The Japanese Dream House: How Technology and Tradition Are Shaping New Home Design

Average customer rating:

Excellent introduction to Japanese system housing

Your basic [money amount]sales brochure

Utterly wonderful and so informative

A GOOD STORY OF JAPANESE HOUSE

The Japanese Dream House: How Technology and Tradition Are Shaping New Home Design
Azby Brown , and Joseph Cali
Manufacturer: Kodansha International (JPN)
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Building the Japanese House Today

The Japanese House: Architecture and Interiors

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Japan Style: Architecture+Interiors+Design

ASIN: 4770026110

Book Description

The modern Japanese home has always attracted Western architects and designers. With a panache that often borders on the outrageous, modern homes in Japan blend such traditional elements as shoji screens and tatam-matted rooms with what, at first glance, appear to be thoroughly contemporary elements of the Western home.

And yet a closer look reveals impressively subtle alterations. Carefully crafted wooden surfaces throughout the home gleam with a delicate Japanese sense of color and rhythm. The kitchen and living areas are fitted out with modern appliances or furniture, yet the subtle variations in the wall placement and space usage suggest that a different sensibility is at work.

Azby Brown, in his third book on Japanese architecture, delves into the intricacies of the modern Japanese home by first reaching back to its roots (some thousand years earlier) to follow its development to the present day, then steams ahead to explore the state-of-the-art Japanese home, with its recycled materials, extruded synthetic wood decks, and dozens of unique touches that can only be found in Japan. Designer Joseph Cali has supplied countless intriguing modern and historical images, many of them appearing here in an English-language publication for the first time.

In page after page of this lushly illustrated, all-color volume, Brown presents his take on Japan's high-tech yet serene home designs. The Japanese Dream House is one of the first English language books to appear in a long time on the subject and is sure to prove an indispensable volume for architects, designers, and homeowners for years to come.

FEATURES

Full color

223 color photos Includes rare historical photos

10 line drawings

New architectural photos never published before

Customer Reviews:

Excellent introduction to Japanese system housing.......2004-10-30

I was expecting a coffee table book on pretty Japanese manufactured houses, but was pleasantly surprised it had depth.

The book begins with a historical look at Japanese housing and the influences of society, aesthetics, and economics on today's housing market. It details the influences of government legislation on the rigid feudal class system; Japanese minimalism of the poor versus the ostentation of the aristocracy; and important events from the Edo period to today's ongoing recession.

Later on, it details the rise of system housing manufacturers, building techniques, and the sales process a family would undertake to purchase a home. While it does feature a few architectural one-offs, the authors discredits these as something mass market consumers have no interest in (no different than North America). Sidebars go into details on things like roofing materials, shoji screens, tatami matting, to bathroom design.

This book is the perfect beginning guide to Japanese manufactured system housing. To complain that this book is a sales brochure for Misawa would be like complaining that a book on cars has too many pictures of Cadillacs and Mercedes and not enough Dacias and Ladas. The pictures are very good, but I would have liked to see a wider variety of homes and interiors, but that can be easily done by picking up a Japanese housing consumer magazine like Plus 1 Housing.

Your basic [money amount]sales brochure.......2003-08-13

This book does provide a fairly interesting, if basic, overview of the modern Japanese home but ... it is also an expensive sales brochure for Misawa system built homes. Misawa provided photos for pages 1, 2, 3, 6-10, 25, 30, 31, 32, 33, 36, 38, 39, 41, 43, 44, 45, 48, 49, 50, 56, 57, 60-63, 68, 69, 76, 77, 78, 79, 82, 88, 89, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 104, 105, 106, 107, 110-118, 120-129. And Misawa is used as an example in the text on 12 pages.

Utterly wonderful and so informative.......2003-06-23

Because we are in the process of designing and building a Zen Danish (as we call it) new home I purchased this wonderful book in order to get some specific ideas. Of special interest are the Danish and Japanese choices in light hardwood floors, tatami mat floor coverings and window coverings like shoji screens which can be opened for full light during the day and closed for more privacy.

And the book does an excellent job in showing the value in smaller appliances like dishwashers for small families and the front loading or combo washer-dryer units which also take up less space and use less water. And the beautifully designed skylights.

