Customer Reviews

Building in the Garden

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For all the talk of "sustainability" and "green design" for the past few years, there have been unheralded architects and urban designers who have been talking, designing, and building for decades in ways that are extremely sensitive to the environment, responsive to the climate, and keenly aware of the human being in the city. Two such designers have been in India, Laurie Baker and Joseph Allen Stein. I knew Joseph Stein even before I studied architecture, and later worked in his firm, and this book, Building in the Garden, is one of the finest legacies of his work.

The author, Steve White, now a successful Dean of Architecture at Roger Williams University in Rhode Island, shares some of the same values that Stein struggled with and embodied in his work--an extraordinary sensitivity to local context, a joy working tectonically with materials such as brick and tile, an appreciation of the labor-intensive construction methods in many parts of the world, and above all, a rare sense of the moral imperative to try to do the right thing. The book presents the most complete collection of Stein's work, including his writing, sketches, drawings, and photographs of his built work.

Stein's extraordinary life took him from the Midwestern United States, to California, and to India, where he was invited to become the director of a new school of architecture and where he spent the last 30 years of his life. The scope and quality of his work is breathtaking--from low-cost housing in California and rural India to some of the most prestigious buildings around, such as those for the Ford Foundation and India Habitat Centre in New Delhi. The strongest chapter in the book, Chapter 2: The Oasis, documents with great care a body of work in one city, Delhi, that is extraordinary by many measures. The chapter places his many buildings within the history and context of the city and discusses Stein's attention to craft and detail, especially in the complex of buildings he built in the Lodi Estate area.

As architects, urban designers, and planners flit on to the next new thing--sustainability, green design, landscape urbanism, technological salvation--I highly recommend this book as a reflection of deeper thought and practice. Designing our cities through singular lenses and current fashions is a myopic exercise, for cities are wonderfully complex and changing entities with many different challenges that require the integration of several different design strategies. Stein was one of those rare designers who spent his entire life understanding the total environment--buildings, cities, landscape--and designing in a wonderfully and obsessively humane manner. For example, I remember discussions and sketching exericises with Stein about how rain would fall on a building during the monsoon season in India, and how we could channel the water vertically and horizontally across concrete, stone, and tile, to create a natural spectacle of a seasonal occurrence.

I highly recommend this book to students of architecture, landscape architecture, and urban design as they develop their own philosophies and design strategies. I would also recommend the book to those practicing professionals who engage in truly reflective practice (rather than current fashion). The book will also appeal to those who wish to understand how to craft a truly ethical professional practice in a world where temptations of narcissism, prestige, and monetary benefit abound. Stein passed away in 2001 at the age of 89, and his work continues to live on in this fine book.