Customer Reviews

How Buildings Work: The Natural Order of Architecture

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HOW BUILDINGS WORK is just a great book, even more interesting than Macaulay's THE WAY THINGS WORK. Buildings are everywhere, and most everyone uses buildings of various kinds for various purposes. Yet how a building works is often a mystery. In this way, I think buildings are much like computers; most people who use them have no clue about the inner workings of them.

Edward Allen takes us through the functions of a building without going into traditional architectural theory. This book is more concerned with the needs that buildings must fulfill, and how we can fulfull them. He discusses water, waste, heat, ventilation, lighting, accoustics, energy, structure, and more, first by explaining each particular concept, and then by examining how problems can be solved with the knowledge of those concepts.

While this isn't a book on theory, neither is it a wholly practical book. That is, it won't equip you with the skills to go and build a house. But it will open your eyes to the various elements of buildings and building construction and you may think "Aha!" the next time you look at a building and observe a strange structural or design detail. You don't have to be an architecture freak to enjoy the book either. You just need to be curious.

I approach this book as someone who likes to walk around old neighborhoods and look at houses. I have collected architectural field guides for years and I can identify most building styles. However, I had little idea how buildings worked.

This book was enjoyable because the writing style was simple and straight to the point. One does not need a technical background to get a lot out of the book. Edward Allen's skillful line illustrations also add a great deal. If I could not understand the technical description, the simple illustration helped me with the underlying principle.

To give you an example of why this book is helpful to a non-specialist. I have heard of septic systems my entire life. However, I had no idea how they worked. With the help of very clear illustrations and straight forward writing, this mystery has been solved. This book is a great introduction to all those interested in architecture. Highly recommended.

Edward Allen clearly, thoroughly, and succinctly explains the basics of architecture to the average reader. He covers not only the materials and methods of construction, but introduces the theory, history, and philosophy of architecture. The reader's mind is filled with knowledge in short order, and is left delighted. Edward Allen is a rare gem of a teacher--someone who honestly understands a topic and can convey that knowledge. There are so many badly written, stuffy, elitist, and meaningless tomes on architecture, that this book stands almost alone. If you had to read only one book on architecture your whole life, then this is it. If you had to read two, then include "How Buildings Learn" by Stewart Brand.

A practical overview of the natural order of architecture. Explains what building do (i.e. Effects of outdoor environment, human environment and the concept of shelter). Explains how a building works (i.e. Various practical functions, providing water, removing wastes, thermal comfort, HVAC, acoustics, form, structural support, fire control, building expansion, etc.).

This book sticks to the basics of what a building is all about. This is not a book about design princples and concepts (old or modern); the book stresses the practical nature of building construction/design and the interface with human beings and the environment.

Excellent book for students, architecture professors, practicing architects, builders and people just wanting to know more about the principles of architecture.

I bought this book in the hope that it will be talking about Heating/Cooling, Lighting/Acoustics in some detail and touch upon other topics as well. The book however was disappointing because it covered too many topics without getting into significant depth for any of them. After reading the book, one can only be satisfied enough as after reading a magazine or sketchbook on the mechanics of architecture.

Another point of contention is that the material presented is rather dated and the contemporary reader would want to know more about some of the issues that are becoming increasingly relevant for architecture today, like sustainability and resource consumption/climate change. Even the issues presented here have seen a lot more development and upgrades than are introduced to the reader.

This review however should not discourage people who are interested in the practice of architecture and want to know more about the discipline. The sketches and diagrams are beautiful and the book would be a great resource for readers in high school who would like to know more about architecture before taking it up as a career choice. It would also be beneficial to students in the first semester in undergraduate architectural education who need to be introduced to the various aspects involved in putting together a building. But not beyond. There are other, so much better books out there for gaining knowledge about things in a contemporary setting. A highly recommended book is: Heating, Cooling, Lighting: Sustainable Design Methods for Architects. Apart from that, the bible of course is:Mechanical and Electrical Equipment for Buildings, 10th Edition. This one can get really technical at times though.

So, consider your own expertise level and how much you want to know about buildings before ordering this one!

Edward Allen presents a way of looking at systems and objects that should be valuable to designers in many disciplines. I bought this book AFTER I finished reading a copy from the library. I needed it in my personal library, next to Christopher Alexander's "The Timeless Way of Building," Edward Tufte's "The Visual Display of Quantitative Information," and Louis Rosenfeld's and Peter Morville's "Information Architecture."

The underlying premise of this book is that architecture is an imitation and application of the principles of nature. To build is not merely to impose our will on nature. It is to cooperate with nature.

Shelter is a natural human need. Building is the art of meeting that need. It does so, according to Allen, by following the example of nature herself and applying her principles. An organic analogy runs through the book. Buildings live and breathe. A building, like a human body, is matter so arranged that it interacts dynamically with its environment and thus perpetuates the arrangement. Buildings, however, are highly dependent on human beings, whom they serve. The parts of buildings, e.g., the roofs, walls, windows and mechanical systems must work together with the other parts in such a way as to "survive" but most importantly to provide optimal human shelter. Buildings that outlive their usefulness "die."

My favorite passage from the book is a section entitled "People as the Measure" (pp. 169-171). Drawing on his extensive knowledge of the history of architecture, Allen explains how "people literally became the measure of buildings." For example, the brick... was standardized in medieval times within a range of sizes and weights that could be easily manipulated by the left hand of the mason, leaving the right hand free to operate the trowel." Allen cautions against bulk materials manipulated by machines instead of people: "[T]he finished product will not automatically display the human-scale texture that hand-sized components have and that occupants often subconsciously identify with."

This book was very educational for me, a Ph.D. in philosophy who has left academia to help run a construction business. I highly recommend it to new students of architecture or engineering or anyone who has amateur interest in those fields.

This is a book on how buildings are designed. It's not a book on how to design a building, that's the architect's job. It's a book on what the architect is going to do to design the building you want.

The book contains hundreds of line drawings on the components of a building. This is how a wall is built, this is how heat circles around a room, this is how a truss structure holds up the roof, this is how electric power is brought into the house and distributed.

This is not a book on how to design a house, you can put the bedrooms anywhere you want, you can have as many bathrooms as you want. This is the basic design of how the building does its job of providing the walls that make up the bathroom, keep it warm/cool, with water inside but kept where you want it.

I consider this book to be interesting to anyone interested in the subject. I consider this book to be mandatory reading for anyone even thinking about building a house or having one built.

Historians and architects can each suffer a form of myopia which makes their work inaccessible to the layman. Allen avoids being too narrow while simultaneously managing to provide some depth and detail on the function of buildings and their subsystems. The tone is conversational without being breezy; the accompanying illustrations do a fine job of conveying the technical detail without becoming too - well, technical! The approach is relatively holistic as well, thinking of buildings as a compilation of systems, each explained in its own right, but also a part of the larger whole. A fine introduction to the topic; this might work as a great read before considering having a home custom-built or a remodeling project done; you'd be able to ask the right questions of the contractor and better understand how and why things proceed as they do.

I practice and teach architecture. This is the best book I have ever found for communicating material essential for the study of building science and architecture. The presentation style is frendly and informative. The knowledge of the subject displayed by Edward Allen is superb. I am a unashamed book-a-holic, if I could only take one book to the proverbial desert island - How Buildings Work would be it.