The photography is wonderful and there are so many, along with informative texts on why certain elements work well, and what the future holds for design. The homes are so open and airy that they can be smaller and more environmentally friendly, and better than what I call the average American tract home that has so much wasted space.

I also like the whole sections on furniture and how the outside garden areas when designed well, become rooms that make the interior of the home look bigger as well. There is so much to be said about the way the Japanese blend style, high tech and spiritual into their home design.

If you are seriously interested in ideas for that one of a kind, high quality home that doesn't have to break the bank then this book may be of great value to you. It is not a book for the person who likes "average."

A GOOD STORY OF JAPANESE HOUSE.......2001-09-06

This book is very interesting for the people who want to know the evolution of house style after II world war:
The evolution of styles from american style to tecnological style.

Customer Reviews:

Actually a pretty good book!.......2003-09-09

Upon stumbling to the Amazon site, I was a bit surprised to see this book being sold for under $5...especially when I just purchased it for $30 at a bookstore (Should of checked Amazon first!)

Anyway, this book is good in terms of if you need a book with ideas from brochures to self-promotion. The book includes specs and costs for over 100 pieces and the pieces included in this book are pretty good.

Seeing how cheap it is now, if you are a graphic artists, this book is a steal! Check it out!

Book Description

Arthur Danto's assessment of the achievement of Robert Mapplethorpe is a lucid and graceful introduction to a controversial artist by the most distinguished philosophical critic of the arts in our time. While fully addressing the most public dimensions of Mapplethorpe's career--the branding of his work as pornography and the legal and censorship issues that surround the exhibition of his photographs--Danto's essay breaks with common responses by offering a fascinating and deeply sympathetic account of Mapplethorpe's aesthetics.
In Playing with the Edge, Arthur Danto returns the discussion of Mapplethorpe to a consideration of his artistic legacy. He refuses to retreat from the sexual content of Mapplethorpe's images, claiming that the content and the artistic character of the photographs simultaneously invite and deflect the charges of pornography and together define the importance of Mapplethorpe's work. Danto discerns the images' uniqueness in the relation of trust between the photographer and his subjects.
Through a fascinating exploration of the relation of Mapplethorpe's images to those of other artists (Titian, Sherman, Winogrand, Cartier-Bresson, Golub) Danto presents a compelling argument for Mapplethorpe's enduring position in the history of art, no less than the history of our times.
FROM THE BOOK:"There is a tension at the heart of Robert Mapplethorpe's art, verging on paradox, between its most distinctive content and its most distinctive mode of presentation. The content of the work is often sufficiently erotic to be considered pornographic, even by the artist, while the aesthetic of its presentation is chastely classic--it is Dionysiac and Apollonian at once. The content cannot have been a serious possibility for a major artist at any previous moment in history. It is particular to America in the 1970s, a decade Mapplethorpe exemplifies in terms of his values, his sensibilities, and his attitudes."

Customer Reviews:

Take care!.......2003-09-29

Danto is a perceptive and knowledgeable art critic whose text is worth the price of this book. The photos are well printed and carefully chosen to illustrate the essays. As an introduction for newcomers to Mapplethorpe this book is perfect. HOWEVER I purchased this book used on this website and found upon receipt two of the plates of the more controversial prints had been RIPPED, not cut, out of the book with great force, loosening the binding. If the jerk who did it ever reads this: Arthur Danto's descriptive talent almost compensates for the visual loss so you should have defaced the words as well. And shame on the bookseller who I believe knowingly sold this damaged volume without disclosure. My decision to keep this book comes from my bibliophilic heart- a book damaged in just this way epitomizes our society's heavyhanded sexual prudery. It's a collector's item, almost a sculpture. Now if the brute had only signed it...

