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M**N
Looks very useful
Looks good, haven't used it yet but looks very useful for interpreting Pevsner's sometimes acerbic summing-up comments for hitherto undisclosed reasons!
Y**N
Pretty and Portable but with Flaws
A pretty, pocket sized book very useful when out pottering around old buildings, especially churches. This is not a comprehensive architectural dictionary (get the peerless 'Oxford' if that's what you want) but a glossary intended to help aid understanding of the terminology used across the Pevsner guides. Two faults, however. Diagrams and illustrations are scattered around the guide in a haphazard manner and are not easily referenced. The textual style is a tad terse.
M**N
Four Stars
great
A**R
This book cashes in on the Pevsner name - superior books are available.
I have studied several other dictionaries of architectural terms - including ones respectively published by Oxford, Penguin, McGraw-Hill (C. M. Harris), Architectural Press (N. Davies & E. Jokiniemi), and Wiley (D. K. Ching) - and I have to say that this Architectural Glossary, which carries the prestigious Pevsner name no less, could be so much better. In fact I am compelled to state that it is pretty awful.The layout of this book is terrible. The book has 3 types of content: 1) text entries; 2) a number of line drawings (41) to illustrate a selection of the text entries; 3) a number of photographs (53) of buildings.The line drawings are interspersed among the text entries, which is a regular albeit unhelpful habit of books of this type (they should instead all be put at the back of the book in a separate section to make them easier to access all at once - see 'Dictionary of Architecture and Building Construction' by Davies and Jokiniemi 2008 for an excellent example of this). However in this particular book when a text entry refers to a line drawing that is on a different page, the line drawing is referred to by its number and not its page number. Thus the reader has to embark on a treasure hunt and spend several moments leafing through the book each time they wish to find a drawing in question.The photographs - which are of a questionable print resolution and quality for a book of this price and publish date - are clumped together in two discrete segments in the middle of the book. The book contains descriptions of these photographs, but these descriptions are in a section at the start of the book. So again the reader is compelled to dart from page to page to make sense of this book's idiosyncratic layout. In addition it should be noted that each photograph description, which is 20-70 words in length, is a copy/paste from a Pevsner area guide. The descriptions do not comprise exhaustive analyses of the photographic content; if the reader is expecting annotated photographs or at least comprehensive textual analyses of the architectural features displayed in the photographs then they will be disappointed. The collection of photographs and associated descriptions do little to teach the reader how to analyse a building's architectural features.All in all this book feels like new money for old rope. Except, ironically when I cross-referenced this standalone Architectural Glossary with the actual glossary of a Pevsner area guide it was the latter that contained more comprehensive descriptions. If the reader wishes to learn about architectural terminology then superior texts are available - texts such as the 'Oxford Dictionary of Architecture', or even the older but less comprehensive 'Penguin Dictionary of Architecture and Landscape Architecture' which Pevsner was involved in authoring. Similarly if the reader wishes to learn about analysing buildings in terms of their architectural features then other more suitable books are available.
