The Details of Modern Architecture : Volume 1 (Details of Modern Architecture)

Rating:
Summary: Scholarly text and incredibly detailed drawings
Review: A 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: Greene & Greene's Gamble House is post and beam only where it shows; FLW's Martin house owes its distinctive style to framing with structural steel and brick piers. Combine this with the second volume, and you'll be familiar with all the important Modern buildings and architects.

Rating:
Summary: Just like the first one
Review: Like 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 a point. After reading these volumes you'll have an overview of the important buildings and architects of the Twentieth century, complete with detailed drawings describing exactly how they were built, and a sense that architects will always agonize over the deceptions they are forced to perpetuate.

Rating:
Summary: Poor drawings
Review: This 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.