Book Description
Oscar Niemeyer is one of the greatest architects of our time. Hugely influential, his work has added a new dimension to modern architecture in the twentieth century. The designer of Brasilia showed that the rhythmic, sensuous lines of Brazilian Modernism were as legitimately modern as the rectilinear lines of the Bauhaus. Oscar Niemeyer Houses showcases the houses built by this seminal modern master in a lavish format that finally does justice to his extraordinary work. Viewed as a collection, these houses serve to demonstrate the wide range of Niemeyer's prodigious genius. The designs show a personal and eclectic facet to Niemeyer's creative imagination, a side of the master little known and under-appreciated. Often built for family members or major clients, they show a wealth of solutions that respond to a wide range of sites: the steep hillsides of Rio, the Atlantic beach shore, the rain forest, and the residential neighborhoods of Rio and Sao Paulo. This celebrated work stands as an enduring and notable tribute to one of the last of the international masters of Modernism.
Customer Reviews:
Not worth getting even in a bargain bin.......2007-08-02
This has to be one of the worst books I have ever bought. I was expecting inspirational works - what I got was some trashy looking houses.
Maybe they are better when seeing them live, but this book does not inspire me to go seek them out. Out of the numerous houses/flat in the book I could say that only 2 or so were inspirational - the rest trash.
Design sensitivity.......2007-06-12
Detailed images to show Niemeyer's thoughts on living. Choronological spectrum of his works and constant re interpretation of his own architecture.
A HOUSE is NOT A HOME.......2006-12-25
I saw some of his work in real, but the pictures of those that I didn't see are awesome! Houses designed by a communist, for the capitalists... But we don't care
A new facet from this marvelous Brazilian architect.......2006-11-06
This is a marvelous edition of a particular unknown facet of Oscar Niemeyer (Houses). He is a Brazilian architect that built an international reputation because of public spaces solutions. This book offers a detailed timeline view of private houses projected by him.
BRAZILIAN MODERN.......2006-10-26
Niemeyer's houses are like modern art deco, they exude elegance and elan. This book does a fine job of captureing what makes his work so special, through the crisp images and interesting text. I was familiar with Niemeyer's public work, which frankly I not a huge fan of, but not his house designs, which I must say I appreciate much more than his civic work, I mean Brasilia is a mess, an urban "1984" nightmare, but his houses are much more serene and elegant. Nice book, highly recommended to anyone with a love for architecture.
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Oscar Niemeyer and the Architecture of Brazil
David Underwood
Manufacturer: Rizzoli
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Oscar Niemeyer: Houses
ASIN: 0847816869
Release Date: 1994-10-15 |
Customer Reviews:
Interesting but Flawed.......2002-03-20
Oscar Niemeyer is Brazil's best-known architect. Famous for his monumental buildings in Brasilia, for the U.N. complex in New York, and his reputation for failed social engineering based on a convenient sort of elitist communism. Underwood's book is a strong introduction to Niemeyer's work, but like Niemeyer's buildings, it has flaws both in design and execution. Niemeyer was born in 1907, and combined a Rio de Janeiro sensibility (deriving inspiration from waves, women's figures, and palm trees) with an assertively modernist approach to architecture. Underwood points out that he went through several distinct periods: his early assimilation of architectural trends including a passion for Le Corbusier's then-revolutionary ideals; a period of introspective critical review that led to a more disciplined style (and Brasilia); followed by years of exile during the military regimes; and finally a return home as the leftist granddaddy of Brazilian modernism.
Niemeyer struggled with what Underwood calls the "Brazilian dilemma," the fact that he sympathized with the poor workingman but designed for and was paid by the wealthy elite. In fact, there really is no dilemma at all. He was a brilliant architectural innovator, but his work contributed next to nothing to the lives of ordinary Brazilians.. He changed forever views on architecture, he breathed life into formal Corbusian structures, but his works never realized his vision of making cities more livable and egalitarian. And the more he tried, the more uncomfortable were his creations. He was forever dependent on the elites and politicos who commissioned his works and bent the rules to get them built. "Modern architectural innovation in Brazil was the stepchild of authoritarian politics and the jeito brasileiro."
