riddle@ut-sally.UUCP (Prentiss Riddle) (11/17/83)
"Architecture: Form, Space and Order" by Francis D.K. Ching
My girlfriend just bought this book as a Christmas gift for a cousin of
hers who is thinking of studying architecture, but I'm enjoying it so
much that I may not let her send it to him. The book takes me back to
my days in junior high when I would check books on Frank Lloyd Wright out
of the library and spend hours poring over them.
The purpose of the book is to illustrate how buildings work. Ching begins
by explaining the "primitive elements" of the architect's palette (the
point, line, plane and volume), and works progressively through more and
more complicated architectural concepts like form, space, organization,
circulation, proportion and scale. Each point is first explained in Ching's
beautifully hand-lettered text and then profusely illustrated by his
equally beautiful sketches. The sketches are balanced between the abstract
geometric diagrams in which architects like to think and drawings and plans
of real buildings. The variety of examples is quite impressive, running the
gamut from East to West and from the ancient to the modern.
If you like buildings and would like to understand them better (or just like
leafing through pictures of them), I heartily recommend this book.
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Prentiss Riddle
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