Designa - Wooden Books

Darren Wright

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Anyone else own any of the Wooden Books books? If you could own a Wooden Books book, which Wooden Books book would you give a look? :D

I picked up the Designa book a few weeks back. It's been a really neat reference book for figuring out design patterns. It breaks down various designs into their basic geometric patterns and shows how the repetition of those patterns makes up the overall design.

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I've found several of the books out on abebooks used also, but so far this one is my favorite.
 
Interesting, I haven't run across these before.. Looks like they have a lot of cool stuff!
This looks plausibly useful as well.. and I'm seeing a few others..

If you're looking for interesting pattern book, I quite enjoyed this one as well (it's perhaps a bit more type specific but has some interesting concepts in space filling).
Celtic Art: The Methods of Construction (Dover Art Instruction) by George Bain (1973)
 
Been thinking about the Compass one, I've got the Golden Section and Sacred Geometry ones to read through yet. Those are much smaller (fewer pages) than Designa, which is a compilation of several related books.
 
Golden Section

I've read a rather large amount on that and imho it is not nearly as much of absolute as many like to claim. Are there things that are close? sure.. does the Parthenon and <laundry list of other things supposedly built around it or do any "natural" elements actually follow it> actually follow it? nope! Most supposed historical applications of it seem like mostly a lot of woo woo and wishful thinking of what could be true.

I've also read a number of studies that failed to find any real "preference" for it as a pleasing proportion either, compared to other simpler proportions (non double blind studies need not apply...).

So I think the golden section/ratio is perhaps more interesting as a study of human psychology than an study of design elements.

I actually just started reading "Get Your House Right: Architectural Elements to Use & Avoid" (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1402791038/) last night... still a bit early to make any angry ranting noises about it yet..



For simplified layout concepts I did quite enjoy the Tolpin book "By Hand and Eye" (https://www.byhandandeye.com/books/), it's also a bit small for the price (but not necessarily a bad thing, consider it "information condensed".. I'll pay for that heh)..
 
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