The book is good. The large format and excellent photos make it easy to follow the trajectory of his career (although one flaw is the lack of a useful city map or aerial photo of Brasilia). Underwood has a good grasp of the architect's jargon, occasionally spinning off..., but generally staying on course. Yet, [I feel] the title is a misnomer. There is no biographical material about Niemeyer himself. The book follows his career, building by building, without any discussion at all of Niemeyer the man. Nor is there thoughtful discussion of the many negative judgements of Niemeyer's buildings with their naïve utopianism, unlivability, and their excessive concern with form over function. Finally, in the final pages, Underwood seems to sour a bit on Niemeyer's flimsy socialist sentiments and takes a more critical perspective. "This is the strongest link between [Rio's] Samba Stadium and Brasilia, expensive projects that purport to give something truly Brazilian back to the people in fact not so subtly take it away."
And on the last page, he [seems to realize] there is something fundamentally wrong with Niemeyer's insistence on designing monumental modernist structures that people don't want to work in or live in, all in the name of social and aesthetic progress. "The important challenge of going beyond attractive appearances and imagining functions genuinely appropriate to the formidable problems of a developing nation continues to take a backseat to creating seductive forms that express the elitist status quo in a way that masks its inequalities or makes them seem acceptable." ...
Customer Reviews:
UNDERSTANDING NIEMEYER FROM A SURREALIST POINT OF VIEW.......1999-09-06
NIEMEYER HAS BEEN HIGHLY CRITICIZED FOR POOR FUNCTIONALIST CONSIDERATION IN HIS BLDGS, SUCH AS HUMAN USE. MANY OF THIS ACCUSATIONS MAY BE TRUE. BUT THIS BOOK OFFERS AN ANALYSIS OF THE ARCHITECT'S WORK FROM A SURREALIST POINT OF VIEW, THAT HELPS US UNDERSTAND WHERE HE COMES FROM AND WHY THE FREE-FORMS ARE ALMOST AN OBSTINATE CONSTANT IN HIS WORK TO THIS DAY. IT'S INTERSTING TO READ UNDERWOOD'S THESIS, AS JUST ANOTHER WAY OF SEEING AND STUDYING THE WORK OF THIS MASTER OF BRAZILIAN ARCHITECTURE.
Amazon.com
Some people live to work while others work to live, and based on this charmingly relaxed and meandering memoir, it would seem that Oscar Niemeyer definitely falls in the latter category. Not to say that he doesn't spend considerable time here musing on his crowning achievement, Brasilia. It's just that he does so the same way that he recounts everything else here, dispensing with details and strict linearity (much like in his built work), shifting casually between different points in time (including the very days he is working on what became this book), and focusing on the human relationships and friendships behind a project (such as with Lucia Costa, his mentor and the so-called "father of Brazilian modernism," as well as Le Corbusier) than their technical, administrative, and budgetary minutiae.
Niemeyer designed the vast majority of the municipal buildings for Brasilia, the city built "overnight" in the 1960s out of the desolate interior of his native Brazil to serve as the country's new capital, and the sensuously curvy modernism of its skyline has effectively become his stylistic signature, even if he didn't anticipate the vast and ugly exurban sprawl that has since come to ring the city's dazzling axial core.
So much more than a professional memoir, this is really the unhurried, and endearingly nostalgic, reminiscences of a passionate man motivated not so much by professional or financial gain (in fact, he claims, he worked for years on Brasilia at the base rate of an average civil servant) as by a profound, even melancholic, love for his beautiful and troubled country; the ongoing struggle for relief from political and economic oppression around the world; and, above all, a vast web of lifelong friendships. To wit, there are far more photos here of Niemeyer with his Brazilian cronies (many long dead, he laments openly) than there are of his projects (one reason why those not already somewhat familiar with his output may want to start elsewhere), and far more recounted about their prank-filled road trips between Rio and Brasilia than about the work that actually went on there. Those tales, and all of Niemeyer's anecdotes and gentle, quirky musings here, possess a kind of melancholic glow, evocative of samba, wine, and the "uninhibited" women of his homeland.
