Form, Function & Design

Rating:
Summary: Broad overview of what architecture really is.
Review: Architecture is not about appearance but function. This excellent book examines the environment: wind, sun, water. It explores human's needs. It dwells into the tie between humans and the environment. The environment is both necesary for life, and can cause death. As such a home should act like a second skin: keeping out harmful agents, and allowing the necessary agents to come in. This book is not only an overview of architecture, but includes an interesting outlook on philosophy, art, architectural evolution, movement, and human pcychology. This book is informative, easy to understand and a fun read. It's good.

Rating:
Summary: Handbook of Beauty, Simplicity, & Functionality
Review: M. Grillo jogs my perceptions of design--and life--out of tired ruts. This book is filled with wonderfully illuminating illustrations, many in surprising juxtapositions, like a farmhouse roof facing prevailing winds next to an inverted ship's hull, a shark beside a jet plane, a cloverleaf in Stockholm by a cut-away of the human heart. He SEES, and in his warm prose tells us what he sees and why it works.

He book not only explains elements of beautiful design but touches aspects of healthy thought. In his note to a young designer, he advises: "Do not be afraid: either of your ideas, no matter how wild---or of the ideas of others, no matter how disturbing. Fear is the motive power of all intolerance."