Synopsis
The Great Buildings Collection on CD-ROM documents over 750 buildings and 400 leading architects from around the world and across history, with more than 2200 photographic images and over 2500 architectural drawings, plus commentaries, bibliographies, dozens of digital video clips, and more than 300 live 3D walkthrough computer models (software included). For Windows 95/98/NT and Power Macintosh.
"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Foreword
Consider the art of correspondences. In Chinese cosmology, west might also be autumn, metal, sorrow, and white. In the West, classical orators memorized long speeches by associating verbal passages with sections of a visual edifice: the Theater of Memory. So too modern computers use graphic metaphors to represent searches through memory. The arrangements need not be limited to hierarchical indexes: using the computer we can also quickly pursue cross references and associative trails. In the near future, we might even use three-dimensional correspondences to go through the looking glass and into the memory theater itself.
The Great Buildings Collection is evidence that we are approaching a milestone. Its thousands of elements and more importantly, links have achieved a critical mass, enabling new kind of associative study. Historians accustomed to searching may not be the first to appreciate this. Students and amateurs are more likely to marvel at the medium, and designers looking for inspiration or precedent may benefit most. Anyone might enjoy the way the models and videos offer escape from the desktop. But remember, this collection is not a relational database. Browse. Move enough data, and you might discover some correspondences.
Malcolm McCullough
Graduate School of Design
Harvard University
December, 1993
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.