Book Description
Taking an original photographic approach to look in detail at certain topics, these four fascinating books provide deeper understanding and richer enjoyment of the worlds of architecture, art, famous artists, and myths and legends. AUTHOR BIO: Neil Stevenson studied architecture at Newcastle University from 1979 to 1984. He has worked for Kenzo Tange in Tokyo and practiced in London.
Customer Reviews:
The World's Greatest Buildings Explored and Explained
The World's Greatest Buildings Explored and Explained.......2007-03-15
Great photos as there always is in the DK series. Takes the viewer from ancient Egypt to 1994 completion of the Osaka Airport designed by Piano. Great introduction to architecture.
50 of the World's Greatest Structures.......2003-01-27
Probably the only thing better than owning this book, would be to travel to all these locations with someone you absolutely loved and who absolutely had a love for life and architecture.
Features:
-Every important architectural style from ancient Egyptian to Contemporary
-50 sites illustrating changes and developments in architecture in all cultures
-Authoritative text to explain developments in technology, materials and styles
-Detailed annotations
Some of the sites featured: Notre-Dame-du Haut, Ise Shrine, The Chrysler Building, The Parthenon, Taj Mahal, Temple of Amun, Karnak, The Colosseum, Santa Sophia, Pisa Cathedral, Durham Cathedral, Sydney Opera House, Tokyo Olympic Stadium and Notre-Dame, Paris.
Favorites: Santa Sophia, Kandariya Mahadev Temple, Pisa Cathedral, Durham Cathedral, Angkor Way, Florence Cathedral, St. Basil's Cathedral, Hardwick Hall, Taj Mahal, Castle Howard, Sagrada Familia and The Ark.
Each site has a two-page spread. You can see a large picture covering the middle/center of the two pages and then it is surrounded by facts about the specifications, history, floor plans, sketches, inside views, specific decorations and styles.
When viewing the pictures of the Leaning tower of Pisa, you also get to see the inside of the Pisa Cathedral and read about Romanesque vaulting.
My favorite site is the Notre-Dame, Paris. This is the most amazing Gothic cathedral ever and was well worth the bus ride to Paris! Unfortunately they don't have room to show you the interior, which is rather amazing in itself.
An exploration into human creativity. This book will make you want to travel the world to see these fascinating buildings in person. Just to imagine walking amongst all this inspiration makes one feel overwhelmingly alive.
Who would not want to walk along the stone-vaulted corridors in the Castle Drogo?
Feeling Inspired.
Pictures and info about the world's best structures........1999-03-30
Every D-K book I have had the pleasure of reading has been a feast for the eyes as well as the mind. This one is no exception. I enjoyed it because it explores many famous structures as well as some which should be famous but are not. I knew little about architecture before I opened the book and so I learned a great deal and enjoyed every minute of it. I love this book!
Book Description
Practical advice on collecting coins, with tips on how to research, organize and build your collection including the internet marketplace.
Book Description
Explore the world's greatest buildings! Architecture is filled with amazing illustrations and photographs that take you to the heart of the world's landmark buildings. Get the opportunity to look beyond the facade. Examine materials and technology that shape buildings, and identify the key elements and decorative features of each architectural style. This is the best definitive visual guide on architecture; it covers 5,000 years of architectural design, style, and construction from airports to ziggurats.
Book Description
With the birth of the steel-frame skyscraper in the late nineteenth century came a new breed of man, as bold and untamed as any this country had ever known. These "cowboys of the skies," as one journalist called them, were the structural ironworkers who walked steel beams -- no wider, often, than the face of a hardcover book -- hundreds of feet above ground, to raise the soaring towers and vaulting bridges that so abruptly transformed America in the twentieth century.
Many early ironworkers were former sailors, new Americans of Irish and Scandinavian descent accustomed to climbing tall ships' masts and schooled in the arts of rigging. Others came from a small Mohawk Indian reservation on the banks of the St. Lawrence River or from a constellation of seaside towns in Newfoundland. What all had in common were fortitude, courage, and a short life expectancy. "We do not die," went an early ironworkers' motto. "We are killed."
