Book Description
No longer a technique just for apartment dwellers or novice gardeners, the use of ornamental containers on decks, patios, terraces, and in the garden itself can save time, space, and money, while offering experienced home gardeners unique creative challenges, site flexibility, and experimental fun. Author and award-winning horticulturist Ray Rogers takes you on an engaging exploration into basic design principles as well as how to create focal points, use water, exploit the potential of empty containers, and more. Stunning photographs by Richard Hartlage provide guidance and inspiration, as well as visually explaining each principle. Gardeners at every level of experience will find inspiration and instruction in this comprehensive book.
Customer Reviews:
Pure inspiration.......2007-08-21
Yet another really fine book from Timber Press. I'll spend long, dark winter evenings wandering through these pages, absorbing the wisdom of the writers and generating ideas for next spring. Gorgeous photographs, too.
Gorgeous book and inspired arrangements.......2007-07-30
I purchased several gardening books together and this one was the highlight. Not only beautifully photographed but full of interesting suggestions and writing. My husband and I were able to immediately use some of the arrangements as inspiration for a new bed in our garden. Turned out beautifully!
Enjoyed it all.......2007-05-14
The book is an excellent reference source. Photos are beautiful. Numbering the pictures with the description very helpful. Lovely coffee table book. I have told other gardeners to seek the book out.
container gardening.......2007-03-14
(This review focuses on the photographs in "Pots in the Garden.")
Picture quality is very good throughout the book, and in parts I and II ("the elements of design" and "bringing it all together") the picture content is excellent as well.
Unlike most container gardening books this one neither details container plantings nor uses captions, instead it inconspicuosly numbers each picture and then conspicuosly puts the number in the text with its corresponding description. Garden styles represented vary but the bold, Little-and-Lewis-type modernists lead the way, and even if this isn't your favorite style of garden you will probably love the containers featured in them!
What really sets this book apart is the variety of pots featured. Terra cotta and stone/concrete are great, and the English gardening books display some wonderful copper and lead, but those of you who especially love high quality glazed/rustic containers and know that it is not all that easy to find good examples of them will be happy to add this book to your collection.
The reasons I didn't give 5 stars are the book's slightly smallish size (9 1/4 x 8 1/2) and its 3rd part ("plant groups for containers") which, though it has some very interesting and unique plant picks (dark purple/black perennial clematis?), does not show most of them in containers; admittedly difficult to do, but David Joyce's "The Complete Container Garden" sure did it well. That's about eighty pages where pots are rarely pictured.
Overall a beautiful and inspiring book at a very good price.
Customer Reviews:
A fantastic book for a very much loved park.......2006-07-26
Did you know that the elm lined mall leading to the Bethesda fountain and the view of the ramble are actually based on the layout of a church? Or that all of the lakes in Central Park are manmade. This and many other very interesting facts are interspersed with lovingly taken photographs of the park which were taken by the author of the book as well. Miller starts decribing how the park came to be and the leading ideas and ideals that lead to its creation by Olmsted and Vaux. She proceeds to describe systematically the various sections of the park providing historical information as well. She delves into the some of the controversies and compromises that Olmsted and Vaux encountered in the creation of one of the finest examples of 19th Century art but it is not a comprehensive history of the park. There is a 2 page map of the park at the of the book with a legend identifying each of the features discussed in the book. If you are first time visitor to the city wishing to explore the park in detail or a life long New Yorker this book will delight and surprise you.
Definitive Review of the Finest Work of Art in NYC.......2006-02-20
As an avid fan of Central Park who has been exploring it and studying the books on it for decades, I was amazed at what there was still to learn about it from Miller's book. For example, other historians allude to a connection between Central Park's design and the Hudson River School of landscape art: Miller provides actual sources of the designer's inspiration and shows the results explicitly in the photos. And all in a way that is not at all "bookish" but instead makes you want to go right in and see for yourself the scenes she shows so well in the book's illustrations. The beautiful photos and fascinating stories and the well chosen historical prints all work together in such a compelling and entertaining way that one might never realize one is being educated by a superb textbook in the field of art.
