Customer Reviews

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (Studio Paperback) (German and English Edition)

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This concise and copiously illustrated survey of the 51 major buildings and projects published by Artemis (Zürich) under ISBN: 3760881025, and by Birkhäuser under ISBN: 3764356197 (Basel...) and ISBN: 0817656197 (Boston) in English and German side by side. It shows enormous amount of pictorial information on only 246 pages with 126 only B&W multi-picture illustrations well balanced, superbly crisp and perfectly legible, of which at least a half is technical as plans, sections, details, elevations, etc. The book begins with an analysis about the architect's style on several pages, and ends with biography, list of works, etc. on several more. In between, there are projects in a chronological order each headed by a description from as little as just a few lines to over a page long followed by illustrations from one to several depending on the work's scope. Like all from the Studio Paperback series, it is one of the best illustrated book among B&W architectural monographs even of a bigger size possibly including "Mies van der Rohe at Work" by Peter Carter published by Phaidon in a larger format. Similar to the same book under ISBN: 8425214777 published in 1993 by Gustavo Gili (GG) on 208 pages in English and Spanish side by side in the Works and Projects series, under ISBN-10: 0500201285 and ISBN-10: 0275495302 in English only published by Praeger first in 1965 and then revised in 1972, and under ISBN: 3764355514 not in English, but bilingual in German and French.

It is compareble to the pocket edition published by Gustavo Gili (G.G.) and that has long ago vannished from the stores for having souch a large demand. This version by Warner Blaser has a better quality layout, at a higher price and larger format but keeps the contents to the essence. It doesn't teach you his concepts and goals, it is his works for your own interpretation. For those Mies van der Rohes` fans, it is a book to keep under the pillow.