5 comments about The Harvard Design School Guide to Shopping / Harvard Design School Project on the City 2.

1. no problems, I live in chile and i receipt my books in less than two months, maybe they could improve the bundle (the plastic).
   Serious.
   thats all



2. For a volume that purports to be scholarly research from Harvard University, it incorporates preciously little hard facts or empirical data from the commercial retail industry, aside from the colorful graphics, it represents, at best, an amateurish take on a global economy in the form of bumper stickers rather than any form of serious analysis.

   Mr. Koolhaas' customary "Firehose" approach to editing - massive amount of unedited images and unaccredited charts and information featuring slogans sufficiently amorphous as to allow readers to draw whatever conclusion they want. Harvard GSD (Graduate School of Design) students would tell you that the whole book is a somewhat cynical exercise for Mr. Koolhaas to use his academic assistants to produce "research" that attempted to justify intellectually what he was designing for the Prada stores in NY, LA, etc. (a "cash cow" for Koolhaas' architectural firm according to his chief assistant) But since Koolhaas is an established and bankable star, none of the participants are complaining. In the end, most of the essays managed to emphasize an approach to architecture that happened to coincide with projects by Mr. Koolhaas.

   For example, while the essay "Depato" give a reasonably detail account of the development of Japanese department stores in the Shibuya district of Tokyo, but then it focused on design features such as the "Bunkamura" or cultural village, art galleries and roof gardens that some stores had added in order to attract customers to shore up declining business. (Koolhaas advocated adding lecture hall in Prada stores but was vetoed for taking up too much valuable retail space). The essay never examined, let alone proposed solutions to, the real cause behind the decline of department store sales - the rise of discount shopping during the decade-long economic recession).

   "Captive-Airmall" amiably speculates on the pros and cons of spaces designed for efficiency and what it meant to operate in an highly impersonal environment. However, it failed to mention the real reason that gave rise to such environment - airline de-regulation that began in the United States which eventually turned airports into corporations responsible for generating their own revenues and thus jump-started the airport retail business.

   Much like a fashion product by Prada, this book is very useful if you want to brag about how intellectually curious and, at the same time, up-to-the-minute-Wallpaper-hip you are at home or the office - it's the latest design accessory for the 1990s bubble economy. It is disappointing to see that even a respectable institution such as Harvard has succumbed to the forces of the marketplace.




3. I'll start with the bad first: this book is too long, the essays are of uneven quality, and the layout is poor (if you are trying to read it, that is, and not just look at it). That being said, I think the overall product is excellent. This authors do not seek to answer questions but, instead, to raise them. Why is retail facing a crisis? How will advances in IT affect retail? What is changing about how we buy, what we buy, and why we buy?

   The authors' premise is that shopping is a living entity, one with survival on its mind. Retail, they claim, has evolved as other beings have evolved: Some advances are foreseen while others come through chance, but all advances are in response to external forces. In the case of retail, the dominant relationship is between the shop and the shopper. As the shopper changes, so must the shop evolve, write the authors.

   That this work is not a completed whole, but rather a piece where some assembly is required by the reader, is important in making this book work. The authors do not and cannot answer all their questions. The idea of "ulterior motives" - which teases at the implications of increased use of IT in retail and urban planning - is, to me, the central issue. The authors note the shift from "how does spacial design affect people" to "how does information design affect people". They note the importance of this shift for the future of shopping and present a history of retail as the vocabulary for which readers can begin to discuss these questions.

   Because the authors have taken on the task of teaching the language of retail, readers may feel as if they are back in grade school English class - slogging through page after page of seemingly useless information that is not neccessarily connected to the next bit of information. However, if you spend some time playing with this information - looking at each bit of knowledge as building blocks that can be moved about and repositioned next to other bits of knowledge to uncover new and different patterns - this book comes alive.




4. Having leafed through this book and "Great Leap Forward," I find myself bemused as to what all the fuss is about. Koolhaas is apparently oh so cool! according to a recent Newsweek. There is little that is new here unless one considers placing an escalator inside Le Corbusier's Dom-ino skeleton novel. It seems that Koolhaas and his chums have once again had great fun cutting and pasting from the past and present, to create a virtual tour through their cluttered minds of consumerist fantasies.