High Steel is the stirring epic of these men and of the icons they built -- and are building still. Shifting between past and present, Jim Rasenberger travels back to the earliest iron bridges and buildings of the nineteenth century; to the triumph of the Brooklyn Bridge and the 1907 tragedy of the Quebec Bridge, where seventy-five ironworkers, including thirty-three Mohawks, lost their lives in an instant; through New York's skyscraper boom of the late 1920s, when ironworkers were hailed as "industrial age heroes." All the while, Rasenberger documents the lives of several contempor-ary ironworkers raising steel on a twenty-first-century skyscraper, the Time Warner building in New York City.
This is a fast-paced, bare-knuckled portrait of vivid personalities, containing episodes of startling violence (as when ironworkers dynamited the Los Angeles Times building in 1910) and exhilarating adventure. In the end, High Steel is also a moving account of brotherhood and family. Many of those working in the trade today descend from multigenerational dynasties of ironworkers. As they walk steel, they follow in the footsteps of their fathers, grandfathers, and great-grandfathers.
We've all had the experience of looking at a par-ticularly awe-inspiring bridge or building and wondering, How did they do that? Jim Rasenberger asks -- and answers -- the question behind the question: What sort of person would willingly scale such heights, take such chances, face such danger? The result is a depiction of the American working class as it has seldom appeared in literature: strong, proud, autonomous, enduring, and utterly compelling.
Customer Reviews:
One of the best.......2005-06-24
Not many books have made me stay up until the early morning hours reading,this one did,the alternating chapters of present day steel workers and early 1900s history was a stroke of genius,all you office people who sit in your little air conditioned rat holes all year need to read this and understand what the construction industry has had to put up with for many years just so you little prima donnas can be comfortable.This is the story of real men working hard for a living.
A Special Fraternity.......2004-10-18
Jim Rasenberger unblinkingly depicts the demanding nature of the work done by these unique men. The reader cannot help but be impressed with their bravery and accomplishment.
It's also clear that this is one of the last few places where men only need apply. In almost every other phase of American working life, qualified women are accepted as working peers. It's really ironic that one of the thickest "glass ceilings" is where they haven't even built the ceiling yet...
But Rasenberger's job is not to change this world, but just write about it. And write he does - you share in the working days of these men, of what happens when they fall (as they do), their families, their heritage, and, in an especially moving chapter, their heroic work right after the collapse of the World Trade Center.
Gender equality is the right thing. I get impatient when I encounter a workplace where women are so clearly unwelcome. What these men do, though, is very special and very much worth our attention and praise. As we might ask them to confront their stereptypes about women, we're challenged to confront our own stereotypes about the "lazy, ignorant construction worker." Rasenberger teaches us that nothing could be more unfair.
These are intelligent, skilled, disciplined and, above all, brave men who can do what we need done. The book will open your eyes.
Outstanding Account of Brave Brotherhood.......2004-06-23
An outstanding account of the brotherhood that built the New York City skyline. Rasenberger does two things particularly well in this book. First, he provides a fine history of the DANGEROUS iron working trade, as it developed with the advent of the syscraper, the redoubtable Flatiron building. "The danger was reflected in the carnage...of 1,000 members of Chicago Local 1 that same year, 103 were injured, 15 permanently disabled and 18 died." Second, he paints lovely portraits of the individuals (the stoic daredevils) who did the work, Sam Parks, "Frenchy" and Jack Doyle, to name a few. I highly recommend that a prospective reader use Amazon's "look inside" feature to sample Rasenber's non-nonsene prose, so well-suited to his subject matter.
A thrilling history and profession, beautifully evoked!.......2004-05-05
"High Steel" has the reader marveling that this dramatic story has remained untold until now. As in "Seabiscuit," the author's narrative skills work with an exotic profession, and a dramatic period in history, to produce a truly gripping read. Rasenberger illuminates the history of ironwork in this country, and beautifully evokes both its danger and its draw to those who join the trade. It is a thrilling, perilous, foreign world up there where the ironworkers spend their days; we are privileged to gain entrance to this world through "High Steel."
A great story.......2004-04-16
This story of iron workers is both extremely interesting and a really fun read. It provides beautifully crafted vignettes drawn both from the history of iron workers and from contemporary tales of today's iron workers at work in New York. A strong narrative thread connects these stories as the reader learns about the lives of a small group of iron workers today at the same time as Rasenberger deftly introduces the history of this trade and its daring tradesmen that brings this story to life and sets it in context. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in iron workers, in the history of our tall buildings and impressive bridges and to anyone looking for an accessible and fun read about real workers engaged in daring and dangerous work. It's beautifully written, a sympathetic portrait, yet one that is not afraid to highlight the faults and foibles of the people it describes, making the story one that resonates as accurate and, most of all, real.
