erikars's review
2.0
Gardiner gives a history of the development of the form of the home. The history of the house begins with caves, but we quickly move on from caves to round houses made out of primitive materials. Over time, both the design of the house and the materials use advance and mature until we reach ancient Greek and Japanese architectures, considered by Gardiner to be the epitomes of ancient architecture. This history up through this point was fairly detailed. After that, Gardiner skims over the relatively uneventful time between Greek architecture and the Renaissance. From there he gives an overview of what he considers the most important styles. Next up is Gardiner denouncing modern home architecture (both densely packed cities and sprawling suburbs). However, all is not hopeless, and he ends the book by pointing out the positives of late 20th century architecture.
Gardiner has a very specific aesthetic, and I have not read enough architecture books to know whether or not it is peculiar. He likes styles where the elegance and design of the structure comes from the form of the building. Extraneous decoration (such as that found in Victorian architecture) is something he considers to be ugly. His taste happens to line up with mine, but I cannot completely agree with his wholesale dismissal of decoration. A point made in The Architecture of Happiness (de Botton) is that elaborate decoration can be a useful way to feel in control for a society that may not be in control. Gardiner believes buildings should be beautiful; he does not think that the appearance of a building should be defined only by its function. However, he does believe that the building should come from the form of the building and the materials used, not some extraneous trappings.
Throughout, Gardiner stresses that successful buildings should have a human scale and fit the community around them. Both these points express, on different levels that buildings should respond to needs. A building that has human scale responds to the need for space and for protection that an individual feels. A building that fits the community around it would fit in with the existing community stylistically as well as fulfilling the needs of the community for safe places that allow interaction of the residents with the larger community.
The only thing I disliked about this book was Gardiner's writing style. The book was filled with one to two page paragraphs, long and complicated sentences (worse than mine!), and lots of jargon and undefined terms. The jargon is what bugged me the most. While I do not expect an architecture book to necessarily assume that the reader has as little knowledge of architecture as I do, I do expect the author to try at least a little. For example, Gardiner mentioned buildings on "piloti" half a dozen times (or so I guess) before he said "piloti, or stilts". Once it said that, it was clear enough what piloti were. If he had done that earlier, I would have been saved much confusion. He also had a whole chapter on the concept of mandala's in architecture without defining "mandala" (a mandala, as he used it, is a geometic symbol that represent the unity of the universe).
Overall, an educational but dense book.
Gardiner has a very specific aesthetic, and I have not read enough architecture books to know whether or not it is peculiar. He likes styles where the elegance and design of the structure comes from the form of the building. Extraneous decoration (such as that found in Victorian architecture) is something he considers to be ugly. His taste happens to line up with mine, but I cannot completely agree with his wholesale dismissal of decoration. A point made in The Architecture of Happiness (de Botton) is that elaborate decoration can be a useful way to feel in control for a society that may not be in control. Gardiner believes buildings should be beautiful; he does not think that the appearance of a building should be defined only by its function. However, he does believe that the building should come from the form of the building and the materials used, not some extraneous trappings.
Throughout, Gardiner stresses that successful buildings should have a human scale and fit the community around them. Both these points express, on different levels that buildings should respond to needs. A building that has human scale responds to the need for space and for protection that an individual feels. A building that fits the community around it would fit in with the existing community stylistically as well as fulfilling the needs of the community for safe places that allow interaction of the residents with the larger community.
The only thing I disliked about this book was Gardiner's writing style. The book was filled with one to two page paragraphs, long and complicated sentences (worse than mine!), and lots of jargon and undefined terms. The jargon is what bugged me the most. While I do not expect an architecture book to necessarily assume that the reader has as little knowledge of architecture as I do, I do expect the author to try at least a little. For example, Gardiner mentioned buildings on "piloti" half a dozen times (or so I guess) before he said "piloti, or stilts". Once it said that, it was clear enough what piloti were. If he had done that earlier, I would have been saved much confusion. He also had a whole chapter on the concept of mandala's in architecture without defining "mandala" (a mandala, as he used it, is a geometic symbol that represent the unity of the universe).
Overall, an educational but dense book.
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