Work/Life : Tod Williams Billie Tsien

Rating:
Summary: A color explotion of wonder and excitement
Review: I have been so looking forward to a book on Tod William's and Billie Tsien's work. So with much anticipation, I opened the book. It began with twenty wonderful color plates, but after those, two hundred pages of pink and blue photos. This lack of black and white emphasizes the balance between the two architects - concentrating on structure and emphasizing bille(my personal friend) exquisite sense of color and material. As Hadley Arnold stated of these photographs they are "the real spaces." Unfortunately if you haven't visited these spaces, this is an exquisite book. I'd recommend that you don't wait until an author comes along that can focus on the architects and the reader.

Rating:
Summary: A Colorless Book
Review: I have been so looking forward to a book on Tod Williams and Billie Tsien's work. So with much anticipation, I opened the book. It began with twenty wonderful color plates, but after that, two hundred pages of black and white photos. This lack of color distorts the balance between the two architects - concentrating on structure and de-emphasizing Billie's exquistite sense of color and material. As Hadley Arnold stated of these photographs they are "simply reminders of the real spaces." Unfortantely if you haven't visited these spaces, this is a frustrating book. I'd reccommend that you wait until an author comes along that can focus on the architects and the reader rather than themselves.

Rating:
Summary: Work/Life not living up to its title
Review: The book serves as a poor representation of both the content and the intent of the architect's work. Instead of compiling a monograph documentiing a body of work through text, representations (sketches, drawings, etc.), and photographs, the book presented little more than a compilation of photography and a bit of text at an obscenely large font. The only purpose of the publisher's selected method of composition was to "pad out" the book to over 200 pages. The same quality of information could be composed in a much smaller book and the content would not suffer.

Rating:
Summary: Simply Amazing
Review: Though esoteric at times, the book beautifully displays the work of these visionaries... I highly recommend it.