Thoughful discussion of controversial body of work.......2000-05-26

The three essays here, along with 29 of Mapplethorpe's photographs, provide an invaluable opportunity to address the work in a reasoned and engaged manner. In some important sense, it is no longer possible to experience the work of Robert Mapplethorpe as directly as one might have in 1988, for now "the images have become celebrities," made notorious, even, by the legal and moral controversies that have so prominently surrounded the work. (5) More importantly, however, Danto attempts to answer the question of how to look at art, particularly difficult or "awkward" art such as Mapplethorpe's, without oversimplifying what is seen. (93)

In the main body of the book, the critical essay of the same title, Danto's seriousness avoids no questions, but thankfully acknowledges the ultimate futility of asking whether such work is art or pornography. This false disjunction results from the failure to hold together both form and content when looking at art. For Danto, art is the transcendence of form and content; it is both and neither, for it moves beyond both while in some sense preserving them in the work. Although Danto needlessly complicates matters with his use of the terminology of Hegel's dialectic to articulate this transcendence, his discussion is clear enough otherwise. This is best seen in his analysis of the respective testimonies of the legislators and the experts at the Cincinnati trial in which the Contemporary Arts Center and its director, Dennis Barrie, were ultimately acquitted of pandering obscenity and child pornography. Danto shows that while the legislators saw the content and ignored the form, the art experts for the defence saw the form and ignored the content. Though this resulted in the acquittal, Danto rightly emphasizes that for Mapplethorpe, the work was all about making pornography that was art; he "literally became a pornographer with high artistic aims." (78) In Mapplethorpe's words, a work can "be pornography and still have redeeming social value. It can be both, which is my whole point in doing it-to have all the elements of pornography and yet have a structure of lighting that makes it go beyond what it is." (89-90) This attempt to "go beyond what it is" both illustrates Danto's conception of art as transcendence and defines Mapplethorpe's work in particular as a "playing with the edge." (77)

Danto identifies trust as the constant attribute of Mapplethorpe's work which allows the form and content to remain together. "The moral relationship between subject and artist was a condition for the artistic form the images took. The formalism was connected to the content through the mediation of that moral relationship." (79) This trust is attested to by the formal quality of the images, in that they are titled with the subjects' names, posed and lighted in formal abstraction, and clearly constitute something the subjects have allowed, thus presenting the subjects as themselves, but not candidly, rather as they have agreed to be presented. (39) This is why acts of sex are themselves generally not depicted, for here the formalism cannot be maintained. In Mapplethorpe's work, however, there is always the danger of losing this formal control and going "over the edge." (79) It is not just a question of sex and the vulnerability inherent therein, but of danger and violence. For Danto, "a presumption that one's partner could be trusted . . . is the basic connection between sex and love." (41) He ties this trust to "the spontaneous human appetite for feeling danger and being protected at once . . ." (42) The combination of sex, danger, and violence, when contained by formalism through trust, is evident not only in the overtly sexual or violent works. Indeed, Danto is perhaps at his literary best in his discussion of these elements in relation to Mapplethorpe's flowers, fruits, vegetables, and finally the portraits of statues.

Danto's discussion of Mapplethorpe's work is frank, clear, and engaged. In neither oversimplifying the seriousness of the issues nor avoiding the questions raised by the work, he nonetheless leaves open its moral status. This is a great benefit. When it is a matter of "playing with the edge," different people will ultimately experience such an encounter differently. Indeed, this frames what may be the most problematic aspect of looking at Mapplethorpe's work: "It is supposed to be shocking. When morality changes so that it is no longer shocking, Mapplethorpe's intentions will fall away into incomprehensibility." (112) Although his assessment of the historical importance of this work--and that of the seventies in America generally--will surely not persuade everyone, the main achievement here is that Danto gives the reader solid handles by which to grapple with a difficult body of work.

Average customer rating:
Playing with the Edge: The Photographic Achievement of Robert Mapplethorpe
Robert] Danto, Arthur C. [Mapplethorpe
Manufacturer: Univ of California Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000KVKFMW

Book Description

The efficient markets hypothesis has been the central proposition in finance for nearly thirty years. It states that securities prices in financial markets must equal fundamental values, either because all investors are rational or because arbitrage eliminates pricing anomalies. This book describes an alternative approach to the study of financial markets: behavioral finance. This approach starts with an observation that the assumptions of investor rationality and perfect arbitrage are overwhelmingly contradicted by both psychological and institutional evidence. In actual financial markets, less than fully rational investors trade against arbitrageurs whose resources are limited by risk aversion, short horizons, and agency problems. The book presents and empirically evaluates models of such inefficient markets. Behavioral finance models both explain the available financial data better than does the efficient markets hypothesis and generate new empirical predictions. These models can account for such anomalies as the superior performance of value stocks, the closed end fund puzzle, the high returns on stocks included in market indices, the persistence of stock price bubbles, and even the collapse of several well-known hedge funds in 1998. By summarizing and expanding the research in behavioral finance, the book builds a new theoretical and empirical foundation for the economic analysis of real-world markets.

