Customer Reviews

Shelter

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Shelters is a must-own classic. I treasure my copy, and I am actually came to the amazon site today to buy 3 copies of this book, one to donate to my Church library, one for a Christmas gift for a carpenter friend, and one to complement my first edition of this book. This book was first released in 1973 by Shelter Press. If this book is of interest, check out the other books from them.

This is a big, oversize paperback the size of a road atlas. Every page packed with great drawings, photos or diagrams. I never get tired of browsing through the pictures, reading some of the stories, and getting inspiration to go out and build a shelter, a home, for a planned or unplanned need to build a place to live; this book covers expedient shelters of many types.

I have yet to see a better book on this subject, it is simply a fantastic reference and a joy to read. This is not a book simply on construction methodology, this is a book about people building shelter to reflect available materials, tools, budget, and most of all culture.

I studied architecture in Australia and dragged my feet through the course. That is until a mate suggested I check out this book.
It liberated me.

Here was a bunch of common folk who met one of the most basic needs of all humanity - shelter.

So much of what we encounter in our 'western' enlightened age is alien and regulated. The materials that we commonly use in buildings & infrastruture is devoid of any life or connection with the earth. They are not in or close to their natural state. And even if they are, there is so much regulation and stipulation on how we are to use them.

But this book gives you hope, a chance to dream. It shows buildings as art forms, useful & practical but completely expressive of the owners they serve. They are not bound by regulations and conventions. This is craftsmanship not industrialisation. They are made from from natural unrefined materials which in essence connects us to the earth, which we all belong to. From dust we came, to dust we will all return. The beauty of nature is your own home.

This book is filled with ideas and ways in which people have often 'escaped' from the life draining cities to a more peacuful and harmonious way of life. It's superb photo's, hand illustrations and even the way the book is laid out are a freedom in itself. This is one book you will not regret owning and will always find pleasure returning again and again to.

I believe this book was out of print for a while so it is nice to have it back. Architecture students or anyone with an interest in architecture would appreciate this book. It is a good look at how humans have satisfied one of our basic needs. It is an exhaustive collection of human habitats, written in a clever and unprentious way (unlike most architecture books!). If you like this book, you may also enjoy books by Witold Rybczynski such as Home, and Looking Around.

The approach to building, to space, to light and to atmosphere which Kahn & Easton have gathered in this book demonstrate a profound interest and concern, if not love, for exploring mind-space & life in its fullest. This book --full of examples, considerations and ideas-- ignites the smarts and hands of anybody with the will to make his house and his home his own.

This is THE Book to own if you have any interest in building construction, architecture, and lifestyle. The pictures are many, and great, and the reading is also just as interesting. I bought some as gifts, and for each of my carpenter friends.

Throughout the 1960s and `70s, hundreds of unwashed, longhaired youth from around the world descended on the open foothills around Placitas, New Mexico, and established multiple communal hippie settlements. These youth had read of the Placitas scene in national magazines and counterculture books, or heard about it from other hippies; they were idealistic types from all around the world, and they came to the area to try to raise their own food, escape The Man, indulge in free love and mind-altering drugs, and live communally in tents, geodesic domes, adobe shacks, and experimental homes they built themselves out of plastic and scrap metal.
This book, "Shelter" documents their bizarre housing experiments in wild detail. It also documents curvaceous mud homes in Africa, riverside huts in Yugoslavia, thatched huts in Ireland, homes in busses, homes in caves, dome homes, homes made of car parts, homes carved into mountainsides, homes made of hay, tipis, barns, gypsy tents, and more.
If there's a strange kind of housing, you'll probably find it in here, and you'll probably be inspired by it.
"Building this house was more of like feeling where you went as you started working with it, you know, the material and just playing it from there," said one Placitas hippie interviewed in this book. "...It's like three dimensional sculpturing, you know, we just got into building a house out here that's like jewelry. ...OK, let me put it this way, the inspiration like as we move along through it, like I found it in [Stanley Kubrick's film] 2001, where the dude had finally split out of the satellite and was heading towards Jupiter, just as he was coming in, what they had done was they had used different types of film, infrared for one, and just taken a plane and flown over Grand Canyon at a high speed, low, what is created you know, is in some respects synonymous to what the house is, you know, and certainly our cell structure in our body is synonymous with that...."
As you can probably tell, this is not "Better Homes and Gardens" or even "MTV Cribs." It's "Shelter," and it's a trip.

Now I don't know if I want to live in a tree, a yurt, or on a converted vehicle. This makes my 'normal' house seem quite ordinary. Drat!

I saw this book at my brother's house and immediately knew I had to buy it for my husband. It is a high quality reprint of an older book and has that "60's" feel. Much excellent info and lots of great pictures. Very eclectic. We got it specifically for the info on Geodesic Dome houses but there's plenty more for shelter freaks.

I bought this book when I was fourteen years old and it blew my tiny little mind! Now that I've lived a bunch of years in the design field, and I take it off the shelf, tattered from three decades of intense study, it still blows my (now even tinier) mind. Mr. Kahn has done us all a great service with this book that goes beyond architecture to higher values and has a spirit that leads by example. Sure it's got some crazy hippy parts, do with that what you will. But a deep devotion to what you make and why; it's all here. I'm thankful for this inspiring work.

Keep this on your coffee table or lounge. People *will* pick it up and read it. It's a pretty interesting and trippy book that speaks to people's natural interest in... well... shelter.