With her emphasis on the past of the park, and its present restored beauty, it is understandable that the author does not use very much of the book's valuable space on the remaining present-day problems, but she might at least have alluded to the incongruity of the city's insistence on using this artistic matepiece as a through route for motor traffic during the majority of daylight weekday hours. In effect, the city's Dept. of Traffic is providing a refuge from the chaos of the surrounding streets during rush hours - but for the cars, not for the people. If you want to appreciate the park shown in this book, go during the times when the traffic noise does not drown out the wind in the trees, the birdsong, and the happy voices of children!
New York's Oasis.......2005-09-21
Central Park is breath taking and this book does a fine job of giving the reader a feel for what makes this 850 acre masterpiece so special. The book is quite thorough and does an commendable job of disecting various sections of the park. The color photos are vivid and well thought out and the text is highly informative. The author has a real love for the park and it comes out in her writing. If you have never visited Central Park or have visited and fell in love with it like so many others, you will love this book. This oasis really is the heart of New York City and to understand New York you have to understand the parks history and its vast importantance to the city. Central Parks importance to New York and New Yorkers cannot be overstated, I can't imagine the city without it.
A Gorgeous Book Commemorating America's 1st Public Park.......2004-03-16
Commemorating the 150th anniversary of Central Park, photographer and historian Sara Cedar Miller celebrates the aesthetic, cultural and historic significance of America's first public park with the book "Central Park, An American Masterpiece." This is the park's definitive illustrated history, and offers some of the most gorgeous photographs I have seen on the subject - a difficult task given the number of pictures that have been drawn, painted and photographed of the Manhattan landmark. The book includes over 200 color illustrations, original plans and drawings alongside modern photos, giving the viewer/reader an historical perspective.
Accompanying Ms. Miller's work, portraying the park throughout the seasons, is a well written text which highlights the conception and creation of the park and its art and architecture. This is a big, beautiful picture book that would make a wonderful addition to any home or library. It's a wonderful gift idea. I know as I have given it numerous times.
Ms. Miller is the parks official historian and photographer and has been since the mid-1980s.
JANA
A book as worthy as the park it celebrates.......2003-11-26
Sara Miller has put together an outstanding book: a book as vast and detailed as the Great Park itself. For those not familiar with the park and its history, this is an invaluable introduction to the political, demographical, economic and, especially, aesthetic thinking that went into the creation of 800 acres of gorgeous park space in the middle of Manhattan. For those seasoned veterans of NYC history, this is a welcome reminder of the enormous vision and efforts of Calvert Vaux and Fredrick Law Olmsted, as they conceived the park.
Nota Bene: A lot of books have gorgeous photos but the print job is miserable ... Others have high-qualtity prints but the photos aren't that interesting ... This book has glorious prints and an expert print job. Pick up this book.
Rocco Dormarunno, author of The Five Points and The Five Points Concluded
Book Description
With populations decentralizing and cities sprawling ever-outward, twenty-first- century urban planners are challenged by the need to organize not just people but space itself. Hence a new architectural discipline has emerged: landscape urbanism.
In The Landscape Urbanism Reader Charles Waldheim — long at the forefront of this new movement — has assembled the definitive collection of essays by many of the field’s top practitioners. Fourteen essays written by leading figures across a range of disciplines and from around the world — including James Corner, Linda Pollak, Alan Berger, Pierre Bélanger, Julia Czerniak, and more — capture the origins, the contemporary milieu, and the aspirations of this relatively new field. The Landscape Urbanism Reader is an inspiring signal to the future of city making as well as an indispensable reference for students, teachers, architects, and urban planners.
Customer Reviews:
The Landscape Urbanism Reader.......2007-04-11
this book is really good to students who study Landscape Architecture.