Customer Reviews:
Good book on Local 40 Ironworkers.......2007-01-04
A good book for reading about the history and stories of the Local 40 Structural Ironworkers of NYC.
Great Story for Iron Workers.......2006-03-19
Rasenberger brings awareness to the little known and aknowledged trade of Iron Workers. This is an excellent book for those who are in the trade and those who want a close to real life view of who Ironworkers are and what their life was and is like. The book gives a pretty accurate history of the trade going back to the early Bridgeman to the current International Associates of Bridge, Structrual, Ornamental and Reinforcing Iron Workers. Being a 3rd generation Iron Worker I found this a very pleasureable read and recommend it to anyone who wants to know more about what it is that we do as we build America on Beam at a time.
Book Description
Escape into these spectacular color photographs of more than 50 of the world's most beautiful lighthouses. They hail from North American shores such as the Outer Banks, Nova Scotia, Bermuda, and the California and Oregon coasts, as well as throughout the Mediterranean, the North Sea, the South Pacific, Asian waters, and the Caribbean.This book is dedicated to the lighthouses of history, legends, films, novels, and personal reveries. Spectacular Atlantic storms rage just outside the cozy interiors, which often contain the most unusual furniture. The text covers the individual characteristics, location, and history of these extraordinary coastal monuments, together with their technical development and the complex psychology of the modern-day hermits who live in them. This book is for all who love the seacoast and its architecture.
Customer Reviews:
Complete in all means.......2007-01-18
Very thorough and detail piece of art as well as a study. Because this is what this book is all about. A complete study with details that are hard to be gathered, followed by a photographic representation that is between the thin line of art and reality.
Congratulations to the author and the team for this project.
Nikiforos
P.S, Excellent price!!!
Average customer rating:
- As beautiful as it is informative
- A Visual Primer of the Buildings You Should Know
- Great Guide to the world's greatest architectural designs!
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The World's Greatest Buildings: Masterpieces of Architecture & Engineering (Time-Life Guides)
Ruth Greenstein ,
Bronwyn Hanna ,
John Haskell ,
Deborah Malor ,
John Phillips ,
Thomas A. Ranieri ,
Mark Stiles , and
Bronwyn Sweeney
Manufacturer: Time-Life Books
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Architecture Explained (Annotated Guides)
ASIN: 0737000821 |
Book Description
They speak to a culture's aspirations and to its imagination, begging the question, “How did they do that?” This unusual volume is a fact-filled, full color field guide to some of the most intriguing and remarkable structures in the world. Also includes profiles of well-known architects, engineers, and builders.
Customer Reviews:
As beautiful as it is informative.......2004-02-13
GREATEST BUILDINGS lends itself to both private reflections and public discussion. It appeals to almost anyone interested in the subject of buildings or architecture from a historical, engineering or aesthetic perspective. The color photographs and structural renderings are detailed and wonderfully realized. Each building is covered in two pages with a background of sort along with any unique engineering or structural problem that was involved. The selections are a good cross-section of cultures.
I have yet to see someone pick this up without perusing and making a comment or two. Color, extra long, thick paper.
A Visual Primer of the Buildings You Should Know.......2004-02-12
This book covers 100 great buildings, giving each one two pages and a few images. There are all the obvious choices for great structures--the Great Wall, the Empire State Building, Versaille, etc. What I enjoyed the most was filling in the cultural gaps in my knowledge: 26 of the 100 structures/buildings were unfamiliar to me. I felt much more informed, and several of these places I plan to do a bit of research on, such as Krak des Chevaliers and Van Eetvelde House. I also enjoyed recognizing each of the 74 structures I was familar with and learning a bit more about some of these familar places as well. The book provides a quick list of key facts such as builder, date, style, material, etc. that makes this a handy book to have around for reference. The pictures are beautifully presented, but due to having only two pages, there are so few of them that I kept longing to go and reread other books or material on the great buildings that I loved, such as Fallingwater or the Alhambra. This is a good read that may inspire you to look for more detailed information on the buildings you find especially interesting.
