Encyclopedia of American Architecture [Hardcover]

Robert T. Packard (Author), Balthazar Korba (Editor, Illustrator)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1994

From the 19th century onwards, America has been a major contributor to architectural design and building technology worldwide. This reference work features articles on American architects, buildings, architectural history, landscape architecture and cities and towns. This edition contains a new selection of photographs, new biographies (from Bernardo Fort-Brescia to Frank Gehry to Cesar Pelli) and new articles on buildings, architectural terms and building technology. Other articles cover adaptive reuse, remodelling and preservation, new building technology, "green architecture", energy conservation, mixed-use facilities and the growth of edge cities.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

This is a quick, one-volume source of information on selected aspects of American architectural history and contemporary architectural practice. It includes entries on about 100 architects, 50 building types, and an equal number of building components and systems such as thermal insulation and insect protection. Unfortunately, it cannot decide whether it is a historical reference work, for which the four-volume Macmillan Encyclopedia of Architects (Macmillan, 1982) is a better resource, or a compendium of contemporary practice, for which the five-volume Encyclopedia of Architecture (Wiley, 1990) is more appropriate. Moreover, it contains entries on such vapid topics as career, computer, and even history, a huge catchall that nonetheless hardly mentions American architecture while at the same time it leaving out such important topics as postmodernism and Greek Revival architecture. Appropriate only as an additional resource for informed readers.
Peter Kaufman, Boston Architectural Ctr.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Editor Packard was a colleague of the late William Dudley Hunt, editor of the original 1980 edition of this work. The basic format has been retained, a mix of several types of articles: biographies of architects of major historical importance, articles on periods in American architectural history, and survey articles on aspects of architectural practice, building types and elements, kinds of materials, and such related topics as climate and real estate. A major enhancement is the replacement of the black-and-white photographs in the first edition by a superb selection of color photographs by illustration editor Balthazar Korab, a celebrated architectural photographer.

More than 20 new biographies have been added, covering figures who have come to prominence in recent decades (I. M. Pei, Frank Gehry, Richard Meier, Robert Venturi) and historically significant architects such as Alexander Jackson Davis and Julia Morgan, who were missed in the original edition. Other new articles cover such topics as Health-Care Facilities; Lead; Patron, Architectural; and Building, Vernacular. A few of the original articles have been renamed as well as updated; Earthquake Protection, for instance, has become Seismic Design. The article Environmental Protection has been carried over unchanged from the 1980 edition, with only the short "Further Reading" list updated. Computer is also unchanged except for a new concluding section on recent developments; here, as in some other cases, the "Further Reading" list has been dropped. Contemporary Architecture is now defined in the updated and slightly expanded article on the topic as "American work produced after 1970." The article on the history of architecture has been carried over unchanged and remains a superficial overview amounting to little more than lists of noteworthy structures from various periods.

The strength of this encyclopedia continues to be its combination of coverage of American architectural history and styles with attention to practice and to the links with the construction industry, all in nontechnical language aimed at the general reader.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 724 pages
• Publisher: Mcgraw-Hill (Tx); 2 Sub edition (September 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0070480109
• ISBN-13: 978-0070480100
• Product Dimensions: 11.1 x 8.7 x 1.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.4 pounds
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,897,194 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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