Customer Reviews:

Best introductory book on behavioral finance.......2007-01-05

As has been admitted by even the staunchest former proponents of financial economics (such as Burton Malkiel), the multi-decades old dominant intellectual field in academic finance has piled up against itself persistent anomalous data. Thus, it is no surprise, as the science of economics advanced, that a new intellectual field would develop to challenge and replace the old. Behavioral finance, which relaxes some of the key assumptions in financial economics, utilizes survey data, and integrates knowledge from psychology to better understand financial markets, is that new intellectual field.

Although still controversial, young economists and financial professionals should become versed in this new field as early as possible: 1) because there is huge room for new research where creative economists can flex their muscle and 2) financial professionals that drop the old adherence to financial economics will have an edge over those that don't. Andrei Shleifer's work is the best introductory work on behavioral finance that I've come across, and I thus strongly recommend it to those who want a quick and easy to understand introduction to this field which is the wave of the future of academic finance (well, I hope).

Robert Stephenson-Padron
MSc student (economics & finance)
University of Navarra, Spain

Arguments Against the Efficient Market Hypothesis.......2005-01-15

Inefficient Markets by Harvard economist Andrei Shleifer provides a strong argument against the Efficient Market Hypothesis (EMH) in its various forms and an introduction to Behavioral Finance. Shleifer's main points are summarized below.

1. The EMH comes in three forms. The Weak Form states that an investor can not achieve returns above the market averages based on the analysis of historical stock price patterns (Technical Analysis). The Semi-Strong Form states that all publicly available news is reflected in stock prices almost instantaneously and that an investor can not beat the market averages by diligently tracking company earnings and other events (Fundamental Analysis). Finally, the Strong Form says that an investor can not beat the market even by using information that is not available to the public (Insider Trading). The Strong Form can be dismissed by considering the number of corporate executives currently under indictment or serving time for insider trading. Evidence against the Semi-Strong and Weak Forms can be found in the Small Stock Effect (small stocks outperform the market) and January Effect (the market does best in January) which seemed to hold until they were widely publicized but have presumably been negated since then by arbitrage. Additional evidence against the EMH can be found in the less than perfect correlation between the price movements of Royal Dutch and Shell Transport and Trading shares which jointly own the Royal Dutch Shell enterprise in a fixed 60%/40% ratio. Furthermore, the prevalence of a 10% to 20% discount in the share price of closed end funds relative to their net asset values suggests that the market is less than efficient.
2. In Chapters 2-4, Shleifer demonstrates the limits of arbitrage in maintaining efficient markets. He develops a mathematical model for predicting the returns of arbitrageurs (who accurately perceive the values of stocks) and noise traders (who incorrectly perceive the same values). His Noise Trader Model explains how noise traders can sometimes achieve higher returns than arbitrageurs based on the "hold more" and "create space" effects. The "hold more" effect is based on the community of noise traders egging each other on as was seen in the technology bubble that burst in 2000. The "create space" effect says that the wider the range of incorrect perceptions held by noise traders, the less effective arbitrageurs will be in bring stock prices back to their correct values. Shleifer uses the Noise Trader Model to make additional predictions about the market behavior of closed end funds and shows that, unlike the EMH, it accurately models such phenomena as the rise in share price to the underlying net asset value upon liquidation or reorganization as an open end fund. Finally, he shows that professional arbitrageurs, such as hedge fund operators, are forced to adopt more conservative tactics than individual arbitrageurs by their need to retain clients and funding.
3. In Chapters 5 and 6, Shleifer develops a model of Investor Sentiment based on investors' patterns of psychological underreaction and overreaction. Investors tend to underreact to new information (such as reported earnings) by modifying their perception of a stock's value by less that the new information would suggest and continuing to extrapolate the old stock price trend. If confronted with repeated inputs of new information that consistently points in the same direction, investors tend to overreact by discarding the old model, accepting the recent trend as the new model, and extrapolating it into the future. Finally, he shows how investor sentiments can form a positive feedback trading environment in which arbitrage can actually destabilize the market.

