the present day.

1. Somewhat academic approach to the role of architectural models in Western civilization, from the ancient Greeks up to the end of the 20th Century.
   
   I found this in the architectural library at a nearby university (my daughter had a junior high school class project on building a scale model of a Gothic cathedral, and I first thought this book might be a handbook on building scale models, but not so). Still, it looked to be an interesting read (for those used to reading works by academics, at least).
   
   Most readers of this book will be students of architecture, but for this non-architect I found the exploration of what an architect was and how they were trained over the past 5000 years an interesting mirror of how Western culture has changed over the centuries. (I'm speaking here as a social scientist more used to reading history than works in the humanities).
   
   The first and fourth chapters are well-done surveys, though the second chapter seemed light in analytical depth in places. The third chapter provides formal framing of his argument between the first and second halves of the book, too academic for many readers but mercifully brief.
   
   The payoff to the too-academic structure of the book comes in the last (fifth) chapter, as the author attempts to deconstruct the work of a handful of architects from the 20th Century, focusing on the role of drawings versus physical models of specific projects in their body of work. I found the approach persuasive for all of the architects examined except for the last, Andrew Libeskind (spelling?), but at least some illumination came of it.
   
   A read of a day and a half for a casual reader outside the field. I'd be interested to hear what specialists in the field would have to say about the book. For instance, is this book based on refereed articles in the field? And how does it related to other scholarly work in the field of architectural studies?

No comments about Visual Research Methods in Design.

No comments about Sweet's The Directory 2002.

No comments about The Third Skin: Architecture, Technology & Environment.

No comments about Material Matters.

No comments about Green Building Handbook: A Companion Guide to Building Products and Their Impact on the Environment.