A reflection of architecture in the Islamic World, the book highlights the relation with the cultural context in which this architecture developed. This allows us to have wider points of reference that make it easier to have more knowledge of the subject.
One of the world's most fascinating
architectures in the world is the Islamic, and getting to know it plunges
us into the religious context together with the economic and social one
that let us identify the different types of constructions and learn more
and more from them.
Hernán Guerrero Figueroa
This piece of work narrates
in a very singular manner, the traditions, myths, rites and customs that
are lived on a daily basis in the Tarasca plateau. It is accompanied by
excellent photographs, and the authors emphasize and grant market value
to the conservation of way of life that has slowly evolved through the centuries.
The book provides the architect with a different way of getting close to
and understanding the community that requires special treatment because
of its characteristics.
Marco Servín Leyva
An architect is a systematic
dreamer of the different forms of living and of the presence-bearing symbols
of the shells where life is possible. Space is not conditioned by its forms
and measurements, but is perceived through the five sense deployed in space
and time. The beauty of an artificial object is not linked to ostentatiousness,
sumptuousness or loudness; in darkness and in emptiness one can find the
most important traits of the sacred space.
The book describes the importance of symbols in architecture, which, by
way of memory can acquire character and make the subconscious conscious
such as experimenting architectural space through gradually living it and
not all at once through sight, based on Taoist logic. It is seeing housing
as a small universe; it is perceiving the importance of emptiness and the
interrelationships found between inner and outer space.
Miguel Angel Orozco Medina
"This book offers an opportunity
to think about the role the architect and urban planning has in our world.
It links the academic and historical points of view that different countries
have had throughout past decades so the public can appreciate better the
past and further their understanding about the future. (Alex Trotman)".
As a result of the One Hundred Years of Architecture exhibit which has been
traveling around the world, a book was created compiling important architectural
works, whether they have been executed or not, but that have had an influence
on the last one hundred years. The book is a catalogue that functions as
architectural holistic references with urban planning, conformations and
establishments around the world. When one looks over the catalogue it is
pitiful to see, and I state this as a Latin-American architecte, the lack
of knowledge about architectural processes available in third world countries.
One will get the impression that the only 'good' works available have all
been created in first world countries.
Adriana Quiroga Zuluaga
With the texts that Norberg-Schilz
gathered, the reader sees how the author approaches Kahn's ideas which are
based on the need to 'build with inspiration. We see the deep understanding
of human institutions and the use of renewed hope for overcoming environmental
crisis. Likemannered, when the author retakes such concepts as "Existence,
Space and Architecture", he makes an interesting link between Kahn's philosophy
and Heidegger's (Time and Being). He sets forth the need of having an architectural
language that allows the translation of a reality that is lived in the constructed
form in terms of existential structures starting with the relation between
topology, typology and morphology.
This book transforms itself into an excellent proposal suggesting the need
to recover architecture as art, starting with the establishment of an existential
domain of reality as the basis for the project.
Carlos
Marcelo Herrera
The book is based on choosing
to adore that which is beautiful over the adoration of everyday vulgarities.
The reader will find a reality of a room embedded in a space enclosed by
walls and a ceiling, and in no way in the roof and walls. The Tea Room must
be small and the materials used to build it must provide the feeling of
refined poverty. Vanity in art is equally fatal when trying to achieve sympathy
either from the artist or from the public.
The importance of emptiness in architectural spaces must be considered very
carefully as it is here where movement takes place. It is important to take
into account all five senses when designing as they both man's and art's
doors of perception. Art is identified with religion and ennobles humanity.
The person who puts together a piece of art, creates an element which is
sacred. The refined issues of art should be sought out and loved, not the
costs. Love that which is beautiful, not that which is in vogue. The book
reveals the beauty aspect of humbleness; a natural love towards simplicity.
Miguel
Angel Orozco Medina