Alan Calder

I work in IT security so I found this book to be very interesting. It is a well written book about how to implement effective management practices in an IT environment. It is a British book, so expect there to be some cultural differences. The main issue with implementing any compliance program is that it has to be part of the mission and goals of the organization, and documented in the job descriptions and performance goals. Without those key steps, you will just be spinning your wheels try to make changes to the organization.… (altro)

Philip Webb, the elder statesman of the Arts and Crafts Movement, believed no architect should design a building until he was forty. James Marjoribanks MacLaren (1853-1890), one of his most gifted and original disciples, took no heed of the advice and produced a series of fascinating Arts and Crafts buildings before he died at the age of thirty seven. MacLaren's work expressed the philosophy of the English Arts and Crafts Movement of the 1880s. He was a pioneer of the revival and development of the Scottish roughcast vernacular and the most significant contemporary influence on Charles Rennie Mackintosh. This study describes MacLaren's buildings in Stirling, London, Las Palmas in the Canary Islands and finally at Fortingall in Perthshire, where he memorably united the time-honoured traditions of the Scottish vernacular with the contemporary ideals of the Arts and Crafts Movement. With the publication of this volume to commemorate the 150th anniversary of his birth, James MacLaren finally takes his rightful place as a leading pioneer of the progressive wing of the Arts and Crafts Movement alongside such contemporaries as Mackintosh, C. F. A. Voysey, E. S. Prior and W. R. Lethaby. Alan Calder is an architect, specialising in historic building work in Oxford and the Cotswolds; his 30-year study of MacLaren culminates in this publication.… (altro)