NorCalMod: Icons of Northern California Modernism

Book Description

Many people think modernist architecture never flowered in California north of the San Fernando Valley. NorCalMod dispels that notion in a copiously illustrated history showcasing extraordinary examples of its proud contribution to the Bay Area and environs. As a style, modernist architecture was hotly debated in its day (why create modern structures where such distinctive Victorian and Arts and Crafts buildings already existed?) pulling heavyweights such as Frank Lloyd Wright, Lewis Mumford, and Walter Gropius into the fray. Ultimately, that existing "Bay Region Style" would remain the area's architectural hallmark, but not before hundreds of important modernist projects, many still standing yet unjustly neglected today, had been established. The remarkable photos in this book open our eyes to a long-lost chapter in the history of California architecture and make NorCalMod a volume to be enjoyed by those interested in California history and style as well as by architecture students and professionals.

Customer Reviews:

Of both particular and general value; a fine piece of work........2007-05-30

This is an accessible, well-written and thoughtful book; a rarity in current architectural discourse.
Furthermore, it is handsomely designed and illustrated with beautiful archival photography.
Though it focuses on the seemingly narrow topic of the neglected/suppressed history of modern architecture in Northern California, its value is much broader.
More generally, it provides lucid insights into the mechanisms of architectural history and, by extension, the very nature by which we come to understand and appreciate our built environment in the present age.

Great, Important Work.......2007-05-17

This underappreciated topic finally gets the attention it deserves. Great photos, interviews, etc which are obviously the result of extensive research. Color photos would have been nice.

Urban Planning Conservation and Preservation

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Urban Planning Conservation and Preservation
Nahoum Cohen
Manufacturer: McGraw-Hill Professional
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Preserving the World's Great Cities: The Destruction and Renewal of the Historic Metropolis
The City Shaped: Urban Patterns and Meanings Through History
Keeping Time: The History and Theory of Preservation in America
A Richer Heritage: Historic Preservation in the Twenty-First Century
Historic Preservation: Collective Memory and Historical Identity

ASIN: 0071375848

Book Description

*Covers rehabilitation and preservation of buildings and entire neighborhoods *Analyzes the key elements of the urban environment *600 beautiful full-color photos enrich the text

San Francisco Style: Design, Decor, and Architecture

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San Francisco Style: Design, Decor, and Architecture
Diane Dorrans Saeks
Manufacturer: Chronicle Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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San Francisco: A Certain Style
San Francisco Interiors
San Francisco Modern: Interiors, Architecture & Design
California Country Style
San Francisco Houses (Designpocket)

ASIN: 0811840433

Book Description

Style expert Diane Dorrans Saeks has an eye for design and she's setting her sights on the City by the Bay. This lavishly photographed book opens the doors to exquisite Bay Area dwellings, inviting readers of all tastes into just-so apartments, grand houses, light-drenched lofts, and cozy bungalows. Enter the graceful abode of San Francisco luminary Ann Getty, whose unique vision is reflected in a multitude of textures unrestricted by style or period. Visit designer Steven Volpe's South of Market loft, converted from a 1916 printing factory. A tour of Dr. Paul Turek's hillside home pays homage to classic contemporary Italian design (and the art of crafting the perfect surfboard). With more than 200 inspiring color photographs, this collection captures the scope of homes and lifestyles that make the northern California region unique. And with Diane Dorrans Saeks's list of where to shop, view art, and truly get an inside look at the city notorious for stealing hearts, this is the perfect guide for interior designers, accomplished home stylists, and anyone looking to create San Francisco style.