The Landscape Urbanism Reader.......2007-01-15
This was a gift for my architect brother. He was thrilled with it. It was received as promised, with quick shipping and arrived in pristine shape. It was indeed a merry Christmas.
Book Description
Rain gardens encompass all possible elements that can be used to capture, channel, divert and make the most of the rain and snow that fall on a property. Using the innovative and attractive approaches described here, it is possible to enhance outdoor spaces and minimize the damaging effects of drought, stormwater runoff, and other environmental challenges. Nigel Dunnett & Andy Clayden have created a comprehensive guide to water management techniques for the garden and built environment. Filled with practical, manageable solutions for small and large-scale implementations and utilizing authoritative research with state-of-the-art case studies from all over the world, Rain Gardens is the first book on sustainable water management schemes suitable for students and professionals.
Customer Reviews:
changes the way you live your life........2007-09-05
This source book of ideas of how to make your home an easier to maintain and more ecological system is amazing. I will be using this to de-commission my lawn mower, save time and money and be more ecological. This is a real winner.
Book Description
The move to liveable communities--ideal ``small towns'' and neighborhoods where people work, live, play, and walk from place to place--is on. Profit from what a visionary group of architects leading this movement has learned about designing new ``small towns'' in Peter Katz's The New Urbanism. You'll discover the amazing potential for this kind of work as well as case studies, site plans, project analyses, and 180 beautiful photographs. This unique reference also tackles--and answers--the critical issues of crime, health, traffic, environmental degradation, and economic vitality and opens a startling window on the look and feel of future communities. Every designer can profit from this guide to building the utopias of tomorrow--today!
Customer Reviews:
Time to Pay Attention.......2005-08-05
I'm actually studying to be an Urban Planner in school. New Urbanism was a concept that greatly interested me because its principles focus around SMART and RESPONSIBLE planning.
I'm a huge fan of Peter Katz's book. There's only one thing I have to critisize about it--it doesn't confront those opposed to New Urbanism concepts, and I believe that in order to be effective you must challenge the tired, old, and sometimes downright arrogant ideas of the opposition (mostly the same Urban Planners who got us into this whole Urban Sprawl Mess).
Basically, New Urbanism speaks for itself. I would admit, it does have its own issues, but ALL great ideas have issues. And honestly, I would trade the issues of a New Urbanist Town over the issues of a delapidated suburb any day.
I think the best example I can give about how New Urbanism can nuture a growing and healthy community is to look at the television show "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition". Not to say that all New Urbanist communities build such homes, but the point I'm making is that the crew of EM:HE give to a family what they truly deserve...a good home. A good home makes a good family, and a good family can contribute to a good community.
New Urbanism is like that, in that it builds COMMUNITY. I mean, how many of us come home to our neighborhoods and sigh at what we see. I know I do. It saddens me to drive past the run down streets of my neighborhood, only to know the local government is content in finding it suitable enough for habitation.
And with rising gas prices, who wouldn't want a walkable community. I know I would, and I live in Florida--one of the more Humid States in the Union. I remember in my early college days. My Community College was 45 minutes to an Hour away (NO TRAFFIC), and so was BORDERS, my place of employment. I would go to school in the morning, drive back home, then drive all the way to BORDERS. That's A LOT of Gas, and A HUGE dent in my pocket book. But I had no choice, and I absolutely LOVED my school and job.
And that's how Jacksonville, Florida is. I LOVE it here, I love my city, but it TOTALLY sucked when I didn't have a car to get around. You HAVE to own a car in Jacksonville, being as the mass transit system is as close to unreliable as it is efficient.
I support this book as much as I support the New Urbanism movement. This book will help educate as well as inform readers of the benifits of SMART URBAN PLANNING. The notion that the ideas of New Urbanism are dangerous are absolutely absurd when compared to the dangers of the decaying suburbs of America. Why do you think Bank of America is so involved in creating better communities? Less bank robberies (LoL). And take a look at a city like Boulder, Co--voted the number one place in the country to raise a family. The city is built on an opposition to Urban Sprawl (though they could do better to lower the real estate prices).
