Book review: A visual dictionary of architecture

Ever since I started to study and work with architecture, one of the biggest challenges for a student is to read a document describing the details of a project and building, with lots of technical terms and names. Well, back there I bought a great book describing with drawings all parts and details of architecture. The book was written in Brazilian Portuguese and helped me a lot during my days as a student and even today, when I see a name that I doesn`t know the meaning I run to the book to check it there.

Back when I started to work on my architectural visualization book with Blender, I felt the need learn the technical terms for architecture again, but now because I know a lot of terms and names in Portuguese but very few in English. At that time a friend of mine borrowed me a great book called A visual dictionary of architecture that I used to search for the names of architectural elements described on the book. After a few weeks I gave back the book and started to write posts for this blog, and even be a part of some visualization projects working with teams, where I had to discuss the details of the project with team members in English. Well, the need to learn a bit more comes again.

So, last week I finally got my copy of the Visual Dictionary of Architecture in English to be able to work, write and discuss about architectural projects and visualization with a expanded vocabulary.

The dictionary has more than 300 pages and describes terms and works on almost 70 related subjects to architecture like:

• Archs
• Ceramics
• Construction
• Foundation
• Ornaments
• Stairs
• Roofs
• Structures

Along with the terms from architecture, the book shows some interesting subjects like solar energy, which will help to create green architecture projects. At least plan them.

If you are an architecture student or a professional willing to start working with projects around the world, I strongly recommend this book for you. It`s a great help to learn and communicate with other professionals using technical terms and works in the English language.