Customer Reviews

Oscar Niemeyer: Houses

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Mention modern residential architecture and Frank Lloyd Wright comes to mind along with some of the designs coming out of places such as Scandinavia. At just about the bottom of my list would be houses designed in Brazil. This book points out how clearly wrong such thoughts would be.

The houses designed by Oscar Niemeyer cover a period of seven decades, an extraordinaty time span to expect to see creative design being done. Several of the houses are small, to fit on tiny, difficult building lots. Some are spectacular palaces that use unexpected curves to great dramatic effect.

The vast majority of his houses were design for and built in Brazil. But in addition he designed houses for clients far away from Brazil including the US, France, Israel, Norway and others.

Mr. Niemeyer is better known for his public building, especially those of Brasilia where he designed most of the main buildings. At 98 years old, he is still an active designer, producing still more striking buildings.

This book gives a detailed look at some twenty of the homes he designed while providing brief mention of several others. The pictures of the homes were taken by Alan Weintraub and are of supurb quality. The printing matches the photographs to produce an extremely attractive book.

Niemeyer's houses are like modern art deco, they exude elegance and elan. This book does a fine job of captureing what makes his work so special, through the crisp images and interesting text. I was familiar with Niemeyer's public work, which frankly I not a huge fan of, but not his house designs, which I must say I appreciate much more than his civic work, I mean Brasilia is a mess, an urban "1984" nightmare, but his houses are much more serene and elegant. Nice book, highly recommended to anyone with a love for architecture.

This is a marvelous edition of a particular unknown facet of Oscar Niemeyer (Houses). He is a Brazilian architect that built an international reputation because of public spaces solutions. This book offers a detailed timeline view of private houses projected by him.

Detailed images to show Niemeyer's thoughts on living. Choronological spectrum of his works and constant re interpretation of his own architecture.

I saw some of his work in real, but the pictures of those that I didn't see are awesome! Houses designed by a communist, for the capitalists... But we don't care

simple the best book of houses....for the modern architect as I am!
Thanks amazon.. sorry now I must to go work!
See you soon
cordiali saluti
Federico

This has to be one of the worst books I have ever bought. I was expecting inspirational works - what I got was some trashy looking houses.
Maybe they are better when seeing them live, but this book does not inspire me to go seek them out. Out of the numerous houses/flat in the book I could say that only 2 or so were inspirational - the rest trash.