Twentieth-Century Residential Architecture

Rating:
Summary: Attractive design, good pics, tiny plans
Review: As soon as I read the opening sentence 'Throughout the twentieth century the house has commended itself as the most appropriate and responsive vehicle for testing ideas and expressing an architectural position in built form.' I was disappointed.

And then, on page 18, "The decorative elaboration can easily blind us to the imagination and discipline with which Macintosh's ideas were grounded in responses to patterns of use, and proved an embarassment to later critics."

Not my kind of book I'm afraid. Don't want to unravel all those sentences.

Still, the pictures are all excellent, as is the overall design. A small floor plan will appear on every third page or so.

The author's charm and wit add to his obvious mastery of the material, so I'm sure many will find this an enjoyable read.