Customer Reviews

Earth Architecture: From Ancient to Modern

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Although Morgan's categorizations are interesting, the meat of the book leaves a lot more to be desired. (It also belies Morgan's "50 years of research.") With roughly two images and one paragraph per work, Morgan leaves himself little room for provoking any thought when it comes to the specific architecture at hand. I've read more detailed coverage of
Ankor Wat, for instance, in children's encyclopedias.

Even if you evaluate the book purely on a visual basis--which is what we designers tend to do--EA is sub par. The images are too cliche, too compendium-ish to really give an understanding of the importance of the architecture. I'm sure Morgan has a lot of passion, but it's simply lost in the briefness. Similarly, the verbal filler reveals nothing that couldn't be deduced from looking at the images.

(Side note: the graininess of the Altar of Heaven image on page 81 is an abomination. What the was the publisher thinking?)

That said, the latent arguments behind Morgan's organization/categorizations can be interesting. For instance, juxtaposing the dallas-fort-worth airport the Borbodur under the category of "Platforms" is thought-provoking.

I have a feeling this book was concocted purely as means of making a quick buck. Whether or not that's Morgan's fault, I dont know. The forward author's claim that EA "[reminds] us to think holistically" does hold some weight, but not $25-$35 worth of weight, which is the cost of the book. If you want substance, consider checking the book out of the library, noting the works covered, and then researching them on your own. It'll be far more rewarding than dropping the cash for this one.

Humans have been building shelters from earth for as long as we have been human. Any architectural survey which wants to explore this topic will have an overwhelming body of architecture to examine. William Morgan structures his survey by cataloging types of earth architecture. Morgan has chapters on mounds, shaped hills, retained earth, terraces, platforms, excavations and modified earth. Each chapter in turn, features a handful of buildings that reinforce the theme.

The value of this book is that Morgan proposes a system for cataloging earth architecture. He also includes some very interesting structures in the various chapters. However, the very few paragraphs he dedicates to each building is disappointing. For those of us who enjoy the classification of building structures, this is an interesting book with nice photos. But I am not sure that is worth the $35.00 price tag. "Earth Architecture" is one of those books, best purchased used.