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by: Edward R. Ford  List Price: $42.00 Amazon.com's Price: $27.72 You Save: $14.28 (34%)Prices subject to change. Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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Binding: PaperbackDewey Decimal Number: 720 EAN: 9780262562027 ISBN: 0262562022 Label: The MIT Press Manufacturer: The MIT Press Number Of Items: 1 Number Of Pages: 466 Publication Date: October 01, 2003 Publisher: The MIT Press Studio: The MIT Press Related Items:
Browse for similar items by category: Click to Display Editorial Review: Product Description: This second volume of The Details of Modern Architecture continues the study of the relationships of the ideals of design and the realities of construction in modern architecture, beginning in the late 1920s and extending to the present day. It contains a wealth of new information on the construction of modern architecture at a variety of scales from minute details to general principles. There are over 500 illustrations, including 130 original photographs and 230 original axonometric drawings, arranged to explain the technical, aesthetic, and historical aspects of the building form. Most of the modern movements in architecture have identified some paradigm of good construction, arguing that buildings should be built like Gothic cathedrals, like airplanes, like automobiles, like ships, or like primitive dwellings. Ford examines the degree to which these models were followed, either in spirit or in form, and reveals much about both the theories and techniques of modern architecture, including the extent to which the current constructional theories of High Tech and Deconstruction are dependent on the traditional modernist paradigms, as well as the ways in which all of these theories differ from the realities of modern building. Individual chapters treat the work of Eliel and Eero Saarinen, Eric Gunnar Asplund, Richard Neutra, Alvar Aalto, Le Corbusier, and Louis Kahn, as well as the Case Study, High Tech, Postmodern, and Deconstructivist architects. Among the individual buildings documented are Eliel Saarinen's Cranbrook School, Asplund's Woodland Cemetery, Fuller's Dymaxion house, the Venturi house, the Eames and other Case Study houses, the concrete buildings of Le Corbusier, Aalto's Säynätsalo Town Hall, and Kahn's Exeter Library and Salk Institute -- with many details published for the first time. Average Rating:
 Rating:  - explains why "God is in Details"I guess most architects are familiar with the super famous modernists' projects, but few know what was put on the working drawings to realize it. This book does not provide actual construction drawings, but provide enough information to address what was quintessential aspects of the details. The reader would really appreciate the ingenuity of modern master's detailing by Ford's rich axonometric drawings of particular details. Ford painstakingly explains major issues involved in the details and weaves ... Read More Rating: - Just like the first oneLike the first volume, excellent book. Be prepared, however, for sentences like this, on page 127: "Perhaps because this methodology required the juxtaposition of opposites seemingly incapable of reconciliation, the irrational combination of radically different techniques, and the simultaneous consideration of multiple variables, it was one at which Aalto excelled". Both books are pretty much like that. It's interesting to read these elaborate sentences, but often they're the umpteenth re-statement of ... Read More Rating:  - Poor drawingsThis book could be the greatest book in my bookshelf, but the detail drawings are so basic and naive that it's valuable almost only for the essays. I mean... I bought a book where I expected to find good and useful details, and got a book with excelent essays about construction according to the masters (from Lutyens to Morphosis). That's why I gave it 3 stars instead of the 5 the title deserved. Rating: - Scholarly text and incredibly detailed drawingsA review of famous modern architects' buildings, starting with H.H. Richardson and ending with Wright's Usonian houses. Shows how each's ideals regarding architectural honesty are revealed and often compromised in their buildings. The theme is really not important, as long as it provides a framework for discussion of construction methods, which is the real heart of the book. (For the sequel, another theme, the influence of industrialization, is added to the discussion.) You'll learn interesting facts: ... Read More Rating:  - The missing detailsI received the books (both the earlier publication and the follow up vol 2) today after a long wait. I must say that I have high expectation of the books and reckon that they could make an important contribution to the study of architecture. In an age where students are learning only from glossy mags and have no idea how buildings are put together and how the tactile quality of construction works, I think it is right that somebody should revisit the art and craft of architecture. However, I ... Read More 
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