This is a book for serious students of finance. It's not a "Behavioral Finance for Dummies". However, the math does not require more than a year of calculus and a good understanding of calculus-based probability and statistics. Shleifer's writing style is remarkably clear for an academic economist (many of whom I find able to obfuscate the simplest concepts). Overall, Inefficient Markets is a long-overdue reexamination of the theoretical underpinnings of modern finance theory.

Some of Roseblatt's comments are wrong.......2004-12-25

Beneath my comments, writes Roseblatt:

=====================
In chapter 4, he is concerned with the 'limits of arbitrage' (the original title of this paper, published in the JOF in 1997). This paper is definitely worth reading to understand the problems with hedge funds and other arbitrageurs. However, linking the limits of arbitrageurs to 'inefficiency of the market' is erroneous. The very fact that arbitrageurs can not take advantage of what they think are mispriced assets, due to collateral constraints (Schleifer's hypothesis), shows that the market is efficient, since no free money is floating around.
=============================

No, with the 'limits of arbitrage', the mispricing cannot be corrected quickly. The logic lies like this: suppose A sees the arbitrage opportunity, but due to the "limit", he can only trade certain shares, and makes $10 FREE MONEY. He knows there is still another $10 "on the table", but he cannot take action anymore. At this point, if no one else sees this arbitrage opportunity, the market remains inefficient until another arbitrageir B jumps in and remove that "remaining $10 on the table". Of course A and B made "free money". Shleifer's treatment is perfectly Okay. Roseblatt's rebuttal is illogic and obviously wrong.

However, EMH itself is a hoax. It is not scientific at all. I believe in the early days, financial economics was dominated by people who had little quantitative or science training, therefore, they could only do something like EMH sort of soft libral arts type of research. To me, it is not EMH, it is how quickly the information gets reflected in stock prices; and how big is the limit of arbitrage. Nothing else. I suggest the new generation of high-level finance researchers should totally discard this spurious EMH topic. Period.

A good intro to Behavioral Finance.......2003-05-29

Markets are not efficient in part because Investor Sentiment is a strong factor creating momentum (either upward or downward trend, whether sentiment is positive or negative). Also, arbitrage is very weak, as there are no proper securities substitutes, shorting the indexes is too risky. The "Noise Trader Risk" is too great. Meaning equity values may continue to diverge long enough for the arbitrageurs to loose their shirt betting on convergence. The investor type is a very important characteristic to factor. This explains the close end fund puzzle. The discount on closed end fund tracks the fate of small cap stocks. When small cap stocks do poorly, the discount on closed end funds deepens. This is because both investments are dominated by the same type of investors: individuals - small investors. Thus, both investment types are subject to small investors' sentiments.

Too much maths but interesting interpretation.......2002-09-11

There is too much maths in the book. However, the comments and interpretation on various models are very interesting. The authour distinguish between arbitrageurs and noise traders. He also give us a theory of substituability which is interesting but inapplicable in reality. Too much theory also with a lot of hypothesis that are not respected in real markets.
I was looking more for a book on investment psychology and I was disappointed.