Oh yah, and about the porches in Seaside, Florida being out of usage. Have you ever been to Seaside? Last time I checked it was a pretty vibrant community. Not to mention, have you ever visited Florida during the Summer? The Humidity will Kill you! I wouldn't be out on my porch either if it was during Summer.
Community is not Architecture.......2001-03-02
I grew up in what new urbanists would probably call a paradise. It was a real community in which neighbours were really neighbours. People did sit on their verandahs and converse with their neighbours on the street. There was an understanding that one could borrow things if the owner wasn't using them. It was considered polite to tell the owner if he was there but if he was away one could just borrow the thing and tell him when he came home if one was still using it. In short it was everything new urbanism wants. This was in a moderately large city in Canada.
There were two things wrong with this paradise:
a) it was not about verandahs, facing the street etc. It was about control and conformity. The neighbourhood protected itself by frowning on unexpected behavior. There was an expected range of interests and an expected range of activity. If someone went out of this range, one could expect social sanctions unfailingly. The dark side of Jacobs 'eyes-on-the-street' is Foucault's 'gaze.' The neighbourhood worked as an exercise in power. The verandahs and street life were instruments of that power. Heaven help anyone who had non-standard interests.
b) the neighbourhood was unsustaining. With the growth of the personal rights ethos, the ability of the neighbourhood to control its inhabitants fell away. No longer could the neighbourhood fathers take action to control petty teenage misbehaviour. Instead personal rights and social policy took these controls away from the neighbourhood and gave them to government agencies. As a result the neighbourhood is now perhaps not unsafe but definitely uncomfortable. No one leaves tools or equipment out now in case a neighbour needs to borrow it. Everything is locked up. The doors are firmly closed and neighbours now complain to the police instead of discussing thier joint problems.
New urbanism seems to miss this point. Neighbourhoods are about local power. For some people this produces a comfortable paradise. For those slightly different it creates a jail of conformity. Some people thrive in it. Some peole will be stifled. Neighboourhoods are an exercise in hopefully beneficent control. Architecture does not create this control. It can destroy it certainly and make it impossible but it cannot create it.
Every library in the country should have this book!.......1999-08-13
I have only had the book a day and already it has given me great pleasure and joy. I love the fantastic pictures and diagrams. The computer digitalizations on a few existing towns today and what they could be like were truely fasinating. I couldn't help not liking the indepth descriptions of numourous cities, towns, and villages from around the country and canada as well. This book had colorful photos and diagrams, this book to me is pure genus!
how to design urban spaces in small communities.......1999-01-08
A very good appraisal of design examples of new communities with also a consistent theoretical approach to New Urbanism concepts. This is a necessary reading to those that want to be updated with the best design practices of integrated urban spaces.
New Urbanism: This is how/where I want to live.......1998-12-12
The basic principles presented in this book are the stuff that dreams are made of. I have shared the ideas presented in this book with many of my friends and they all want to live in communities such as this. We've been strip-malled, mega-malled and automobilized to near-death. New Urbanism as presented here is like a million breaths of fresh air.
It is best to read the basic principles presented in the front of the book first. It may look like dry reading at first but as you get into it, your interest will be piqued at first, then grabbed, and you won't want to put it down till you've read it all. Having read this part you will be armed with the knowledge that, to date, no development or developer has had the guts to follow the principles completely. All of the projects presented include some elements of New Urbanism but none of them have it right. One of the other customer reviewers of this book, Ken Wing, missed this entirely. Hey Ken, there is no people in the Seaside pictures because they want the reader to see the architecture! Those who don't get it, or are afraid of change, tend to trivialze New Urbanism and mis-represent it.
Once you have read this book, you, like myself will want to immediately pack up and move to a New Urbanist community. Better ones are coming out of the ground each year and I hope to see one near me real soon.
