Product Description

The compact, affordable guides in this series depict the architecture and history of some of the finest University campuses in the United States. Each has a large colour map providing an overview of the landmark buildings on the campus, as well as detailed district maps beginning every chapter. In addition, all of the Campus Guides are beautifully illustrated with archival images, drawings, and specially commissioned colour photographs.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1049290 in Books
• Published on: 1999-06-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 168 pages

William Morgan, Architecture Boston, Winter 99
Princeton Architectural Press's new series will do much to enrich our understanding of this particular architectural genre.

About the Author
David Neuman, Paul Venable Turner, and Richard Joncas all live in Stanford and have a number of previous architectural books to their credit. Richard Guy Wilson and Sarah Butler live on campus at the University of Virginia. Patrick Pinnell is a resident of New Haven, Connecticut.

Customer Reviews

Charming
A charming book. Clear photographs and sensitive analysis of buildings familiar, new, and vanished. Pinnell sets his stories of each structure in its context with due attention to historical development. I would have liked seeing more photos of sets of buildings together. Note how the two large pictures of Harkness Tower are especially engaging for their backgrounds. It would also have been nice to see a drawing of Venturi's famously unbuilt Math building. If you can get to New Haven easily, carry this book around to enrich your visit.

Architectural guide of the very highest quality
Many authors would wilt under the task of tying together the nearly 300 year historical development of what is widely recognized to be the finest assemblage of buildings to be found on any American college campus. Fortunately, Pinnell, a Yale alumnus and professor of architecture, is up to the challenge. Bringing to his subject matter a depth of feeling and complexity of thought borne of his many years of close interaction with the Yale built environment, Pinnell pulls off the difficult task of creating a guide that will offer fresh insight and intellectual challenge to those who know the campus well while retaining the interest of even first time visitors. As this is an architectural and not a travel guide, the author assumes that the reader's primary interest is in the school's buildings, its public spaces, and its historical and urbanistic relationship to New Haven. As a result, a less architecturally-concerned reader may be better served by another sort of book. However, for those of us who share Pinnell's passion for building generally and the magnificent Yale campus, in particular, this is the book we've been waiting for.

Buy It
This is a prodigious and learned work. Anyone visiting Yale can learn a lot from it.

One interesting thing about this campus series is that as we continue to turn America into sprawl -- what James Howard Kunstler calls "the National Automobile Slum" -- campuses are the first urban experience for many Americans.

Note to Princeton Architectural Press: you should let the authors talk more about the outdoor public realm and not make them focus so much on individual buildings.

The book should also have many plans (there are none). The best architecture guidebooks have plans for every building.