Great Guide to the world's greatest architectural designs!.......2001-11-23
This book is indeed a masterpiece and it is great for someone who is studying to be an engineer or is interested in architecture. It is fantastic and has everything from the Lovely Louvre to the palace at Petra, from the Great Golden Gate to the construction of the Chrysler. It shows fine examples of art deco, modern, classical, Greek, Islamic etc. architectural wonders. It not only explains and shows the construction of these great buildings, but for certain buildings it also shows their plan, it's legends, along with information about who built it, why did they build it, whom did it build it for, when was it built, and where it is. It also has sections showing the greatest styles of architecture ever used along with a series of historic sites in the world. All in all this is a fantastic and very useful guide to the masterpieces of Architecture and Engineering.
Average customer rating:
- Big and surprising, plenty of pictures
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Superstructures: The World's Greatest Modern Structures
Neil Parkyn
Manufacturer: Merrell
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Skyscrapers
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Skyscrapers: Structure and Design
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Santiago Calatrava: Complete Works
ASIN: 1858942381 |
Book Description
Presents the most ambitious, awe-inspiring and advanced engineered structures of the last one hundred years. International coverage includes all types of major constructions, from enormous dams and vast wind tunnels to high-speed-railway lines and international airports; from space-exploration launch sites and massive oil platforms to a succession of remarable tunnels and bridges. Large format, clearly organized, profusely illustrated and accessibly written.
Customer Reviews:
Big and surprising, plenty of pictures.......2005-06-11
I thought the Falkirk Wheel built in Scotland in 1998-2002 was the most unique item in this book. The circles which are the most obvious features of the design look like the eyes of needles made of concrete. The concrete aqueduct which carries passenger boats through these circles are supported only at the outer edges, so it is possible for a camera to capture pictures of the sky or a distant hillside through the arc under the canal. This is described as "the high-level Union Canal." (p. 62). The Falkirk Wheel allows boats to be lowered to a basin leading into the Forth & Clyde Canal, part of a continuous waterway link between Scotland's east and west coast. The visitor center at the lower ground level has windows that allow spectators to look up as the wheel rotates, observing a gear system that keeps each caisson containing water and boats level during the fifteen minute drop or lift. Anyone expecting to see a lot of pictures of bridges and stadiums is likely to be surprised on pages 5-6 to see a shallow arched canal ending in mid-air, with the boat suspended in a container of water so close to the slanted windows of the building below that the shadow of everything is the most ominous clue that whatever is going on is not ordinary.
People who have learned to work with computer aided design programs that figure out all the angles and lengths for unusual shapes might appreciate the number of calculations required for the Yokohama Port Terminal built in Japan in 2000-2002. The index lists pictures on pages 13, 15, and 56-59. On page 13 it is described as "a whole `landscape' of passenger concourses and external terraces has been created with a structure of folded steel beams." A ceiling that could be flat plates welded together is described as "Interior ramp with folded-plate beams above, typical of the complex, fluid spaces inside the building." (p. 59).
The best roller-coaster pictures I have seen show the Top Thrill Dragster at Cedar Point Resort, Ohio, 2002-2003. The tubular tower of yellow cylinders supports a red sectional steel trusses track that climbs 400 feet and twists 270 degrees as it falls vertically. This has a snowy backdrop in the pictures on pages 159 and 164-165. I did not find any pictures showing what holds the riders in the roller-coaster during this high-acceleration ride.
The interesting roof structures for bus and train passengers at Oriente Station in Lisbon, Portugal, 1993-1998, cantilevered steel-and-glass canopies provide the drama on pages 20-23. This is a big book, with big dams, sea barriers, telescopes, wind tunnels, and the CERN Large Hadron Collider "inside which protons and other nuclei will crash head on, Big Bang style," (p. 154) in Geneva, Switzerland, 1997-2006, an underground great ring tunnel 17 miles long.
Books:
- Astronomy: A Beginner's Guide to the Universe, Fourth Edition
- Astronomy: Journey to the Cosmic Frontier/Book and 3-D Glasses
- Astronomy Today (5th Edition)
- Astronomy Today (5th Edition)
- Back to the Moon: A Novel
- Bad Luck and Trouble
- Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make Competition Irrelevant
- Building a Successful Construction Company
- Cafe & Restaurant Design
- Classical Dynamics of Particles and Systems
Books Index
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A Visual Dictionary of Architecture
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