Blow-Up: Inflatable Art, Architecture, and Design

Rating:
Summary: A fascinating book. A great gift.
Review: Start dreaming. Let yourself be carried away into an amazing world of Art, Architecture and Design. And order another book for your best friend.

This is what blowup will do to you.
My wife is the design author Ingrid Wenz-Gahler, and when I gave her this book her first words were: How much work to get all this information, to collect all those pictures. She knows what she is talking about.

blowup by Sean Topham is a richely illustrated history of inflatable design and pneumatic technology which encompasses us in all aspests of life. This book takes you through two hundred years of engineering inflatables from the first start of a Montgolfière in France in 1783 to pneumatic dummy Sherman tanks used in World War II by the British and to architectural challenges like the Eden project of 2001 in the American West.

What I like most about this book is the use of inflatables in modern art, the film industry and even fashion. Sean Topham has looked into every corner of this world and came up in this book with pictures of Woody Allen in an inflabable body-suit for the film Sleeper, with fashion created by Jean-Paul Gaultier and many others, and with countless pieces of art like Andy Warhol's Silver Clouds and Hans Haakes Sky Line. - Just to name a few.

What Sean Topham is showing us that inflatable art, architecture and design is adding beauty to our lives. WELL EARNED FIVE STARS.