Average customer rating:
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Mandated Landscape: British Imperial Rule in Palestine 1929-1948
Roza El-Eini
Manufacturer: Frank Cass
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 0714654264 |
Book Description
This work examines the construction of post-Soviet political space, geopolitical discourses and boundaries in Estonia. Making use of innovative methodological solutions such as Q-methodology, its analysis includes in-depth interviews in order to elucidate a variety of issues through human experience and subjective perception, such as Estonian-Russian border disputes of the 1990s, inter-ethnic issues and national integration and security.
As Estonia is one of the frontline EU accession countries and is queuing for membership of NATO, the book raises broad questions of post-Soviet geopolitics in the Baltic region and across Europe. Indeed, the book argues that small states such as Estonia should be understood as active participants in post-Soviet and European geopolitics, and not simply pawns in a superpower environment.
Customer Reviews:
A nice study.......2007-03-17
This is a compact and important study of all the aspects of landscape during the Palestine Mandate(1917-1948). It covers agriculture, Land laws, forestry, the land system, the partition plans and there is a special case study of the Shephalah, the Palestine Piedmont area on the Coastal plain. An important contribution to the field of study of Palestine in the 20th century, an excellent and interesting view of the Mandate, one that seperates politics from reality, a welcomed addition therefore to reading on Palestine and the land that became Israel.
Seth J. Frantzman
Amazon.com
We are surrounded by the hardware of the modern world, but how much of it do we even notice, much less understand? This unique and fascinating book covers the parts of the landscape that are often overlooked despite their ubiquity--objects such as utility poles, power lines, cell phone towers, highway overpasses, railroad tracks, factories, and other man-made mechanical marvels. And they are not just in urban areas, but include out of the way "ecosystems" such as mines, dams, wind farms, power plants, grain operators, steel mills, and oil refineries. In Infrastructure, Brian Hayes offers clear explanations of the systems that keep the modern world running, including agriculture, energy supplies, shipping, air transportation, and the various ingenious methods of recycling and managing the waste we generate.
Subtitled "A Field Guide to the Industrial Landscape," the book is laid out like a nature guide, with comprehensive details and photographs on every page. "There can be just as much of interest happening on a factory rooftop as there is in the forest canopy, just as much to marvel at in the operation of a strip-mining dragline as in the geological carving of a river canyon," writes Hayes. A mine may not be as scenic as a mountain peak, but he argues it can hold as much fascination. His "chief aim is simply to describe and explain the technological fabric of society, not to judge whether it is good or bad, beautiful or ugly." In this he does an impressive job. He tells us how things work and why they are located where they are, and answers dozens of practical questions in the process. He also walks us through how raw materials such as coal, timber, petroleum, and water are converted and transported for use in our homes and businesses. Readers won't view the industrial landscape that same way after poring over this remarkable book. --Shawn Carkonen
Book Description
A companion to the man-made landscape that reveals how our industrial environment can be as dazzling as the natural world.
Replete with the author's striking photographs, Infrastructure is a unique and spectacular guide, exploring all the major "ecosystems" of our modern industrial world, revealing what the structures are and why they're there, and uncovering beauty in unexpected places—awakening and fulfilling a curiosity you didn't know you had. Covering agriculture, resources, energy, communication, transportation, manufacturing, and waste, this is the "Book of Everything" for the industrial landscape.
The objects that fill our everyday environment are streetlights, railroad tracks, antenna towers, highway overpasses, power lines, satellite dishes, and thousands of other manufactured items, many of them so familiar we hardly notice them. Larger and more exotic facilities have transformed vast tracts of the landscape: coal mines, nuclear power plants, grain elevators, oil refineries, and steel mills, to name a few. Infrastructure is a compelling and clear guide for those who want to explore and understand this mysterious world we've made for ourselves. 500 color illustrations.
Customer Reviews:
Phenomenal book, interesting, detailed, a surprisingly great pleasure to read.......2007-07-08
Going into this book, I would have never expected that it would become one of my five or so favorite books of all time. Taking what could be the most mundane, everyday objects and sites and providing an incredibly rich explanation of their purpose, their reason for being, sounds like an incredibly difficult task. Making it interesting enough to actually turn into a page-turner sounds impossible.
