The Designer's Eye

by Brent C. Brolin

This imaginative book offers architecture students over a hundred examples of visual problem solving in architectural design.
Photographs of actual buildings, paired with digitally manipulated images in 'before and after' comparisons, demonstrate the sorts of real-life situations that architectural design courses rarely teach students how to address, and show how designers can manipulate form and material to achieve desired effects: emphasizing or diminishing building elements, imposing visual order on a façade, or adding grace notes. 250 black and white illustrations

Genres: Architecture

Paperback

First published May 1, 2002

Reviews

[Jin Kim · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found the topics about a designer’s intent to be interesting and relevant even though this book was published 20+ years ago.

[Nat · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a kind of training manual for how to examine your aesthetic judgments. By placing a picture of a subtly modified version of a building or part of a building next to a picture of the original, Brolin eliminates the primary barrier to ordinary aesthetic judgments, which is a kind of incommensurability--you might be reluctant to compare the Chrysler building with the Hancock building, for example, since they are different in innumerable ways. But there's nothing that stands in the way of deciding whether the Chrysler building is better or worse without its distinctive gargoyles. Once you can make those kinds of judgments, progressing to much more complicated assessments of relative value shouldn't be too hard.

I think one of the few buildings that Brolin's altered version improves on is Venturi's Guild House (p.23).

[Nikki · Rating 3 out of 5]

It’s fine, a points out differences in buildings and why may be one thing looks better than another, but it would be nice if there was a conclusion section. So here you go.

1. Poking holes in a façade makes it seem lighter.
2. Horizontal lines can do a good job of connecting and drawing the eye laterally.
3. Vertical lines are good for height.
4. Things that aren’t symmetrical add tension.
5. If you don’t want things to appear flat add a mural.
6. If you can make tops round, make tops round.

The end.

[Carmen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Awesome reference book full of examples (pairs of real + photo-manipulated structures) to demonstrate the visual impact of small details. I'm new to architecture and found it helpful. Learned a lot of new terms and how to "read" and describe a building.

[Bob · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty cool book. Very simple, picture book for designers/architects/architecture lovers. It points out various subtleties in arrangement and details, and how they help buildings look and feel better.

[Zedder · Rating 5 out of 5]

The experimental approach to art criticism.