A New Theory of Urban Design (Center for Environmental Structure Series, Vol 6)

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A New Theory of Urban Design (Center for Environmental Structure Series, Vol 6)
Christopher Alexander , Hajo Neis , Artemis Anninou , and Ingrid King
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction (Center for Environmental Structure Series)
The Timeless Way of Building
The Oregon Experiment (Center for Environmental Structure Series)
The Production of Houses (Center for Environmental Structure Series)
The Phenomenon of Life: The Nature of Order, Book 1 An Essay of the Art of Building and the Nature of the Universe (The Nature of Order, Book 1)

ASIN: 0195037537

Book Description

The venerable cities of the past, such as Venice or Amsterdam, convey a feeling of wholeness, an organic unity that surfaces in every detail, large and small, in restaurants, shops, public gardens, even in balconies and ornaments. But this sense of wholeness is lacking in modern urban design, with architects absorbed in problems of individual structures, and city planners preoccupied with local ordinances, it is almost impossible to achieve. In this groundbreaking volume, the newest in a highly-acclaimed series by the Center for Environmental Structure, architect and planner Christopher Alexander presents a new theory of urban design which attempts to recapture the process by which cities develop organically. To discover the kinds of laws needed to create a growing whole in a city, Alexander proposes here a preliminary set of seven rules which embody the process at a practical level and which are consistent with the day-to-day demands of urban development. He then puts these rules to the test, setting out with a number of his graduate students to simulate the urban redesign of a high-density part of San Francisco, initiating a project that encompassed some ninety different design problems, including warehouses, hotels, fishing piers, a music hall, and a public square. This extensive experiment is documented project by project, with detailed discussion of how each project satisfied the seven rules, accompanied by floorplans, elevations, street grids, axonometric diagrams and photographs of the scaled-down model which clearly illustrate the discussion. A New Theory of Urban Design provides an entirely new theoretical framework for the discussion of urban problems, one that goes far to remedy the defects which cities have today.

Average customer rating:

Amazing
Provides his commercial design work plus new graphics created just for this book: some 700 images in all
Brillian
SOLID GOLD!!!
MARTIN VENEZKY ROCKS ME

It Is Beautiful...Then Gone
Martin Venezky
Manufacturer: Princeton Architectural Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Fingerprint: The Art of Using Handmade Elements in Graphic Design
Handwritten: Expressive Lettering in the Digital Age
U&lc : Influencing Design & Typography
How To Be a Graphic Designer Without Losing Your Soul
The Art of Looking Sideways

ASIN: 1568984561

Book Description

Martin Venezky is not your typical point-and-click designer. While he is adept at operating a mouse, he is just as comfortable cutting and pasting type from old books or collaging found signs or making his own photographs. What results are the unique creations of a unique eye. And with this eye and his design firm, Appetite Engineers, Venezky has created beautiful and influential work for Speak and Open magazines, the Sundance Film Festival, Reebok, and numerous publishers and institutions.
It Is Beautiful...Then Gone presents Venzky's commercial design work as well as new graphic work created for the book; details of the wall collage that define his office and his aesthetic; the singular photography, collections, and notebooks that define his personality; and text that explains -- or at least questions -- it all. Venezky's philosophy that life and design are a continuation of each other permeates this elegant book filled with hundreds of idiosyncratic, deeply wrought examples.

Customer Reviews:

Amazing.......2006-10-03

Typographic inspiration at its best. Effortlessly combines interviews and stories with images of Venezky's work...every graphic designer should own this book.

Provides his commercial design work plus new graphics created just for this book: some 700 images in all.......2006-02-03

Martin Venezky's It Is Beautiful Then Gone (1568984561, $40.00) provides an unusual artistic approach: Venezky hones 'Slow Design', using raw materials and old design tools of collage and cut-and-paste to create an artwork which will intentionally age and decay over time. By this process, Martin Venezky maintains, the art evolves and changes and the artist develops a closer connection with the tool over the machine. It Is Beautiful...then Gone provides his commercial design work plus new graphics created just for this book: some 700 images in all.

Brillian.......2005-03-15

Martin is brilliant, this book is beautifully designed and his work is amazing. Definately a very inspirational book for all graphic designers out there, especially for those experiemental typographers.

