Encyclopedia of Detail in Contemporary Residential Architect Paperback – September 1, 2010

This book shows a very large array of different details, making it a must have for every architecture firm, from ceiling to floor, an ultimate resource for the student to the professional.

encyclopedia of Detail in Comtemporary Residential Architecture was a gift for my architect son in law who was delighted with it and will use it in his business.

The photos are tiny and do not relate at all to the details. The photos are just random general images of the building and don't give any context as to how the details relate to the building.Do not buy this book. It's a waste of money.

The book is in great shape but of all the book I’ve ordered in this series, ALL 3 of them have NOT included the CD ROMs / DVDs that include all the details (auto cad dwg files etc)! I want to see the dimensions of the designs and can’t without those references!! I’m not happy about that at all.

Nice book

I'm a student who was looking for a book of detailed drawing. I found it. Great layout, excellent drawings. thanks.

I found this book very well worth reading and a useful reference manual.Like the author's other lavishly illustrated volumes of architectural sections and details, this book describes, in an abundance of finely delineated drawings, key components of residential architecture: floors, walls, fenestration, doors, roofs, stairs, etc. The graphic quality of the details is rich and highly articulated, and though not construction documents or shop drawings per se, they do address the key design intentions of the architect's in an understated, elegant manner.The organization of the book is also noteworthy: the first part shows photographs of the residences, with footnoted references to the details themselves. Likewise, the details also refer back to the photographs so that reading the book becomes an inquisitive, iterative journey from the macro to the micro worlds.The details are taken from a broad cross section of residential architecture throughout the world, and more or less focused on designs that play to the minimal, reductive style that pretty much dominates this era's aesthetic gestaldt.The collection of books by Virginia McLeod can be viewed as a modern redux of Ramsey and Sleeper's,'Architectural Graphic Standards', and will likely enter the canon of 'must have' architectural reference books for the lay person to enjoy and for the professional to gain inspiration.I cannot recommend this book, and its campanion books highly enough.

I was really excited to get this book. As an architecture student, I'm constantly trying to track down good precedent details. And it's a bonus that this book comes with a CD of the CAD files. Unfortunately, most of the details are really poorly drawn. It doesn't look like the author did any processing or quality control, so there's no consistency in representation, line weight, or level of detail.I also don't care for the organization of the book. At the beginning, each project in shown in picture, with a listing of reference numbers for the types of details that are available from that project in the subsequent chapters. The chapters are then organized by assembly: foundation details, wall details, roof details, etc. It seems like a good system, but it proves pretty frustrating. There's no overall building sections to show what part of the building is shown. And the project photos are not shown again with the detail, so you end up flipping back & forth trying to figure out what you're looking at.Finally, it's annoying that often the most architecturally interesting parts of the projects are not what's shown in the details.