It is clear that the author has poured his heart into this book, and one emerges post-reading it as excited and almost as passionate as the author himself. The prose is remarkably well written, chapters commencing of the form "The social life of dairy cows is endlessly fascinating.." -- and it remarkably is, as he goes on to explain!
There are very few books that are such a labor of love. If I were trying to get a child interested in the world around them, I would buy this book for them immediately. It provides the richness to really begin to appreciate the world in its full complexity, with a framework that really makes a lot of sense. As an investor & member of the business community, I instead respect this book based on the fascinating topological overview that the book gives of the lesser-seen aspects of the industrial economy and its key value chains.
Fascinating. Fantastic. One of my favorites ever - a surely unrecognized marvel of a book. I wish the author well.
Get the hard cover edition.......2007-06-06
Great book but the paperback edition is unwieldy. The book is very wide and printed on high quality, glossy paper which is very heavy. It's almost impossible to read the paperback edition when holding it in your hands because it won't lie flat.
I'm returning it and ordering the hard cover edition.
First Class.......2007-03-13
This is a terrific overview of infrastructure, very clear and accessible to anyone who is willing to read a bit carefully. I plan to use it as a text in an undergraduate course for social science undergraduates next academic year.
The answers to so many questions.......2007-02-19
As an engineer myself, I have been repeatedly astonished at how much this book has to offer. So many things I have wondered about and speculated on are addressed here. It's a long read (at least for me) but worth every minute. I wish I'd had this book 25 years ago as I probably could have skipped the first year or two of engineering school. It does get a bit geeky in places, with a few more detailed descriptions, but overall, it's written for someone with a curious mind. I feel like I can travel around our landscape with a new layer of understanding about how and why things are the way they are. An invaluable resource.
Highly recommended.
The greatest coffee book ever.......2007-01-04
If you have any interest in seeing how industry works (mining, the electrical grid, etc), you can get lost for hours in this book. The information is deep and very accessible. I've given it as a gift and it went over VERY well.
Book Description
Over the last fifty years, the process of community building has been lost in the process of city building. City and suburban design divides us from others in our communities, destroys natural habitats, and fails to provide a joyful context for our lives. In Design for Ecological Democracy, Randolph Hester proposes a remedy for our urban anomie. He outlines new principles for urban design that will allow us to forge connections with our fellow citizens and our natural environment. He demonstrates these principles with abundantly illustrated examples--drawn from forty years of design and planning practice--showing how we can design cities that are ecologically resilient, that enhance community, and that give us pleasure.
Hester argues that it is only by combining the powerful forces of ecology and democracy that the needed revolution in design will take place. Democracy bestows freedom; ecology creates responsible freedom by explaining our interconnectedness with all creatures. Hester's new design principles are founded on three fundamental issues that integrate democracy and ecology: enabling form, resilient form, and impelling form. Urban design must enable us to be communities rather than zoning-segregated enclaves and to function as informed democracies. A simple bench at a centrally located post office, for example, provides an opportunity for connection and shared experience. Cities must be ecologically resilient rather than ecologically imperiled, adaptable to the surrounding ecology rather than dependent on technological fixes. Resilient form turns increased urban density, for example, into an advantage. And cities should impel us by joy rather than compel us by fear; good cities enrich us rather than limit us. Design for Ecological Democracy is essential reading for designers, planners, environmentalists, community activists, and anyone else who wants to improve a local community.