SOLID GOLD!!!.......2004-12-29

If you are looking for experimental and intiguing imagery this is the book for you! I don't understand how Martin got looked over so bad? His work is from the school of Cranbrook. If you like collage work and fun typography buy it!!!

MARTIN VENEZKY ROCKS ME.......2004-12-11

this book is the most beautifulest, gorgeousest, most awesome kickass book EVAR. it is heartily recommended. keep a lookout for martin's cat, "baby girl", who makes frequent appearances. WORD.

-fish

The Gate: The True Story of the Design and Construction of the Golden Gate Bridge

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Can't Stop Reading This Book!
A thriller for engineers and others.
Let's Make It a Movie: Survivor III!

The Gate: The True Story of the Design and Construction of the Golden Gate Bridge
John van der Zee
Manufacturer: Backinprint.com
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Superspan: The Golden Gate Bridge
Spanning the Gate
Hoover Dam: An American Adventure
High Steel: Building the Bridges Across San Francisco Bay
Empire State Building: The Making of a Landmark

ASIN: 0595094295

Book Description

<>The Gate is an absorbing panoramic account of the building of one of the world's most beautiful and famous landmarks. In a narrative richly laden with detail and the flavor of the period, John van der Zee reveals for the first time the complete history of the longest single-span suspension bridge of its time—including the identity of the man who actually designed it, which has been obscured since its completion in 1937.

With novelistic flair, van der Zee recounts an exciting drama of human greed, ambition, frailty, courage, and intellectual achievement.

"It is among the top books on California I have ever read."—Kevin Starr, State Librarian of California and author of Americans and the California Dream

"A case study of personal and technological adventure bordering on hubris...The engineers in this bok come alive as people, with all the faults and foibles associated iwth the human species. A fascinating work that shows that the best of cutting-edge engineering is much, much more than science and technology."—Henri Petroski, Nature

Customer Reviews:

Can't Stop Reading This Book!.......2006-03-13

I have a bad habit of picking up books that look interesting and then giving up after the first hundred or so pages. This book is one of the few out there that gain and hold your interest, with such compelling detail that it boggles the mind how the author could have compiled and written this book in just 18 months. This is a wonderful, well-researched book with many surprising twists and turns. In fact, I bank with Bank of America, and now when I go up to the ATM and see the picture of the Golden Gate on the screen, I know why that image is there. A must read, and you will never look at the Golden Gate the same way again.

A thriller for engineers and others........2000-09-30

The book is one of the few books that I've ever read twice. And I find that I've continued to tell other people about this book from time to time. I would characterize the book as a thriller or, at least a drama, for and about engineers. The book is highly location-conscious. After reading the book, you'll be able to relate how the Golden Gate Bridge is related to engineering companies in New York City, to fund-raising efforts in the northern counties in California, to engineering professors in the mid-west, to a theater designer of the 1939 World's Fair on Treasure Island, to professors at U.C.Berkeley, and to a certain humble bascule bridge that continues its unsung day-to-day chores in an obscure part of San Francisco. To repeat, I really liked the author's interconnections, that he related in the book. The book deserves to be back in print, and it deserves to be in every gift shop in the City. The book is highly fact-based (it is not laced with fanciful commentary), and yet the book is difficult to put down. Perhaps the most striking and sad part of Van Der Zee's book, is that the engineer responsible for most of the innovations of the bridge was left off of the plaque (for political reasons), which is mounted on the Golden Gate Bridge.

Let's Make It a Movie: Survivor III!.......2000-09-09

San Francisco politics. Bridge politics. Egos clashing and crashing. The original "Survivor" saga, this book has all sorts of people intrique. Strauss is definitely the book's Richard. If the two of them ever sought out the same goal....yikes!! Strauss cut deals with everyone from whom he could benefit, and he axed out those "friends" as soon as he was finished 'using' them. The designer, Ellis...out, and it was three years before he could find another job in the depression 30s. O'Shaunassy, as SF's city engineer, was right in there swinging from the start. Michael was voted out by Strauss, and cast aside. (He did finish the Hetch Hetchy project for the city.) Strauss created a string of bodies as his ego forged ahead to be known as "Mr. Bridge, designer, builder, ......" of the Golden Gate span. Well, he was none of these things. Unfortunately, the text is quite weak on providing the engineering details of the span.The few pictures the book has are interesting, but not sufficient to acquire a good idea of the supurb engineering that went into the structure. You'll have to go to another book for that!

