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Worlds Greatest Architecture
Avoiding technical terms and abstract concepts as far as possible, this is an illustrated survey of what are generally recognised as great buildings, from the earliest times to the present, and from every culture.
447 pages, Paperback
First published May 24, 2000
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
October 6, 2016
The book does feature a huge number of architectural works and I did find some of them quite interesting, but it had some severely off-putting flaws for me:
1) Really bad editing
You get sentences without full-stops, sentences with huge spacings between certain words for no reason (it wasn't a paragraph justification issue as the paragraphs are not justified in this book), etc. And there is no set standard with regards to whether the city name is included in the title of the structure or not (see point #3 below).
2) Poor writing
You get the sense some chunks of text are just copied and pasted. There is no proper "introduction" for some of the works; the author just starts talking about them as if you were already having a conversation about it. The English is not very good either.
3) No country given
The later chapters include the city name after the name of the building in the title, but not the earlier ones. (But even then a few did not have city names appended either.) You had to sift through the entire chunk of text in order to find the city name - that is, assuming it was a city in the first place. And there was completely no country given. Did the author assume everyone knew where exactly in the world all the towns/cities/states/whatever mentioned in the book were located? I found myself having to google the structures mentioned in order to find out which country they were in. Very very frustrating and annoying.
4) The featured 20th century works were really mediocre
The chapters are divided into "Baroque", "Classical", "Revivalist", "20th Century", and so on. (Although there is also a chapter just on "The Far East", another on "Islam", and another featuring just India.) The works featured in the earlier periods of history were quite impressive, with the exception of a few really plain-looking structures, but those from the 20th century were decidedly lacklustre. Some buildings were so common-looking they could have been any office block in Manhattan. (In fact, Manhattan has far more interesting-looking structures than what the book featured in its "20th Century" chapter.)
5) Some photos were bad
While most photos did show the entire building's facade or its details, a few photos did not demonstrate how the structure was unique or outstanding in any way. And one photo I distinctly remember showed the side of a regular-looking, really common building, 70% obscured by trees.
6) Microscopic text
In order to save space I suspect (because the book is already very thick but printed in only approximately half-A4 size), all the readable text in the book is printed extremely tiny. Regular (i.e. non-capitalised) letters were less than 1mm in height. My eyes died getting through this book.
If you do decide to peruse this title, I'd suggest using a magnifying glass, and having Google by your side so you can find out where in the world the structures are located.
1) Really bad editing
You get sentences without full-stops, sentences with huge spacings between certain words for no reason (it wasn't a paragraph justification issue as the paragraphs are not justified in this book), etc. And there is no set standard with regards to whether the city name is included in the title of the structure or not (see point #3 below).
2) Poor writing
You get the sense some chunks of text are just copied and pasted. There is no proper "introduction" for some of the works; the author just starts talking about them as if you were already having a conversation about it. The English is not very good either.
3) No country given
The later chapters include the city name after the name of the building in the title, but not the earlier ones. (But even then a few did not have city names appended either.) You had to sift through the entire chunk of text in order to find the city name - that is, assuming it was a city in the first place. And there was completely no country given. Did the author assume everyone knew where exactly in the world all the towns/cities/states/whatever mentioned in the book were located? I found myself having to google the structures mentioned in order to find out which country they were in. Very very frustrating and annoying.
4) The featured 20th century works were really mediocre
The chapters are divided into "Baroque", "Classical", "Revivalist", "20th Century", and so on. (Although there is also a chapter just on "The Far East", another on "Islam", and another featuring just India.) The works featured in the earlier periods of history were quite impressive, with the exception of a few really plain-looking structures, but those from the 20th century were decidedly lacklustre. Some buildings were so common-looking they could have been any office block in Manhattan. (In fact, Manhattan has far more interesting-looking structures than what the book featured in its "20th Century" chapter.)
5) Some photos were bad
While most photos did show the entire building's facade or its details, a few photos did not demonstrate how the structure was unique or outstanding in any way. And one photo I distinctly remember showed the side of a regular-looking, really common building, 70% obscured by trees.
6) Microscopic text
In order to save space I suspect (because the book is already very thick but printed in only approximately half-A4 size), all the readable text in the book is printed extremely tiny. Regular (i.e. non-capitalised) letters were less than 1mm in height. My eyes died getting through this book.
If you do decide to peruse this title, I'd suggest using a magnifying glass, and having Google by your side so you can find out where in the world the structures are located.
April 23, 2020
This book has some beautiful pictures but half of them do not have a description of the name or location of the building. Too much esoteric babbling about architectural trends instead of just the name of the architect, location of the building, the year it was designed and constructed, why the writer likes the building, etc.
September 28, 2011
This is a lovely book to read and enhance your knowledge about architectural works from antiquity to contemporary times. It is one of the masterpieces for a good architectural education.
December 4, 2018
Received it as a gift from.the office I worked for... It is a timeline of architectural history with photographs and brief notes about important landmarks...
December 13, 2019
Many very interesting buildings, most of which I was not familiar with before.
June 14, 2013
yep! the Greatest.
Borobudur juga ada :D
Borobudur juga ada :D
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews