Basil's, but Alexia Blue travels with a different purpose: to visit the public baths. What starts off as a simple vacation quickly becomes an obsession, as Brue ventures out to sample the range of bathing traditions the world has to offer. Full of intimacies, discoveries and unexpected twists, Cathedrals of the Flesh is the candid and playful account of one woman's determination to follow her passion.

    And while the country runs with clockwork precision, the cultural life of the inhabitants is transformed with the changing of the seasons, a testament to the enduring power of nature's rhythms.With each page alive with facts, history and inspiration, Be More Japan unlocks the secrets behind modern Japanese living - whether you're eating sushi in London or enjoying the cherry blossoms in San Francisco. And if you're dreaming of a future trip to Japan, this book will get you closer to your destination before you've even departed.

    

    That groundbreaking book proposed a new blueprint for the American home: a house that values quality over quantity, with an emphasis on comfort and beauty, a high level of detail, and a floor plan designed for today's informal lifestyle. Creating the Not So Big House is the blueprint in action. Focusing on key design strategies such as visual weight, layering, and framed openings, Sarah Susanka takes an up-close look at 25 houses designed according to Not So Big principles. The houses are from all over North America in a rich variety of styles -- from a tiny New York apartment to a southwestern adobe, a traditional Minnesota farmhouse, and a cottage community in the Pacific Northwest. Whether new or remodeled, these one-of-a-kind homes provide all the inspiration you need to create your own Not So Big House.

    Kimberly Elam takes the reader on a geometrical journey, lending insight and coherence to the design process by exploring the visual relationships that have foundations in mathematics as well as the essential qualities of life. Geometry of Design-the first book in our new Design Briefs Series-takes a close look at a broad range of twentieth-century examples of design, architecture, and illustration (from the Barcelona chair to the Musica Viva poster, from the Braun handblender to the Conico kettle), revealing underlying geometric structures in their compositions. Explanations and techniques of visual analysis make the inherent mathematical relationships evident and a must-have for anyone involved in graphic arts. The book focuses not only on the classic systems of proportioning, such as the golden section and root rectangles, but also on less well known proportioning systems such as the Fibonacci Series. Through detailed diagrams these geometric systems are brought to life giving an effective insight into the design process.

    The work adds up to a powerful and endlessly rewarding resource for students of all ages. First published in 1969, the book is now reissued to present the enduring core of Potter's arguments. An afterword by Robin Kinross sets the work andits author in their contexts.

    From this theoretical standpoint he seeks to establish a link between modern architecture and reality as a source of inspiration. The volume is a valid instrument that permits the reader to interpret and compare modes considered central to modern design: the relationship between man and space (presence), design and its instruments (language) and architecture in its relationship to the landscape (place). Numerous examples of modern and ancient architecture and urban and landscape systems (Paris, Urbino, Jerusalem) strengthen and exemplify the theoretical notions, further supplementing them with a rich collection of images.

    Expert software designers have specific habits, learned practices, and observed principles that they apply deliberately during their design work. This book offers sixty-six insights, distilled from years of studying experts at work, that capture what successful software designers actually do to create great software.The book presents these insights in a series of two-page illustrated spreads, with the principle and a short explanatory text on one page, and a drawing on the facing page. For example, "Experts generate alternatives" is illustrated by the same few balloons turned into a set of very different balloon animals. The text is engaging and accessible; the drawings are thought-provoking and often playful.Organized into such categories as "Experts reflect," "Experts are not afraid," and "Experts break the rules," the insights range from "Experts prefer simple solutions" to "Experts see error as opportunity." Readers learn that "Experts involve the user"; "Experts take inspiration from wherever they can"; "Experts design throughout the creation of software"; and "Experts draw the problem as much as they draw the solution."One habit for an aspiring expert software designer to develop would be to read and reread this entertaining but essential little book. The insights described offer a guide for the novice or a reference for the veteran--in software design or any design profession.A companion web site provides an annotated bibliography that compiles key underpinning literature, the opportunity to suggest additional insights, and more.

    Its architecture is not more impressive than that of Rome or Paris; its museums do not hold more treasures than those in Barcelona or London. And yet, when citizens of “New York, Tel Aviv, or Rome ask me where I’m from and I mention the name Berlin,” writes Peter Schneider, “their eyes instantly light up.”Berlin Now is a longtime Berliner’s bright, bold, and digressive exploration of the heterogeneous allure of this vibrant city. Delving beneath the obvious answers—Berlin’s club scene, bolstered by the lack of a mandatory closing time; the artistic communities that thrive due to the relatively low (for now) cost of living—Schneider takes us on an insider’s tour of this rapidly metamorphosing metropolis, where high-class soirees are held at construction sites and enterprising individuals often accomplish more without public funding—assembling a makeshift club on the banks of the Spree River—than Berlin’s officials do.Schneider’s perceptive, witty investigations on everything from the insidious legacy of suspicion instilled by the East German secret police to the clashing attitudes toward work, food, and love held by former East and West Berliners have been sharply translated by Sophie Schlondorff. The result is a book so lively that readers will want to jump on a plane—just as soon as they’ve finished their adventures on the page.

    He is grieving for the loss of his wife when the tunnel collapses and traps the bus inside. In the darkness that follows, he manages to fumble out of the bus with the only other survivor, an astute and gentle woman who reminds him of his late wife. Without any light to guide them and with only each other to depend on, they try to escape the stifling darkness and along the way find themselves confronted by their pasts and given their last chance at intimacy, and ultimately, absolution.A realist story that plays with surreal elements, the tale poses a simple question: what is the meaning of hope?