He reminisces lyrically about Paris, Italy, and Algiers, where he lived and designed projects for much of the period during which Brazil was under a repressive dictatorship. But even amid his delight in world travel, his homesickness is apparent. "I want to watch the stars / I want to feel life / And be back in Brazil / That's where I want to live," goes a characteristically openhearted poem he wrote in those years of near-forced exile. It is the land and the people of his beloved Brazil, much more so than any or all of what he designed there or elsewhere, that make up the soul of this unconventional and thoroughly lovely memoir from one of the 20th century's most talented, and passionate, architects. --Timothy Murphy
Customer Reviews:
Niemeyer looks back.......2002-09-29
Niemeyer looks back in a non-linear fashion at his life, which spans most of the 20th century. He talks about his friendships with presidents, musicians, radicals, architects and drunkards, stressing the things that made them most human. A good read, not only for architecture fans but for anyone who is interested in Brazil. The translator includes detailed footnotes explaining the names, places and buildings. I found it surprising to find out what a Bohemian Niemeyer is and the delight he has in telling stories of adventures with his pals in Brazilian brothels. He mentions Henry Miller as one of his favorite writers and at times the influence is evident (although Niemeyer is too classy to go into sordid detail). A poignant read by an atheist who knows the end is near and is admitedly afraid of death, who values family and friendship above art.
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Brazilian Conditions: Complex and Simple
Rüdiger Lainer ,
Sabina Riss ,
Dieter Spath , and
R. Kohoutek
Manufacturer: Springer
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ASIN: 3211321926 |
Book Description
Wie begegnet man dem Mythos Brasiliens, wie der monumentalen Arbeit Oscar Niemeyers? Im Jahresprogramm des Studio Lainer erfolgte die Annäherung an die Prinzipien der brasilianischen Architektur über assoziative Entwürfe. Dokumentiert werden Recherchen und Studienprojekte, die, integriert in einem selbst erstellten operativen Reisehandbuch, als aktiver Wahrnehmungsfilter für die spätere Architekturexkursion nach Brasilien dienen. Illustriert wird auch, wie die erlebte Aura der Brasilianischen Moderne, wahrgenommen von 40 architektonischen Augen, in nachfolgenden Entwürfen der Studierenden reflektiert wurde.
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The Curves of Time: Memoirs
Oscar Niemeyer
Manufacturer: Phaidon Inc Ltd
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ASIN: 0714848573 |
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Oscar Niemeyer: Une esthetique de la fluidite (Monographies d'architectes)
Gilbert Luigi
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ASIN: 2863640372 |
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My Architecture
Oscar Niemeyer
Manufacturer: Editora Revan
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ASIN: 8571061998 |
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Art of the Print: History, Technique, Master Works
Walter Koschatzky
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ASIN: 0898352630 |
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- Great book for young adolescents
- Margaret, a pioneering female
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Margaret Bourke White
Susan Goldman Rubin
Manufacturer: Harry N. Abrams
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Margaret Bourke-white: The Early Work, 1922-1930 (Pocket Paragon Series)
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Margaret Bourke-White: Photographer
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You Have Seen Their Faces
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Restless Spirit: The Life and Work of Dorothea Lange
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Dorothea Lange: Photographs Of A Lifetime (Aperture Monograph)
ASIN: 0810943816 |
Amazon.com
An inspiring biography of one of the most successful photojournalists of the 20th century, this life of Margaret Bourke-White (1904-1971) is exactly the type of book teachers and parents of adolescent girls are looking for. It would be a mistake to treat this as a book for girls only, however, when so many great men--Bourke-White's father, her second husband, several darkroom technicians, and even General Jimmy Doolittle, commander of the 12th Air Force in World War II--figure prominently in it as mentors, teachers, colleagues, and friends. Author Susan Goldman Rubin gracefully deals with sensitive material such as the photographer's shame at discovering that her father was Jewish. And she does a remarkable job of choosing appropriate pictures. As the chief photographer for Life magazine, Bourke-White shot many hugely important but often harsh subjects. Rubin deftly edits these images so that famous photos like the haunting Living Dead of Buchenwald, April, 1945 are here, but not such profoundly disturbing ones as Bourke-White's shot of bony corpses stacked for burning. The author underscores the photographer's extraordinary self-confidence as a young woman of huge ambitions and--beginning with Bourke-White's initial flirtation with the soft-focus style of Edward Steichen--delineates the growing power and clarity of her mature documentary style. Bourke-White's life-long interest in science--she kept jars of multilegged fauna on her office bookshelves at Life--is fascinating, and the stories of her wartime adventures--in marooned life rafts, low-flying reconnaissance planes, and torpedoed ships--are frighteningly vivid.