Book Description
Skateboarders are an increasingly common feature of the urban environment - recent estimates total 40 million world-wide. We are all aware of their often extraordinary talent and manoeuvres on the city streets. This book is the first detailed study of the urban phenomenon of skateboarding. It looks at skateboarding history from the surf-beaches of California in the 1950s, through the purpose-built skateparks of the 1970s, to the street-skating of the present day and shows how skateboarders experience and understand the city through their sport. Dismissive of authority and convention, skateboarders suggest that the city is not just a place for working and shopping but a true pleasure-ground, a place where the human body, emotions and energy can be expressed to the full.The huge skateboarding subculture that revolves around graphically-designed clothes and boards, music, slang and moves provides a rich resource for exploring issues of gender, race, class, sexuality and the family. As the author demonstrates, street-style skateboarding, especially characteristic of recent decades, conducts a performative critique of architecture, the city and capitalism. Anyone interested in the history and sociology of sport, urban geography or architecture will find this book riveting.
Customer Reviews:
Production of Space.......2006-03-09
This book is an informative look into Ian Bordens extensive research into the history and culture of skateboarding, which illustrates alternative issues of architecture and production of space.
The beginning chapters are heavy reading and heavily referenced, but worth the time and effort. The later chapters go into an in depth and detailed look at skateboarding development and cultural issues.
He challenges readers to change their perception of architecture and spaces, and to look at how our own actions affect the space we occupy, by looking at skateboarding and its culture. He references Lefebvre who said, "Surely it is the supreme illusion to defer to architects, urbanists or planners as being experts or ultimate authorities in matters relation to space." He then goes on to talk about how the interaction addresses the physical architecture, yet responds with a dynamic presence not another physical object. Skateboarding produces space, but also time and the self. This book addresses how, architecture as a set of flows, as a set of experience and reproductions, can be embedded in the practices of architectural history - for as architecture is not itself a space, but only a way of looking at space. The rest of the book is a thoroughly researched look at skateboarding.
Its worthwhile noting that his is not a skateboarding magazine and is written in the academic tongue so is not easy to read. But worthwhile reading if you are interested in this field.
Appropriate This! Urban Space.......2005-03-21
Unmistakably and in so many ways, Iain Borden thinks that skateboarding is RAD! This sentiment comes through in nearly every one of his 267 pages on the subject, a sort of tribute to the urban arts of skateboarding. This is scholarship as panegyric ... but don't get me wrong, I'm largely with Borden in his readings and estimation of the radical nature and content and potential of skateboarding: it's RAD!
In this monograph, Borden's archive is largely skateboarding magazines. He talks some about zines and almost none about films, and the way he reads mags is simply (and a bit disappointingly) to quote from the alphabetic portions of those texts. This is not to say that this book is not replete with images, because it is -- photos, magazine pages, more photos, including even one of Borden in a pool at a skate park! love that moment in the text -- it's just that Borden is not a discourse analyst, so he doesn't break down and close read in the ways I might have wanted him too. But dude, he sure is an architectural theorist, and so what this book is is Borden dumping piles and piles of Lefebvre onto skateboarding in order to redefine architecture and make sophisticated sense of what might otherwise be considered a "mere" hobby.
That's right: Borden more or less erects a massive half pipe of Lefebvre's work on space and the city, rhythmanalysis, bodies, and the modern city, and then skates skateboarding and the spaces/landscapes that skateboarding takes place and shape in and around in RIGHT THROUGH that theoretical halfpipe. It makes for a yummy ride, if a bit of a repetetive one -- back and forth we go for all of those 267 pages largely riding on the simulacral wave that is the half pipe made out of Lefebvre. But since I dig Lefebvre, I was into the book.
Okay, but this is what Borden SAYS in this book, and what he claims, and what he ardently works to prove. He's mainly trying to say (aside from the statement that "Skateboarding is RAD!" which comes through on every page of this book, even though it is never expressly said) is that
*** get this *** Architecture is not buildings, and objects in our cities and lives are not texts, but that architecture is a sort of result of interactions of bodies in space. So the skater in the halfpipe makes something in excess of the pipe when he (and it usually is a he, Borden concedes; hot skater dudes populate this text while skate-grrls are few) goes for an arial, or does something unexpected with his body-board continuum. Skateboarding is just one way, and a very specific one, that space in the city is made and remade and created out of interactions of the skating kind.
