Reviews for Renzo Piano Building Workshop: Complete Works - Volume 5

The average rating for Renzo Piano Building Workshop: Complete Works - Volume 5 based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2015-11-07 00:00:00 Marek Svoboda besides the fact that this book reads like a PhD thesis -- with line after line of meta-garbage that takes itself far too seriously -- there's the blaring fact that this book is hardly about the chicago fire at all. it would be ok if the book didn't cover the essential story of the fire, but then why call the book "the great chicago fire?" it's incredibly misleading. a better title would have been something like "burned into memory: the fire's myth-making of chicago," or better yet "raised from ashes: the architectural impact of the great chicago fire" because this book was 80% about architecture. changing the title alone -- and thereby not misleading me -- would probably have raised my estimation of this book significantly. i still would have hated it, though.

Review # 2 was written on 2018-08-30 00:00:00 Emily Barr This is an informative, adequate history of good, old-fashioned, nineteenth century American resilience, entrepreneurship, architecture, art, literature, and capitalism (filtered through the lens of a conventional--and Marxist?--literature professor who nevertheless is relatively fair to Ayn Rand). It is worth a read for the history of the "Second City," the panoramic view of nineteenth-century culture, and the chronicling of the early years of the disgracefully neglected architectural giant Louis Sullivan (Frank Lloyd Wright's mentor).