Customer Reviews

Dwellings: The Vernacular House Worldwide

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Paul Oliver is a scholar with soul. In the early '70s, he published Shelter and Society, a wonderful book on indigenous building. He was formerly head of the Graduate School at the Architectural Association in London and is now Chair of the Master's Course in International Studies in Vernacular Architecture at Oxford Brookes University in Devon, England. Dwellings is about handmade buildings by indigenous people of the world, some of whom still thrive, others whose traditional ways of life are threatened. The photos, mostly by the author, are terrific, and the accompanying text is perceptive and informative.

It is estimated that over 90% of the world's buildings were constructed without the services of an architect. Most of these buildings are owner or commuity constructed using traditional building technologies. They are part of a building tradition known as "vernacular" architecture.

There are hundreds of millions of these traditional dwellings throughout the world and as Westerners we have a need to better understand these buildings by breaking them up into discrete and easily understood categories. There is probably no one in the world more knowledgeable about vernacular architecture than Professor Paul Oliver of Oxford and "Dwelings" is his attempt to classify these buildings into better understood categories.

The strength of this book is in the many interesting photographs of vernacular buildings througout the world. They show the wide array of ingenious solutions people have come up with to shelter themselves from the elements. Of further value is Paul Oliver's broad categories into which he groups vernacular buildings. Unfortunately, in order to justify his categories, Paul Oliver turns to summarizing numerous academic articles on vernacular architecture. This need to summarize other people's work turns the text into an episodic and sometimes tedious narrative. "Dwellings" is a good jumping off point for the study of vernacular architecture. However, in depth knowledge of vernacular architecture will have to be found somewhere else.

when we are looking for a new perspective to see architecture. this book is the one.
paul oliver offers an inclusive, and balance view to see architecture. no more from western point of view.
i think, this is in tune with rudofsky's 'architecture without architect'.
i recommend those books to my coleagues as great and a must be read book!

A lot of text but of very good quality and wonderful pictures ! highly commandable together with Built by Hand from Steen(s)& komatsu(s) (almost only pictures of the highest quality) and Home Work from Lloyd Kahn, You get the best to study dwellings all over the world and maybe built with more simplicity healthy powerful and sacred places as all dwellings should be !

I was really impressed by this careful selection of photographs by one of the most inventive photographers of the twentieth century. These beautifully printed images lead us through the life of Erwin Blumenfeld, from Holland, to Paris, to the United States. The photographs lead us through Blumenfeld's endless creativity from striking political photos (of Hitler in 1933) to pure beauty , and on to fashion in the fifties. Many of the interesting captions are taken from Blumenfeld's autobiography Eye to I which I had read with great interest a few years ago. The photographs (55) color and Black and white are placed in chronological order and some of them had not been published before.
The variety of techniques and darkroom magic displayed here is a stunning lesson in photography and this book can be as well considered as a first approach to Erwin Blumenfeld's work as a more in-depth perception, thanks also to the excellent introduction by Michel Métayer.