Okay, so that seems to be his main idea, as I repeat it with flaws of all kinds, no doubt. He begins with chapters on wheels and boards, then moves to the skateparks (less interesting) and the urban appropriation of space/architecture by rampaging skater dudes (more interesting). This is where skating is radical, unlawful, wild ... RAD! Borden does a few other funny things: like saying skating is the parole to the lange of the boring everyday, or something like that. He's all theory-crazed, looking for any way he possibly can to see skateboarding as RAD! And he does. And it works.
I guess the main limitation of this book for me, and there were few, is the lack of critique. Borden doesn't see skateboarding as being nearly as commodified and caught up on "what's cool" and even a sort of coopted critique and radicalism as I see it to be. I think it's RAD, I guess, but in ways I wished he would have explored the commodification of it more, the rage and anger and ways that skating is perhaps misplaced and thus safe aggression and critique. I wanted it to be read not so much as RAD, but as a patterning with more facets, at least a few of them LAME. Without, it becomes some kind of cure-all activity, beyond human.
a major disapointment.......2004-08-19
Yes, I said it, and I stand behind it. I really had my hopes up for this one. There is so much that can be done, the title alone suggests creativity utilizing the imagination. Does it deliver? No. The book, wich I expected to be full of photography and articles showing how skateboarders use the surrounding architecture for creativity, is really just a sad piece that goes on to tell the history of skateboarding, with very little interesting photography at all. The written content itself is hard to keep your interest, even for a long time skateboarder as myself. Dont get me wrong, I am all for the history of skateboarding, hell, I lived most of it. But that should be and has been put in books and editorials that were labled as such. This was, as I said, a disapointment. I can only hope that someone will see this and spark the idea to do it right, unless I do it first that is.
Book Description
Communities across the country are working to convert unused railway and canal corridors into trails for pedestrians, cyclists, horseback riders, and others, serving the needs of both recreationists and commuters alike. These multi-use trails can play a key role in improving livability, as they offer an innovative means of addressing sprawl, revitalizing urban areas, and reusing degraded lands.
Trails for the Twenty-first Century is a step-by-step guide to all aspects of the planning, design, and management of multi-use trails. Originally published in 1993, this completely revised and updated edition offers a wealth of new information including.
- discussions of recent regulations and federal programs, including ADA and TEA-21
- recently revised design standards from AASHTO
- current research on topics ranging from trail surfacing to conflict resolution
- information about designing and building trails in brownfields and other
- environmentally troubled landscapes
Also included is a new introduction that describes the importance of rail-trails to the sustainable communities movement, and an expanded discussion of maintenance costs. Enhanced with a wealth of illustrations, Trails for the Twenty-first Century provides detailed guidance on topics such as: taking a physical inventory and assessment of a site; involving the public and meeting the needs of adjacent landowners; understanding and complying with existing legislation; designing, managing, and promoting a trail; and where to go for more information. It is the only comprehensive guidebook available for planners, landscape architects, local officials, and community activists interested in creating a multi-use trail.
Books:
- Presentations: A Passion for Gift Wrapping
- Professional Painted Finishes: A Guide to the Art and Business of Decorative Painting (Whitney Library of Design)
- Raw Colour with Pastels
- Secrets to Drawing Realistic Faces
- Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA): Concepts, Technology, and Design (The Prentice Hall Service-Oriented Computing Series from Thomas Erl)
- Skin: The Complete Guide to Digitally Lighting, Photographing, and Retouching Faces and Bodies
- Special Effects: An Oral History--Interviews with 37 Masters Spanning 100 Years
- Spectrum 10: The Best in Contemporary Fantastic Art (Spectrum (Underwood Books))
- Stop the Anger Now: A Workbook for the Prevention, Containment, and Resolution of Anger
- The Annotated Mona Lisa: A Crash Course in Art History from Prehistoric to Post-Modern
Books Index
Books Home
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