Open House

Rating:
Summary: Open house: Closed book.
Review: Disappointing! I purchased a number of books along the lines of this book for a reference library and this was the only one that I did not want to keep. It just seemed to miss the point. Everything in this book had been covered so much better in my other purchases. There was nothing original and inspiring that made me feel this was a book to keep. To add to my disappointment the store management equated the return of this book like requesting my money back after reading a novel and extracting the gist. They had no concept of what it means to build a reference source. It's not like seeing a bad movie and requesting a refund after sitting through it which is the way they put it to me.

Rating:
Summary: Open House: Unbound Space and the Modern Dwelling
Review: Heavy on pictures and short on text, this is a quirky collection of houses that take the modern obsession with openness to one or another extreme. Familiar examples like Philip Johnson's Glass House and Shigeru Ban's Wall-less house --with its toilet and tub sitting out in full view--are juxtaposed with some interiors that feel confined and a couple of blue-sky projects that seem almost claustrophobic. However, as surveys of contemporary architecture become ever more predictable, a book as eccentric as this is welcome. (Michael Webb is the book reviewer for LA Architect magazine.)