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Type of bind: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 720
EAN num: 9780847824724
ISBN number: 0847824721
Label: Rizzoli International Publications
Manufacturer: Rizzoli International Publications
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 224
Printing Date: December 06, 2002
Publishing house: Rizzoli International Publications
Release Date: December 06, 2002
Sale Popularity Level: 1537386
Studio: Rizzoli International Publications
Editor's Notes and Comments:
Product Description:
At the beginning of the twentieth century, a new vision of architectural space was born, made possible to new construction techniques that eliminated the need for interior load-bearing walls. Developed concurrently with Picasso's cubist paintings and Einstein's theories of quantum physics, the new architecture manifested itself most emblematically with the open plan: physically and visually free-flowing spaces. Modern architects broke free from spatial constraints and traditional limits to design houses that were unbound, dynamic, and open.
The freedom afforded by the open plan, however, emcompassed philosophical and social freedom as well as physical. The very first half of this book explores the spatial and social evolution of the open plan. From Frank Lloyd Wright's early prairie houses to Mies van der Rohe's universal structural grid, architects eliminated self-contained rooms, combined living spaces and discarded traditional social and familial constraints to open up the house. In the 1950's, especially in California, residential architecture began to blur the distinction between inside and outside. Windows were replaced by glass walls in houses designed by Rudolf Schindler, Richard Neutra, and Oscar Niemeyer, offering their inhabitants casual, free-flowing floor plans and seamless integration of exterior and interior spaces.
Today, the free plan, and in turn the open house, has taken yet another turn as a new generation of architects takes up the reigns of modernism. As seen in diverse contemporary projects such as Shigeru Ban's minimalist retreat in Japan, or LOT/EK's industrial vernacular duplex in New York, the modern open plan house is clearly alive and well. Twelve projects by today's leading international architects, including Pritzker Prize winner Glen Murcutt, Patkau Architects, Ben van Kerkel and Caroline Bos, Wes Jones, Daly Genik, and Kuth/Ranieri are showcased in full-page colour photographs to illustrate the enduring relevance and formal variety of the open house.
User popularity level:
Rated by buyers 
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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.)
Rated by buyers 
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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.
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