5. It arrived just when i was needing it. Malls, shopping, consumerism, no-spaces, junk-spaces, the artificial-scape...finnaly Venturi&Brown met Koolhaas..(as i already suggested) but, despite all these, i still find it hard to pay such a thrilling money just because they didn't take the work of selecting the material. It seems to me lately that information grows endlessly and nobody is paying care to the "old customed" thing of selecting, choosing what's really important. IF THE BOOK WERE HALF ITS SIZE IT WOULD BE WORTH. As it is not, i must blame the authors for their happy "cut and paste and get the money" editorial strategy. I'm sad to say that i had to read it all and swallow even the most unmature essays to get to this conclusion. I suggest a combined reading of it with "No Logo" to get to an ecstasyc state of annoyment and claustrophobia.

5 comments about Metric Handbook, Third Edition.

1. I am an Architect dealing with planning and early stages of projects. This book is concise, clear and comprehensive and I don't know what I would do without it. I had a well-used and dog-eared copy from the original edition of 1979 and have just updated to the current edition. The information is easy to find, not over-detailed and still seems to be under the control of one person. Highly recommended and good value.



2. A valuable and a must have book...but print and paper quality is not worth...it is very much like as if phocopied and binded...
   Yagmur TOPRAKLI



3. I'm a graduate design architect, and i've been looking for a design standards reference. I came across this book, i've never heard about it before, as i was more familiar with Time Saver. But i was surprised by how good this book is and how sufficient the information contained is for all stages of design.
   The Time Saver Book might be more comprehensive in some aspects and may also have more examples of different building types. But the price of this book is very good compared to the time saver, which costs much more. I definitely recommend this book...



4. this cd cost 250 dollars, it is a plug-in program for autocad. it creats a new toolbar for autocad users to find images. However, i find this toolbar is NOT frinedly to use and it is hard to find images, and this software can't work in autocad 2000, it just can work with the outdate autocad (r13,R14). Further, this software not ever cover different size of common doors and windows. EDITOR, your CAD-library is not powerful enough. I personally believe this software is only worth 50 dollars.



5. I have been told that there was a review that said that there were errors in the book. This is certainly so, I should know, I am the editor! No reference book as comprehensive as this will ever be perfect. However, if you, the customer, finds one of these, please tell me. My e-mail address is David_Adler@compuserve.com. Thank you.

No comments about Community Participation Methods in Design and Planning.

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 Ecology and Design.

No comments about The Judicious Eye: Architecture Against the Other Arts.

No comments about Design Charrettes for Sustainable Communities.

3 comments about New York 2000: Architecture and Urbanism from the Bicentennial to the Millennium (New York).

1. NewYork as I know and love it.This is an exceptional book,it explains why the city is like it is.Every outstanding architecture is well described and it is readable by everyone.



2. At 1300 pages this is quite comprehensive and exhaustively researched. NYC has had a real resurgence in skyscraper building in the last ten years or so and many good buildings have been built..like the Time Warner Bldg. the Bloomberg Tower, and the New York Times building..and so far it looks like the world trade center site is going to have some specacular buildings, frankly im still not sure about the Freedom Tower(please find a new name, lord)design but it's so much better than that untenable Libeskind designed, frankly I love the Norman Foster design but whatever, but I digress...as for this book it's fantastic and if you love NYC you will have to have this in you collection, really a complete, thorough book on current architecture in NYC, buy this book you wont be disappointed.



3. I bought this book as a gift for my boss who loves both NYC and architecture. He loved it! I looked through it before giving it to him and agree it is a great book. It's $100 in the book stores, so it is a good buy on Amazon for $63.00. Great for anyone who loves NYC.

2 comments about The Limitless City: A Primer On The Urban Sprawl Debate.

1. The best and most unusual thing about this book is that it is more balanced than most: while most sprawl-related books are pure attacks or defenses (or are too superficial to adequately cover either side of the argument), Gillham gives a significant amount of space to the arguments, counter-arguments and counter-counter arguments on both sides (though on balance he is definitely more antisprawl than not). In addition, the book covers a wider range of issues than many sprawl related books; instead of being focused on quality of life issues (like most New Urbanist books are) or on environmental issues, Gillham goes into both. Also, Gillham discusses the political lineups on sprawl related issues: who's for changing the status quo, who defends sprawl and why.



