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Title: ArchiLab's Earth Buildings: Radical Experiments in the Architecture of the Land by Marie-Ange Brayer, Beatrice Simonot ISBN: 0-500-28412-1 Publisher: Thames & Hudson Pub. Date: 30 June, 2003 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $39.95

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Average Customer Rating: 2 (1 review)

Rating: 2
Summary: lots of theory, little pragmatism
Comment: When I first received this book, I was very excited about it, as the book itself is nicely crafted with lots of full-color renderings. But as I read through it, I found myself often neck deep in lofty theoretical idealsism, longing for a real built project to examine.

The book consists of a series of introductory articles that examine a variety of concepts with varying degrees of pertinence to ecological design (what I had thought the book was about from the title and publisher's review). This is followed by a selection of _short_ articles on individual architects and firms, as well as examples of their work. While there are a few projects that have actually been built, the majority were unbuilt or purely analytical works.

My main gripes with this book are non-trivial: the material presented does not seem entirely suited to the book's title -- some projects had nothing to do with the Earth, and a few had nothing to do with buildings. While the content was at times thought-provoking, it remained too much in the theoretical arena for me, disregarding the practical application of the ideas presented. More importantly, the projects were all presented with just a smattering of information -- the text was too brief to be fully informative, and the pictures were often vague, obscure, or just too small to convey real meaning.

If you're in college and need something to stimulate your conceptual brain, this book may be for you. But if you're like me and trying to find information to support or inspire real-world applications, look elsewhere.

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