Lance LaVine

I can't recall what possessed me to buy this book not long after it came out. Not familiar with the author, I must have been intrigued by the title and the notion that architects need to get back much of what has been ceded to engineers. (The book can be seen as an extension of Reyner Banham's The Architecture of the Well-tempered Environment.) Perhaps this book set me off on my utopian belief that mechanical engineers are unnecessary -- if architects would only design more in tune with nature. This book has therefore had a lingering impact on my thinking (even if that thinking has not come across directly in my writing). Structured as case studies of four houses, my favorite is the chapter on Charles Moore's own house in Orinda, California; the(other houses are: a traditional Finnish log house; Tadao Ando's early Wall House; and Corbu's Villa Savoye. I learned to dislike Moore in architecture school -- stemming most likely from a paper I wrote on his Piazza d'Italia -- but LaVine's study made me question my earlier dismissal.… (meer)