The photographs themselves are ultimately given pride of place, in large duotone reproductions that do them ample justice. This book would be right for anyone over 10, and older readers might go on to Sean Callahan's Margaret Bourke-White: Photographer, which is more of a traditional monograph and includes those images that tell truths so painful that Bourke-White herself had great difficulty sorting their negatives. --Peggy Moorman
Customer Reviews:
Great book for young adolescents.......2001-12-30
First off, this is a KIDS book. Interested in Margaret Bourke-White's work I picked this up from the photography section of our local bookstore, but quickly found the simple declarative sentences absolutely maddening.
As a child's book I rate it 4 to 5 stars. Great photo selection and actually quite a lot of interesting information on Ms. Bourke-White's life. As an adult book maybe one star (and that one for the good selection of photos).
Margaret, a pioneering female.......2000-07-27
I didn't know who Margaret Bourke-White was until I received this book as a gift. I have always been interested in photography but never considered it as a career until I read this book. The photos that are in the book are very inspirational. Reading about her life and what she went through to make her dream come true was very interesting. I have had this book for two years and still enjoy looking through her photos.
Book Description
Margaret Bourke-White (1904-1971) was one of the leading photojournalists of her time, a mainstay of the Luce empire whose signature work for Fortune celebrated the machine age and whose later work for Life featured the human face and a "progressive" humanitarian sensibility. Many of her photo essays are classics; indeed those on the Louisville Flood and its victims, on the liberation of the Nazi death camps, and on the poverty of India and Pakistan are now part of the iconography of the twentieth century.
In this brief collection of her earliest work, two art historians present the "unknown" Bourke-White, the young amateur aged eighteen to twenty-six. Her first photographs, created in 1921 under the tutelage of Columbia University's Clarence H. White, were impeccably designed soft-edged still lifes, "painterly" images characteristic of the period but not of the artist. Bourke-White took this technique to college - to the University of Michigan and to Cornell - and there made traditional portraits of campus buildings and, almost by accident, her first "industrial" photograph, a Duchamp-like study of loudspeakers. After graduation she moved to Cleveland, where, trembling with fear and aesthetic excitement, she photographed the interior of the Otis Steel Mill, the trestles of the High Level Bridge, and the new Terminal Tower. It was these thrilling Cleveland photographs, made in 1928-30, that won her an audience with Luce, who sent her on to Fortune . . . and to fame.
The eighty photographs reproduced here have seldom been seen outside the archives of Cornell's Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art and the University of Syracuse Library. They will fascinate anyone interested in the life and work of Margaret Bourke-White and the early history of American photojournalism.
Customer Reviews:
Early Margaret celebrated.......2006-03-13
Margaret Bourke-White was a leading photojournalist whose work for Fortune, among others, celebrated the machine age and whose later work for Life featured more of an interest in humanitarian concerns. MARGARET BOURKE-WHITE: THE EARLY WORK, 1992-1930 provides a new gathering with a focus on her earliest work, when she was an amateur. Her first photos were still lifes and images more characteristic of her times rather than her talents: one can see the transitions to her personal style in the photos made from 1928-30, and it's also notable that the some eighty photos reproduced here have seldom been seen outside their archives. A 'must' for any in-depth art library.
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The Taste of War (Century Travellers)
Margaret Bourke-White
Manufacturer: David & Charles
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Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 0712610308 |
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Margaret Bourke-White: A Photographer's Life (Lerner Biographies)
Emily Keller
Manufacturer: Lerner Publications
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ASIN: 0822549166 |
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For the World to See (A Studio book)
Jonathan Silverman
Manufacturer: Studio
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Binding: Hardcover
Bourke-White, Margaret
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ASIN: 067032356X |
Customer Reviews:
Go and have fun! get -Out There-.......2003-06-18
If you're looking for an adventure, this is one book that you should have.
The creative team behind Crimson is back. The caricature-like artwork greatly done by Humberto Ramos, and the clear and fast-paced story-telling of Brian Augustyn make for a book that is simple and captivating.
The story takes place in El Doarado City (E D City as its resident would call it), where the residents (namely the parents and town officials) made a deal with a sinister character named Dreadalus, to keep their city prosperous and safe in exchange for some favors. The favor was pretty simple -- to help Dreadalus invade Earth.
Four highschool kids, a woman reverend, and a really big guy is their city's only hope.
Join our unlikely heroes as they try to fend off a much more powerful adversary.
complex.......2003-02-27
This book was excellent. There is no other word for it I would read it if you like to read graphic novels, this one is in color the whole way through, it is the only one I have read like that. I couldn't put it down and I had bought it for someone else, for Christmas
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