Average customer rating:
Icc Banking Commission Collected Opinions 1995-2001: Queries and Responses on Ucp 500, Ucp 400, Urc 522 & Urdg 458

Manufacturer: ICC Publishing
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books
Banks & Banking | Industries & Professions | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 9284212979

Average customer rating:

Lacking some very necessary details

Did we read the same book?

decidedly hands-on

Entertaining and Smart

PRICELESS INFO FOR THE JOB SEEKER

Games Companies Play: The Job Hunter's Guide to Playing Smart & Winning Big in the High-Stakes Hiring Game
Pierre Mornell
Manufacturer: TEN SPEED PRESS
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Job Hunting & Careers | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books
Guides | Job Hunting & Careers | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books
Job Hunting | Job Hunting & Careers | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books
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45 EFFECTIVE WAYS FOR HIRING SMART: How to Predict Winners and Losers in the Incredibly Expensive People-Reading Game

ASIN: 1580084087

Book Description

Following up his highly successful HIRING SMART (San Francisco Chronicle Best Books of the Year selection), business guru Pierre Mornell moves to the other side of the interview table to share his knowledge of the hiring process with job hunters of all levels. This indispensable guide is packed with Dr. Mornell's savvy, street-smart advice on taking the plunge into a new career, readying the necessary cover letters and recommendations, shining in the toughest interview situations, and closing the deal on a dream job.

Customer Reviews:

Lacking some very necessary details.......2004-05-21

Pierre Mornell's, 'Games Companies Play,' makes for a quick and easy 2 hour or so read - printed in enormous type with a sparse page layout readers will effortlessly glide from start to finish without so much as utilizing a sprinkling of brain power. While this book does serve nicely as a very general overview of the job search and hiring process, those who are in need of more nuts and bolts information will be sorely disappointed with what this book has to offer.

Did we read the same book?.......2001-05-03

A high school guidance counselor could write a better job hunting book then this! Dr. Mornell has so little to say he resorted to using a huge 14 pt type font so he could fill up 187 pages. His best answer for the standard "What are your five-year goals?" is " You can evaluate my work in three, six, or twelve months - and if it's excellent, we can decided how to best use my talents within the company." In my opinion this answer is vague and shows the job candidate has no ambition, no incentive to take ownership of his career, no plan and no sense of direction. If you are serious about finding a job, order "Knock 'em Dead 2001" by Martin Yale and get serious answers from a pro on really tough interview questions.

decidedly hands-on.......2001-02-11

from my review of this book as one of the top 5 of 2000 in mbajungle.com: "Mornell's book is decidedly hands-on, full of advice for today's job hunter. The manager looking for great employees will also find this book a godsend during any candidate search. My favorite tip: Call a prospective employee's reference when you know he won't be there, and leave a voice-mail message asking the reference to call back only if the candidate is outstanding. If the employee is indeed above par, says Mornell, the majority of people will respond in a flash."

Entertaining and Smart.......2000-09-28

Dr. Pierre Mornell's book fed me valuable information about the hiring process. The book's easy writing and engaging design is made for a new internet-era. I loved the options I had: I could either breeze through the book and pick out pull-quotes and scan graphics or really curl up and read detailed ancetdotes and issues regarding the hiring "game". Writing was witty and entertaining, Mornell made it easy to absorb critical information in choosing a long lasting job.

PRICELESS INFO FOR THE JOB SEEKER.......2000-09-06

THIS BOOK IS A PLEASURE TO READ,BEAUTIFULLY DESIGNED,AND AN ABSOLUTE NECESSITY FOR SERIOUS JOB SEEKERS LOOKING FOR QUALITY IN A CAREER...THE DUE DILLIGENCE THAT HIRERS ARE URGED TO USE IS TOO RARELY URGED AND INSTRUCTED ABOUT FROM THE HIREE'S VIEWPOINT....... TOO BAD THERE IS NOT A 6 STAR RATING...THIS WOULD ABSOLUTELY MERIT IT.

Book Description

Jump Start is written by an unprecedented collection of leading entrepreneurs and explains in an easy to understand language proven strategies for successfully getting a new venture successfully off the ground and running. The book covers the most important aspects of entrepreneurship, financing, hiring, landing the first client/selling the first batch of products, goal setting and other important topics every entrepreneur must address when starting a new business venture. Also covered are specific strategies pursued by successful entrepreneurs of some of the world's largest companies, when they started their venture, that can be altered, adapted or expanded upon for your business. A must read for every entrepreneur, regardless of the stage of their company, or whether they have even started it yet, this timeless book will serve as a valuable resource to keep you on track to building a successful company.

Customer Reviews:

INSPIRING.......2003-08-15

If you're starting a business,this book will be a great resource.

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