Reviews for Renaissance Paris: Architecture and Growth, 1475-1600

The average rating for Renaissance Paris: Architecture and Growth, 1475-1600 based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2011-01-07 00:00:00 Vijeshwariee Yoganathan A useful book in thinking about financial systems, and REA models.

Review # 2 was written on 2013-03-24 00:00:00 Randy Novak The claim that a style can be evaluated in moral terms has played a significant role in modern architectural history. Watkin's book is a classic work on this theme, tracing the history of moral arguments in architecture beginning in the 19th century and critiquing the justification of stylistic choice based on moral criteria. The book certainly has a polemical tinge to it, rather than being a scholarly tome, which invites one to agree or disagree with Watkin's ideas. The book's central thesis, which basically argues that architectural style involves personal choice by the designer rather than only some sort of historical zeitgeist and always involves ornamentation regardless of claims to pure rationalism/functionalism, challenges a long tradition of architectural theory. Like it or not (for the most part I personally am with Watkin) this critique of a major impulse in modern architectural theory helped open up a healthy debate, which continues to shape how architecture is designed and understood today, and for that reason this short book is decidedly worth reading.