Building with Nature: Inspiration for the Arts and Crafts Home

Average customer rating:

Building with Nature: an example of how architectural styles happen
The Art of Arts and Crafts
Origins of the "Arts & Crafts" in America
Maybeck scholar reviews Arts and Crafts book
Building with Nature--Review

Building with Nature: Inspiration for the Arts and Crafts Home
Leslie M. Freudenheim
Manufacturer: Gibbs Smith, Publisher
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Greene & Greene
Toward a Simpler Way of Life: The Arts and Crafts Architects of California
Purcell & Elmslie
Bernard Maybeck at Principia College
Historic Arts & Crafts Homes of GB

ASIN: 1586854631

Book Description

This new edition of the classic, Building with Nature: Roots of the San Francisco Bay Region Tradition, focuses on the beginnings (1865 and on) of the Bay Area shingle style and Arts & Crafts collaboration in California, and the origins of the trend toward building simple rustic homes in harmony with nature. Freudenheim explores how and why a small, influential group of Californians (including Joseph Worcester, Bernard Maybeck, Charles Keeler, William Keith, Charles Lummis, A. Page Brown, and others)--all of whom had come from the East or from England--were especially devoted to Ruskin and the Arts & Crafts style and how this combined with their dedication to California's natural beauty to create a unique architectural movement.

Customer Reviews:

Building with Nature: an example of how architectural styles happen.......2006-02-07

Ms. Freudenheim has provided us with a very well-written book about how new and developing architectureal styles happen, using the SF Bay Area and the development of the Arts and Crafts style as a perfect example. Ms. Freudenheim's excellant research and engaging style shows, in words and photos, how a web of people and buildings continually interact and thus result in a new style. In this greatly expanded edition of a now hard-to-find great original book, we learn about these people, their interactions, and how this resulted in a new archtectural style. This book will be enjoyed by anyone interested in the Arts and Crafts style, either as a home owner, collector, scholar, or as a total observer of the Arts and Crafts movement and it's recent resurgence. Enjoy!

The Art of Arts and Crafts.......2006-01-26

Leslie Freudenheim has captured an era that has given great beauty to our lives. With grace and wisdom she has presented the San Francisco Bay Area as a landscape filled with the richness of the architectural geniuses who gave the area their distinctive creations. The beauty of the arts and crafts buildings complements nature, and bonds our living spaces into it. The author has, with a great deal of style, significantly enriched our experience of this fine period in our history.

Origins of the "Arts & Crafts" in America.......2006-01-22

This is the first book to truly explore the origins of the American Arts & Crafts Movement. A group in San Francisco began constructing simpler buildings and furnishing them with what eventually was called Mission furniture. This lead to the nationwide popularization of Craftsman homes and furniture by Stickley and others. If you have an interest in Architecture or the "Arts & Crafts" you should read this book.

Maybeck scholar reviews Arts and Crafts book.......2006-01-16

Building With Nature, when first published in 1974, brought attention to Bay Region Architecture as a tradition, as the progenitor of simple homes, grounded on the philosophy of Bernard Maybeck and Charles Keeler among others, and as an influence on residential architecture of subsequent generations. In this new and significantly expanded book, Leslie Freudenheim broadens the inquiry toward a wider appreciation of indigenous forms of California architecture, and an understanding of the relation of natural building and environmental sensitivity to the international Arts and Crafts Movement. The book is a must for any Arts and Crafts devotee and architectural history, personal, or professional library.
Robert M. Craig [author, Bernard Maybeck at Principia College The Art and Craft of Building]

Building with Nature--Review.......2006-01-14

This is a very important reexamination of the American origins of the Arts and Crafts Movement and the major contibutions of a small group of Bay Area designers. The central role is occupied by the Reverend Joseph Worcester who created one of the true landmarks of the movement with the Church of the New Jerusalem in San Francisco. The author provides new context and a great amount of new reseach. This book is a major accomplishment.

