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Architects? Working Details ? Foreign Examples ? 6 (1959) D. A. C. A. Boyne ? The Architectural Press ISBN: none (real architects don?t need barcodes, they have drawing numbers) Condition: Good Vendor: Crappy Old Books Behold: the glamorous, jet-setting side of construction detailing. Architects? Working Details ? Foreign Examples ? 6 is what happens when 1950s British architects look up from their brick cavity walls, squint across the Channel and say, ?Hang on, what are they doing with their lintels?? This is not a coffee-table book of swoony façades and lifestyle photography. This is the hard stuff : sections, details, junctions, and notes in tiny, disciplined lettering. It?s a curated album of how other countries were solving the eternal questions of: ?How do we keep the rain out?? ?How do we hold this up without it falling down?? ?Can we do it with more confidence and less timber?? Inside these staunchly monochrome pages you?ll find: Foreign details ? the phrase alone suggesting a world of exotic gutters and cosmopolitan expansion joints. Plans, sections and elevations of real buildings, carefully sliced open so you can admire how other nations handle stairs, roofs, glazing, balconies and structural contortions. That beloved mid-century trifecta: thin lines, precise hatching and absolutely no Photoshop , just pure draughtsmanship, ink and anxiety. Notes and captions that assume you already know your way around a detail drawing and are merely here for fresh ways to handle a parapet upstand. A gentle, underlying suggestion that the Continent might, just possibly, be doing a few things better. It?s like a travel guide for architects where the sightseeing consists entirely of junctions blown up to 1:5. Our copy is graded Good , which in Crappy Old Books terminology means: The cover/boards are solid and functional, perhaps a little rubbed at the corners, like a well-used drawing board that?s seen one too many tracing pins. The spine is sound and upright, possibly with a touch of shelf wear, but absolutely in line with the Building Regulations on structural integrity. The pages are all present and firmly bound, aged to a soft, creamy ?old drawing office? tone that pairs nicely with the smell of tracing paper and stale coffee. A faint smudge here, a tiny pencil tick there ? evidence some previous architect actually mined this for ideas instead of just waving it around in meetings. No catastrophic coffee spills, no major tears; just honest, professional wear, as if this book has spent its working life being opened flat on a desk next to a parallel motion and a pile of sharpened 2H pencils. Not pristine, not ?as new? ? more like a reliable senior technician: experienced, slightly scuffed, knows exactly how that roof junction should go. Perfect for: Architects and students who secretly enjoy details more than concept sketches and are not ashamed to admit it. Heritage modernists who think the pinnacle of civilisation was the 1950s drawing office and would like to see how they did things in Switzerland. Or Sweden. Or anywhere that wasn?t Croydon. Design nerds who collect old technical books and call it ?research? Anyone tired of architecture books that talk about ?space and light? but never show you how the balcony is actually fixed to the slab. Architects? Working Details ? Foreign Examples ? 6 is a love letter to the unsung heroes of architecture: the little lines where everything meets and nothing leaks (in theory). Available now from Crappy Old Books , where our foundations are solid, our grading is honest, and we firmly believe that beauty is in the eye of whoever can read a 1:10 section without crying.
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