2. This book delivers a thorough, unbiased and thoughtful approach to the problem of sprawl. The issues are clearly defined and the myths debunked when necessary. After reading this book, one feels that the problems and potential solutions can be grasped. The writing is clear,and concise and draws the reader through the complexities of the issues.

4 comments about The Process of Creating Life: Nature of Order, Book 2: An Essay on the Art of Building and the Nature of the Universe (The Nature of Order).

1. I first discovered Christopher Alexander's book "A Pattern Language" about eight years ago and it has been a treasured companion on my bedside table ever since. I would highly recommend it as an excellent introduction to the framework of design concepts proposed by Alexander in subsequent books.
   
   I decided to start with Book 2 in the "Nature of Order" series as one Amazon reviewer described it as the most "practical" of the four. I can best describe my overall reactions as excitement regarding the implications of Alexander's ideas, and disappointment that the text is so dense and repetitive that I fear that only the most committed of readers will persevere. I don't mean to dissuade other readers at all, but merely to warn you that Alexander's motto seems to be "why use one word when you can use ten, and then repeat yourself ten times." I believe a rigorous editing of the book would render it far more digestible without losing any of its inspirational magic.
   
   Alexander provides philosophical, logical and practical examples of concepts of wholeness and flow in design and how these lead to "living" end products, whether these products are buildings, interiors, works of art or simple household objects. I am currently using these ideas to renovate my home and I can now see why some rooms "work" and others don't and what I can do to improve them. There are many photos of "living design" scattered through the book, to reinforce the concepts. In addition, you don't need to be independently wealthy to apply the ideas - you just need to be willing to think about how you like to live, recognise what feels comfortable and "right" in your environment and experiment with small changes to see how they affect the "feel" of a room or space.
   
   I can strongly recommend this book for any fans of "A Pattern Language", but read it slowly and you will see how it provides a strong conceptual framework for using the patterns described in his previous book. I have just ordered Book 1 in the series and will gradually work my way through the remaining books - I may resort to using a highlighter pen to make it easier to re-read and absorb the ideas. (I recently heard an interview with Alexander which was produced by a Canadian radio station - luckily he speaks succinctly and presents very well in conversation).



2. One can make a strong case for Alexander's Nature of Order as one of the greatest advances in the entire history of aesthetics. Book 1 treats the expression of Life in art in its static form. Book 2 examines the dynamic process of life creation, in real life and in architecture. I can't do better than second what Professor Salingaros says below. He is a major figure in architectural aesthetics himself -- google him on the web and you will see.
   
   In this volume, as in the others, Alexander presents his principles and gives examples both positive and negative, richly illustrated with hundreds of pictures, many in color. His examples are both historical, such as the evolution of St. Mark's Square in Venice over a period of a thousand years, and drawn from his own building experience, showing how he has gone about designing and building a structure in a way that maximizes its life.
   
   Yes, it costs $75, but considering its aesthetic gravity and its 636 pages and all the illustrations, this is a bargain. I bought all four and am still benefitting by rereading them.



3. I originally only intended to read book one of this series because they are so expensive; however, after reading the first, and becoming interested in Alexander's ideas, I have committed to the entire series. There is a lot of food for thought in these books, from the idea that there is actually a universal consensus on what is beautiful when one looks at things on a fundamental level, to the concepts that we spend too much time in this society on ornamentation and rule making to the exclusion of building things that actually enhance life. Book 2 in this series goes in depth into the concept that things can only be built to enhance life and be truly beautiful and useful if they are built in a sequence of appropriate steps. Alexander is changing the way that I look at the world. This is not a book for someone who just wants to know how to decorate a pretty house.



4. Review by Nikos A. Salingaros.

   PART A. REVIEW FOR ARCHITECTS.

   Contemporary architecture is increasingly grounded in science and mathematics. Architectural discourse has shifted radically from the sometimes disorienting Derridean deconstruction, to engaging scientific terms such as fractals, chaos, complexity, nonlinearity, and evolving systems. That's where the architectural action is -- at least for cutting-edge architects and thinkers -- and every practicing architect and student needs to become conversant with these terms and know what they mean. Unfortunately, the vast majority of architecture faculty are unprepared to explain them to students, not having had a scientific education themselves.

