Copyright (c) 2009 All rights reserved. http://works.bepress.com/bgiberti Recent documents in Bruno Giberti en-us Sun, 31 May 2009 03:45:17 PDT 3600 http://works.bepress.com/bgiberti/4 http://works.bepress.com/bgiberti/4 Fri, 25 Apr 2008 11:17:13 PDT The history of design is not a new subject. It has been the theme of two well-known if not always well-loved pillars of the historical literature, Nikolaus Pevsner's Pioneers of the Modern Movement (1936) and Sigfried Giedion's Mechanization Takes Command (1948). In contrast, design history is a relatively new discipline, well established in Britain but still forming in this country. The time is right, then, for a book like Design History and the History of Design, in which John A. Walker surveys the landscape of this field for its students. Bruno Giberti Book Reviews http://works.bepress.com/bgiberti/3 http://works.bepress.com/bgiberti/3 Wed, 16 Apr 2008 11:00:29 PDT As any undergraduate knows, architectural history is a relentlessly visual subject. It is not impossible, but exceedingly difficult to make a convincing argument through words alone. Words must talk to pictures, in the absence of buildings, and pictures must join together to form a visual argument that is an analogue of the text. What then are we to do with the big picture books favored by publishers like Rizzoli? These serve a function and have an audience, which includes many historians, some of whom are their authors; but it is not the same function as an academic publication, which rarely graces the tops of coffee tables. Bruno Giberti Book Reviews http://works.bepress.com/bgiberti/2 http://works.bepress.com/bgiberti/2 Thu, 10 Apr 2008 11:17:20 PDT The history of the Swiss chalet is a history of recycled form. This paper considers the nature of the chalet as a vernacular building type, its appropriation beginning in the eighteenth century within picturesque theory and high-style architecture in England and America, and its eventual return to the vernacular in the form of the early-twentieth-century bungalow. The goal of the paper is to explore the process by which specific vernacular forms may become integrated into more generalized styles of building. Special attention is paid to identifying the archetypal chalet elements in the high-style work of architects Charles and Henry Greene, which architectural historians have normally identified with Asian rather than European influences. Finally, an appeal is made for a better understanding of the concept of style as it pertains to architecture in the modern period. Bruno Giberti Articles http://works.bepress.com/bgiberti/1 http://works.bepress.com/bgiberti/1 Fri, 04 Apr 2008 16:57:55 PDT In a 1916 essay that was probably his most important written statement, Irving Gill railed against contemporary historicism and argued for a return to origins: "the straight line, the arch, the cube and the circle." His ideal was not the primitive hut but an equally convincing trope that he called "the stone in the meadow." This phrase implied a method by which the rational was to be brought into an intimate relationship with the organic: "We should build our house simple, plain and substantial as a boulder, then leave the ornamentation of it to Nature." Bruno Giberti Book Reviews