    Its applicability to the design process is seen in the physical fit, or interface, between the human body and the various components of interior space.Human Dimension and Interior Space is the first major anthropometrically based reference book of design standards for use by all those involved with the physical planning and detailing of interiors, including interior designers, architects, furniture designers, builders, industrial designers, and students of design. The use of anthropometric data, although no substitute for good design or sound professional judgment should be viewed as one of the many tools required in the design process. This comprehensive overview of anthropometrics consists of three parts.The first part deals with the theory and application of anthropometrics and includes a special section dealing with physically disabled and elderly people. It provides the designer with the fundamentals of anthropometrics and a basic understanding of how interior design standards are established. The second part contains easy-to-read, illustrated anthropometric tables, which provide the most current data available on human body size, organized by age and percentile groupings. Also included is data relative to the range of joint motion and body sizes of children. The third part contains hundreds of dimensioned drawings, illustrating in plan and section the proper anthropometrically based relationship between user and space. The types of spaces range from residential and commercial to recreational and institutional, and all dimensions include metric conversions.In the Epilogue, the authors challenge the interior design profession, the building industry, and the furniture manufacturer to seriously explore the problem of adjustability in design. They expose the fallacy of designing to accommodate the so-called average man, who, in fact, does not exist. Using government data, including studies prepared by Dr. Howard Stoudt, Dr. Albert Damon, and Dr. Ross McFarland, formerly of the Harvard School of Public Health, and Jean Roberts of the U.S. Public Health Service, Panero and Zelnik have devised a system of interior design reference standards, easily understood through a series of charts and situation drawings. With Human Dimension and Interior Space, these standards are now accessible to all designers of interior environments.

    With a stunning, brand-new look, Eyewitness Travel Guides are essential reading for vacation, business, or armchair travel. Consistently chosen over the competition in national consumer market research, Eyewitness Travel Guides include up-to-date information on local customs, currency, medical services, transportation, and much more.

    That quixotic quest for understanding has drawn much of the world’s population eastward ever since Buddha first assumed the lotus position, and writer Mara Altman needed to know why. So she flew around the world in search of an answer not only to that mystery, but also to the deeper questions that plague all who yearn to define the meaning of life. What Altman found in her wild, comic 18-day reporting trek across India – a journey that took her on a laborious, 37-hour cross-country train trip, onto a mystical flat rock by the ocean in Pondicherry, and eventually into the emergency room of a cut-rate Bangalore hospital – will make you laugh, learn and ponder. By the end of her epic odyssey, it will also take you unexpectedly and thrillingly close to the pulsing heart of human existence. After graduating from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, Mara Altman worked as a staff writer for The Village Voice. In 2009, HarperCollins published Altman's first book, Thanks For Coming: A Young Woman's Quest for an Orgasm, which was optioned as a comedy series by HBO. She has published seven bestselling Kindle Singles, including the #1 bestseller Bearded Lady, and has also written for New York Magazine and The New York Times. Cover design by Adil Dara

    Clueless in Tokyo provides an outsider's take on everyday life in Japan's capital city—a place where vending machines talk, toilets can be terrifying, and centuries-old festivals unfold against a backdrop of space-age architecture. During the seven years Reynolds lived in Japan, she filled thirty sketchbooks with everything that caught her eye. Whether it's fashion, food, sport, transport, seasonal rituals, or Japanese pastimes, each vibrant sketch is a delight, and Reynolds' witty hand-lettered captions in both Japanese and English provide an entertaining resource for beginning learners of the Japanese language.Adult students and travelers alike will find this Japan travel guide to be a charming and insightful addition to their trip.

    In a mountain village, we meet Morie Sawataishi, a fierce individualist who has chosen to break the law by keeping an Akita dog hidden in a shed on his property. During the war, the magnificent and intensely loyal Japanese hunting dogs are donated to help the war effort, eaten, or used to make fur vests for the military. By the time of the Japanese surrender in 1945, there are only sixteen Akitas left in the country. The survival of the breed becomes Morie's passion and life, almost a spiritual calling. Devoted to the dogs, Morie is forever changed. His life becomes radically unconventional-almost preposterous-in ultra-ambitious, conformist Japan. For the dogs, Morie passes up promotions, bigger houses, and prestigious engineering jobs in Tokyo. Instead, he raises a family with his young wife, Kitako-a sheltered urban sophisticate-in Japan's remote and forbidding snow country. Their village is isolated, but interesting characters are always dropping by-dog buddies, in-laws from Tokyo, and a barefoot hunter who lives in the wild. Due in part to Morie's perseverance and passion, the Akita breed strengthens and becomes wildly popular, sometimes selling for millions of yen. Yet Morie won't sell his spectacular dogs. He only likes to give them away. Morie and Kitako remain in the snow country today, living in the traditional Japanese cottage they designed together more than thirty years ago-with tatami mats, an overhanging roof, a deep bathtub, and no central heat. At ninety-four years old, Morie still raises and trains the Akita dogs that have come to symbolize his life. In beautiful prose that is a joy to read, Martha Sherrill opens up the world of the Dog Man and his wife, providing a profound look at what it is to be an individualist in a culture that reveres conformity-and what it means to live life in one's own way, while expertly revealing Japan and Japanese culture as we've never seen it before.