San Francisco: Architecture & Design (And Guides)

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San Francisco: Architecture & Design (And Guides)

Manufacturer: Te Neues Publishing Company
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ASIN: 3832790802

Teotihuacan: Art from the City of the Gods

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Teotihuacan: Art from the City of the Gods

Manufacturer: Thames & Hudson
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ASIN: 0500277672

San Francisco: Architecture of the San Francisco Bay Area: History and Guide

Average customer rating:

Not bad, but not comprehensive
Good Guide for a Walking Tour

San Francisco: Architecture of the San Francisco Bay Area: History and Guide
Mitchell Schwarzer
Manufacturer: William Stout Publishers
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Mexico City: Architecture & Design (And Guides)
San Francisco: Architecture & Design (And Guides)
San Francisco Architecture: An Illustrated Guide to the Outstanding Buildings, Public Artworks, and Parks in the Bay Area of California

ASIN: 0974621455

Book Description

The successor to the tremendously popular guide book, Architecture and Design: SF (1998), this delightful traveler's companion covers the best in classic and contemporary architecture throughout the Bay Area. It's not just for tourists; in fact, it's a must-have for Bay Area architecture and design aficionados, the perfect item to keep in the glove compartment for reference in any neighborhood. The first half of this durable, vinyl-bound book offers a comprehensive survey of the area's architectural history, dating fro California's beginnings to the present. The rest of the book is divided into regional chapters, studded with useful maps marked with architectural points of interests. Each of the mapped landmarks is accompanied by a summary description of the project, information on the architect, date of construction and a precise address. With numerous color photos and sketches of the projects.

Customer Reviews:

Not bad, but not comprehensive.......2007-04-04

Any book that claims to be a guide to the architecture of the San Francisco Bay Area has to be either thick as a brick (a la White & Willensky's guide to NYC) or carefully (and subjectively) selective. This book is an example of the latter. While I like the color photography, the essays and the broad geographic coverage of the book, I don't particularly like the selected buildings. All the real landmarks are here, but beyond that there's a definite domestic, modernist and arts & crafts favoritism. It's much more like Sutro's AIA guide to San Diego than Gebhard & Winters' guide to Los Angeles. Chances are, if your favorite buildings are landmarks (of any age) or modernist attractions, they'll be in here. If they're older traditional structures that don't quite make landmark status, they probably will NOT be in here. So that begs the question: When are we going to get a really good comprehensive guide to the entire Bay Area? Granted, such a task is enormous, but not impossible. Such guides exist for New York City and the state of North Carolina, for example.

The volume itself is attractively printed and bound.

Good Guide for a Walking Tour.......2007-02-11

About 25% of this book is an architectural history of Sanfrancisco and the Bay area. This sectiondescribes the various stages in development in San Francisco beginning with the earliest days of the cities development, going through the Indian/Hispanic period, the Victorian era, Eclecticism, modernism and the contemporary.

Following this is a guide to the buildings in the area that have some architectural significance. This section is broken down into seventeen general areas that have maps with the building shown, and then a brief description of the particular houses.

The book is printed on very thin paper to make it eash to carry. It has a permanent ribbon type page marker. These lend the book to being carried with you as you make a walking tour of the areas of interest in the city. Much of downtown San Francisco is such a small geographical area that it lends itself very well to walking tours. Many of the houses illustrated are still in use as private residences, so interior access will be limited, but many of the other building from churches to schools, to commercial buildings will be open.

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