Saluti cordiallissimi. Our most gracious welcome to you. We are delighted you found us. May we assist you? We offer unique teaching books. Books about perspective. Books about color media and markers. Coloring books to illustrate great buildings. Books cataloguing the built environment around us. For teaching facilities, we offer visual media and large-format teaching books and even wall posters. soon we will introduce streaming video techniques, which will then make their way to your iPod via video podcasts. Membership will provide you with electronic access to our works, PDF downloads on diverse topics ranging from three-point perspective to Andrea Palladio. Travel audio Podcasts will soon be available for unique sites, first in Italy and then expanding across the globe. Our bookshelves provide access to specialized, small-run publications with this year’s being the first of a series called Smartbooks. There are links to on-line art supplies at a discount and further reading sources beyond our own shelves. And there is Ask the Professor.  Architectural Salad is a catalog collection of 25,000 images, not a stock of photos, but a teaching collection organized to permit the historical sequencing that we think makes the past so much a part of present design. Membership grants access to all pages in color and provides an institution seeking visual media with a good pre-purchase look. Some pages are copyright protected and may only be viewed as an educational tool; links to sites are often provided
Smartbooks share light-hearted ways to grasp perspective and hand media control, giving you tools to reach the next stage of dream making: rapid design visualization. As a member, you may access all pages and download special papers that offer tips and suggestions ranging from paper supplies, marker pens and accessories, to pencils all to achieve your visualization goals.
Amtal Travel will provide a glimpse into our upcoming travel lectures schedule, along with PDF downloads of particular sights we have seen. Hotels are reviewed when we know of an especially fetching place, or we might share one of our personal favorite restaurants or dishes. Some will be famous, but most are loved by just a few in the know. We are preparing audio i-Podcasts for special locations, as Fumane's Villa Della Torre (read more in Essays). We are delighted to consider our agents based in Milano, Italy the experts in facilitating your final travel plans.
The Amtal Store is a quick place to sort recommended readings, purchase discounted art supplies, acquire Smartbooks for rapid visualization techniques, and locate Architectural Salad lecture catalogues. Slides from Architectural Salad will be available as $250.00 custom sets or full collections for scholastic use.
. May we extend our warmest welcome to our site and our dreams. Benvenuti! |
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 Ancient Maya civilization has a remarkable appeal to the general public, partly because of the exotic contrast of their world with our industrialized society. Also, the popular press usually can be counted on to characterize Maya civilization as mysterious, unknowable, unique, as well as bizarre, weird, and awe-inspiring. The exotic, tropical setting of most ancient Maya ruins adds to the appeal for those who do not have to live there.
The environmental realities are quite different. The jungles offer maximum heat and insects, alternating deluge and drought and a milieu in which bacteria, viruses and other disease-causing organisms flourish. And cultural realities can be just as different as some romanticized perceptions. Sadly, the exotic image has often masked the truth. The real Maya are truly one of the most interesting and important early civilizations to evolve in place from simple beginnings. |
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 With a secure pay site, we are often asked, “What’s inside?” During these first months, we have managed to amass a substantial amount of content. Among other elements, there are the initial drafts of two illustrated books, each more than one hundred and twenty pages in printed length.
Smartbook 1 begins the conversation of sketch perspective geared for interior architecture and interior design. Step-by-step guidelines, illustrations, and comments navigate the user to a solid understanding of perspective. This so-called “red” book contains thirteen chapters, plus a glossary.
 Our sample gallery of actual pages includes the simultaneous learning of one point and two point perspectives as each relates to the location of the observer. The view corresponding to that of a client entering a room and stopping to admire the ambiance can be understood quickly through the use of body orientation.
Architectural-style elevations, well understood by designers and architects, are usually not that clear to a client. We have chosen to share two pages that start from an elevation, locate isolated vanishing points within, and pull the converging lines to the viewer (converging lines are actually parallel but appear |
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 We are delighted to share with you as we continue to evolve our products and services. We are currently working to improve the text of the first two Smartbooks as we prepare the series for physical publication later this year. The system of learning perspective that we present, is specifically geared towards depicting interior spaces, and it is one of the quickest methods to create rapid visualization renderings. There will be two more Smartbooks, completing the four book series. In all, two books examine perspective drawing, and the other two explore markers and some mixed media rendering materials that put the finishing touches on the presentation drawings. |
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News Feeds |
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NYT > Art & Design
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Museum Review: Good Guys, Bad Guys and Spies, All Wrapped in ?Edutainment?
The International Spy Museum and the National Museum of Crime & Punishment in Washington promise the latest forms of ?edutainment,? which generously blur boundaries between fact and fancy. 
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For an Artist at Full Speed, Everything Else Just Takes a Back Seat
?The Art of Failure: Chuck Connelly Not For Sale? chronicles Mr. Connelly?s fast rise and long career slide. 
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Art Review | 'Radiance From the Rain Forest': Objects From a Long-Vanished Peru, Parading All Their Magnificent Plumage
This show supplements the Met?s rarely displayed holdings of featherwork with examples borrowed from public and private collections. 
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China?s Legacy: Let a Million Museums Bloom
Most art is an unsettled category in China and museums have complicated uses. 
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Art Review: Storm-Tossed Visionary of Light
The oil and watercolor paintings in the Metropolitan Museum?s ?J. M. W. Turner? swing between overblown and moving, inspired and mechanical. 
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Design Review | Buckminster Fuller: Fixing Earth One Dome at a Time
A timely new exhibition of works by Buckminster Fuller at the Whitney Museum is likely to stir waves of nostalgia for those who miss the architecture of the cold war. 
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Along the Hudson, Searching for Old
For country-weekend antiquing, the mid-Hudson Valley offers excellent prices, great scenery and, in terms of merchandise, a little of almost everything. 
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Art Review: Some Shows for Escape, Some for Introspection
When the dog days arrive, many New York art galleries turn their exhibition spaces into pluralistic laboratories to test new talent and experiment with cool ideas. 
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Art Review: 3,344 People May Not Know Art but Know What They Like
The Brooklyn Museum?s ?Click! A Crowd-Curated Exhibition? invites its viewers to consider whether the crowd is better than the individual at picking quality photography. 
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Art in Review
Tetsumi Kudo at Andrea Rosen, Hilary Harnischfeger at Never Work, Cliff Evans at Luxe Gallery and more. 
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Antiques: Diverse Sales Upriver at Stair Galleries
An auction house on the Hudson is previewing a 500-lot ?exposition auction,? which will feature a diverse range of furniture, mirrors, chandeliers and porcelain. 
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Inside Art: London Swings as a Dynamo for Selling Art
The weak dollar has made London an attractive place for Americans to sell art, and has become the stomping ground for rich denizens of the former Soviet Union. 
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Museum and Gallery Listings
Selective listings from art critics of The New York Times. 
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Abroad: Visiting the Heights and the Depths, With Goya as Guide
?Goya in Times of War? at the Prado in Madrid is most memorable for pictures less famous, some rarely or never seen ? still lifes and portraits ? many from obscure collections. 
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Renaissance Sculpture Damaged in Fall at Met
A relief by the Renaissance sculptor Andrea della Robbia came loose overnight from its perch and crashed to the stone floor below, seriously damaging it. 
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