   Here is an architecture book by an architect/scientist, just in time to help architects in the new millennium. Alexander discusses many of the scientific terms arising in cutting-edge architecture, and explains them to those who don't have scientific training or advanced mathematical knowledge. We find discussions of the evolution of forms; the importance of process in design; iteration; genetic algorithms; sequences of transformations; different levels of scale (i.e. fractals); etc. They are explained here by an architect who is also a scientist, because he wants to change the way architects think and build. Alexander is not merely popularizing other scientists' results and making them accessible to architects: he is in fact presenting new and original scientific work that ties many of these concepts together in a way that will be useful to architects.

   Alexander spends many of the 636 pages of this book talking about PROCESS. He describes the sequence of steps leading to a built form, and how each step depends on all previous steps. Alexander distinguishes between good and bad sequences of steps, where the latter are marked by some disruptive discontinuity, and which, as a result, cannot lead to coherent form. It follows that the method of design taught in architecture schools for decades -- "conceive an interesting image in your mind, then impose it onto the environment" -- is wrong. ALEXANDER ARGUES THAT COHERENCE CAN NEVER BE ACHIEVED EXCEPT BY THE SEQUENCE METHOD. Don't forget this is the Alexander who wrote "A Pattern Language", an equally revolutionary book. Therefore, every architect, especially those whose own design methodology clashes with Alexander's ideas, is well advised to become aware of what he says instead of simply dismissing him offhand.

   The present volume is the second of four. I believe that, with some effort, it can be read independently from the first volume (not that I am suggesting this, but merely to encourage people to plunge into Volume 2 immediately). This is the one of the four volumes that is most likely to appeal to those who are already interested in and actively working in applying the New Sciences to architecture. I therefore urge innovative architects and architecture students to read this book. In my opinion, it should enlighten everyone's conception of the design process, and help to initiate a reexamination in one's mind of how new ideas for structures and buildings are generated. This book might well influence in a major way how buildings of the future are designed and built, hence how they will look. No-one who thinks deeply and conscientiously about design today should pass it by.

   PART B. REVIEW FOR SCIENTISTS.

   Alexander is famous in the architectural world, yet he trained in Physics and Mathematics in Cambridge, and was part of the group of scientists who developed systems theory along with Herbert Simon. He has been investigating the interaction between science and architecture all of his life, and the four-volume work "The Nature of Order" contains the results of his researches. Volume 2, in particular, contains the most science. It may surprise many professional scientists that Alexander has managed to conceive of new results by applying architecture to science, surely a development that is as unexpected as it is novel.

   This book contains interesting scientific insights. For example, already by page 42, Alexander proposes a radical rethinking of the standard Neo-Darwinian synthesis. He suggests that, based on a broad range of examples, evolving form in any context is driven just as much by intrinsic long-range forces having to do with geometrical configurations, as by the usual random Darwinian selection process. He thus takes suggestions by Stuart Kauffman and Brian Goodwin and develops them into a proto-theory of morphogenesis. It is not complete, and Alexander knows that, but I believe that the evolutionary biology community will get very excited about this idea. He supports his arguments by using phenomenology, and providing a theoretical basis wherever he can. I believe we are going to see a lot of activity, as ideas from this book inspire other authors to try to prove or disprove them. All of that is healthy, and will eventually establish Alexander as a contributor to scientific thinking.

   My own favorite part is the discussion of how generative sequences break symmetry: instead of producing identical components (i.e., windows, houses, office blocks, apartments), the same generative process gives rise to similar types of complex objects that are individualized and thus distinct. This helps us to understand natural complexity, where adaptation does indeed produce diversity within the same typology. The underlying problem is how to correlate the different scales in a complex system, hitherto unsolved in any discipline. Therefore, this discussion is of great interest to computer scientists, who are grappling with modularization in software so as to handle the increasing complexity of code.

   I am a scientist, and I have profited from Alexander's efforts to understand very deep problems in complexity. The price to pay is having to read through all the architectural examples (which may or may not be of interest to many scientists). Alexander is like a moth circling around fascinating problems. Even when he does not give a solution, his circling in fact identifies the problem, and by approaching it, he gives nontrivial hints towards its eventual solution. And, don't forget that it's the architectural stuff that's going to inspire architects to build a more beautiful world for the rest of us.