Art Architecture Photography Books

Highest recommendation. The toast of Paris at its height, perhaps the greatest artist of all time.

I bought this book because I was working on the design of a home in Colorado at the time and wanted some inspiration. There are some very nice photographs (though some of the projects are a little hit or miss). I would recommend this book as a good "taste" of contemporary mountain home architecture.

this has lots of nice pictures of houses you couldn't possibly afford.

This is a collection of 25 homes (published by Bacelona's Loft Publications) mostly built in rural - not necessarily mountainous - regions. Roughly half of the homes are located in the united states, with three by architect David Salmela in Minnesota and one in Michigan (Brininstool + Lynch Architects) - not exactly what American's refer to as mountainous regions. Some of the other architects featured include: James Cutler, Hariri & Hiriri, Eduardo Sauto de Moura, Alfedo DiVito, Fernau & Hartman, and Frank Harman. Most of the homes contemporary and woodsy and some, such as Salmela's, employ a regional vernacular. The photos are excellent and clear. Almost all the featured homes have floor plans. A disappointment is that few have site plans or site sections - which I find helpful to the understanding of a 'mountain house'. Although the title may at times be deceptive, this is a beautiful book at a fair price. Until somebody writes a monograph on the Northwoods best kept secret - David Salmela (and I do hope somebody does) - This is one of the best sources of his work.

In the 20 page written intro to Bob Thall's book of photographs, the author discusses the introduction of the new suburban areas surrounding large cities, specifically the ones surrounding Chicago, and even more specifically Schaumburg, Illinois. His description is admittedly subjective, but that doesn't make it negative. He addresses the pros and cons of both city life and suburban life, and details the way that his photographs will illutrate his points.

The photographs themselves are stunning simply because they are of such typical subruban non-descript businesses, streets, homes, and parks. What is interesting is how new everything looks, and yet 8 years later, I wonder what it looks like. Thall considers what these neighborhoods will look like 20 years from their construction dates, considering they are built with such cheap material, and almost a decade later, we're close to finding out. It would be interesting to see a follow-up book about the same area, just to see how much can change in such a short amount of time in a rapidly growing suburban area.

For anyone interested in the suburbs and the small cities full of strip-malls and housing developments that arise around major cities, this book is an excellent reference point.

Schaumburg, Illinois (incorporated 1956) is now on the map thanks to Bob Thall's excellent photos taken during the growth of the town in the Nineties. Divided into four chapters dealing with the landscape: corporate, commercial, domestic and natural, the photos carry on the deadpan format of Adams, Baltz, Gohlke and others associated with the New Topographics style.

Despite appearing rather anonymous because there are no people in the photos Schaumburg does look a very reasonable place to live and Thall mentions in his short opening essay that many of the houses and corporate offices overlook small lakes and ponds, created by the developers to control flooding, this water obviously encourages wildlife. As is usual with suburbs/edge cities/New Villages, critics will assume that the inhabitants can't possibly be happy living in such an environment but I bet they are. Probably the best folks-at-home-in-the-suburbs book is Bill Owens stunning 'Suburbia' (ISBN 1881270408) photographed in Livermore, San Francisco.

The sixty-five photos in 'The New American Village' are well presented (in 265dpi) in the standard art-photo landscape format though there is the usual photobook annoyance of having to turn to a page in the back to read each photo's caption. Unfortunately the captions say no more than place and date yet the images frequently, it seems to me, deserve more of an explanation than just resting on the page.

Incidentally, it is worth looking down at Schaumburg on Google Earth, you will see a place that has matured over the years since Thall took his photos and especially look at the space between houses, the curved streets, the position of corporate and retail units in relation to domestic housing. A pretty good place to live!

***FOR AN INSIDE LOOK click 'customer images' under the cover.

Thall is a photographer and his photographs are marvelous: lucid, lovely, tonally rich, beautifully constructed. What's astonishing, though, is the way he has applied his sensibility to the least-liked spaces that increasingly dominate America and the globe: the "edge cities" of prefab warehouses for outsourced products, of instant townhouse communities (really trailer courts stacked upright) of malls and corporate "campuses." Most writing about this new American landscape excoriates it or, more rarely, argues that it's the landscape we want (ignoring that "we" aren't the architects, the patrons, or the developers). Thall seeks simply to look, to see what's remarkable, and then to communicate it, in pictures that embody the complex history of our newly decentralized human habitations. On the cover is a picture of two shocking office towers shot from a parking garage. Only one car is there: a beat-up Toyota station wagon perched impudently at off-angle to the resolute order of the rest of the space. That must be Thall's car; certainly it's the embodiment of the position he takes when he makes these pictures.

Published in conjunction with an exhibit of traditional Saudi doors, this coffee-table book shows traditional doors that are actually still in use throughout the kingdom. A brief introductory essay outlines the differences in style and materials used for construction throughout the four regions of Saudi Arabia. And then it's on to the photographs, which, is has to be said, are somewhat of a disappointment. There are several magnificent doors shown, however in many cases the photographer seems to have had real problems with the natural lighting. Many of the photos are either washed out from being overexposed, or are murky, with details lost in shadows. It's a shame that the photos aren't more consistent, because when they are good, they are very good. Unfortunately, there are also a few instances where somewhere in the book's production, the negative has been flipped. In general though, the book's production is very nice, with rich, thick paper. Interspersed with the photographs is some beautiful calligraphy by the master Mohammed Zakariya. A brief afterword says all the usual things about traditional Islamic art and architecture. All in all, of mixed quality and of limited interest.

I saw this book in its preparation stages before its ultimate publication. Many of the photographs provided inspiration for the marvellous exhibition on Saudi Arabian doors that was presented by the Al-Nahda foundation in Riyadh in 1995.

For anyone wanting to learn more about Saudi Arabia, this book provides a wonderful visual experience to the culture and history of the kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

I bought the book because I intend to build a japanese style house.This book is useless in residence design.The title is wrong!The book is about famous royal palaces and sorroundings.It contains exactly nineteen beautiful color pictures, showing some general views of six imperial palaces and gardens. Short descriptions and historical details are presented with a score of black and white pictures and some sketcks.

It is difficult to believe that this ordinary book was written by the former leading authority in premodern Japanese architecture.

I recommend "Form & Space in Japanese Architecture" by Norman Carver Jr, who really understood and captured the the japanese spirit.

A wonderful book to carry around with you in Rome. The book provides very detailed maps of the City with brief descriptions of what seems like every building in Rome. It is a great format for wandering and discovering as you go.

Southam's wonderful book of (mostly) large format images taken from multiple series has been one of the most stimulating of the medium I've yet come across. I think it was Fay Godwin (also from the UK) who first made me look at both the beauty and timelessness of the landscape and the detritus of habitation despoiling same. One can get too precious with the subjects considered worthy of an exposure. From the methods of the photographer as revealed herein, Southam is a painstaking master of the medium with a strong idea of what he's trying to convey. His images of rock falls and dew ponds are unquestionably beautiful and with great colour. But it's the "stories", the multiple approaches of aspect or over time that are most interesting here. With some thoughtful essays and excellent printing, this is a book worthy of consideration.