Summary

How does the experience of turning a door handle, opening a door from one space into another, affect us? It is no wonder that the door, one of the most elemental architectural forms, has such metaphorical richness. But even on a purely physical human level, the cold touch of a brass handle or the swish of a sliding screen gives rise to an emotional reaction, sometimes modest, occasionally profound.

This book aims to understand how these everyday acts are influenced by architectural form, a concept that is vital for all architects to grasp. It considers how specifically built elements and volumes, taken from a wide array of buildings and settings around the world, can affect our powers of decision. From hand-carved stairs in Greek villages to free-floating catwalks, from the elegant processional steps of Renaissance Italy to Frank Lloyd Wright's masterly manipulation of form, all provide very different experiences of stepping from one level to the next, and all affect our experience of that space.

Seamlessly integrating text and image, each chapter focuses on a different aspect of our daily interactions with architecture, looking at stairs, floors and paths, moving interior spaces, perception and perspective, transparency and the relationship between a building and its setting. This book is not just for architects and designers engaged in the production of space, but for all those who seek a richer understanding of their place in the built world.

Choice Review

In designing, architects consider the experiences of people who use the buildings, or elements, designed. This changed during the modernist period. Like Witold Rybczynski, most notably, architect/photographer Henry Plummer (emer., Univ. of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign) offers insight into modernist buildings. Plummer notes that architects devote themselves to either technology, utilitarianism, exhibitionism, or experience--the last the subject of this book. He uses modernism-as-art to swipe at modernism as vacuous banality. Beautiful color illustrations of creations from hand-crafted details to gardens to rambling interiors, all carefully described, alert the reader to experiences giving free exercise of willful action as an end itself and nothing more. Most examples are from Japan, Italy, and the West Coast of the US during the period from the 1960s to the 1980s, the era of the theories (most notably French and American) of psychology and philosophy. Aimed at architecture students in search of ideas and aficionados of modernist architecture looking for new experiences, the book evidences the publisher's high standards (although luster is lost on the matte paper). Summing Up: Recommended. Lower- and upper-division undergraduates; professionals; general readers. --Carroll W. Westfall, University of Notre Dame (retired)

Library Journal Review

We all experience architecture as users of buildings and urban spaces. Plummer (architecture emeritus, Univ. of Illinois; Nordic Light) has researched this type of interaction, and deplores both the monotony and the theatricality of many contemporary architectural works. Here, he celebrates buildings that invite participation: sensuous appreciation, views, exploration, and operation. Chapters on floors and stairs, doors and windows, ambiguous spaces, hidden spaces, and stimulating buildings offer examples both traditional and modern, mostly illustrated with the author's color photographs. Some items, such as doors with hidden latches, seem whimsical, but the range of examples helps clarify Plummer's concepts. Most of the content is from Europe and Japan, although designs by American luminaries such as Frank Lloyd Wright, Louis Kahn, and Paul Rudolph are included. Plummer's effusive, sometimes poetic essays about human encounters with built spaces will fascinate, and his examples are diverse. He references the humanities and social sciences as well as design. Unfortunately, the small sans serif typeface is not entirely reader-friendly. The 300 illustrations work well with the text. VERDICT Architects and architecture students will appreciate having another analysis of this vital aspect of their field.-David R. Conn, formerly with Surrey Libs., BC © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.