By being practical and performing well over time, they are as much the antidote to superficial styling as they are to the shoddy and second-rate. Applied to the home as a whole, this discerning approach results in interiors that are effortlessly stylish, confident and timeless, with plenty of room for the expression of personal taste.Plain Simple Useful is organized according to the main activities that take place at home. Inspirational interiors, many of which are Conran's own, and a number of projects designed by him exclusively for this book, provide all the guidance you need to tailor-make your own storage. The book also features iconic examples of classic designs that will enhance any home, as well as a peek behind the closed doors of those well-ordered closets, pantries, and other storage spaces that contribute so much to easy living.

    One among them is Terah Kathryn, who presents us with this guide to Feng Shui, specifically geared to lifestyles in the Western world.

    Unaccountably, the details of that shocking crime have been largely ignored by Wright’s legion of biographers—a historical and cultural gap that is finally addressed in William Drennan’s exhaustively researched Death in a Prairie House: Frank Lloyd Wright and the Taliesin Murders.     In response to the scandal generated by his open affair with the proto-feminist and free love advocate Mamah Borthwick Cheney, Wright had begun to build Taliesin as a refuge and "love cottage" for himself and his mistress (both married at the time to others).      Conceived as the apotheosis of Wright’s prairie house style, the original Taliesin would stand in all its isolated glory for only a few months before the bloody slayings that rocked the nation and reduced the structure itself to a smoking hull.     Supplying both a gripping mystery story and an authoritative portrait of the artist as a young man, Drennan wades through the myths surrounding Wright and the massacre, casting fresh light on the formulation of Wright’s architectural ideology and the cataclysmic effects that the Taliesin murders exerted on the fabled architect and on his subsequent designs. Best Books for General Audiences, selected by the American Association of School Librarians, and Outstanding Book, selected by the Public Library Association

    30-Second Architecture

    Classic work of Edward White on analyzing a site for building.

    Designing with Plants is both inspirational and instructive-an informative and visually breathtaking study that shows readers how to create the same effects in their gardens. This paperback reprint includes four main parts. "Planting Palettes" shows the range of plant choice available in form, texture, and color. "Designing Schemes" shows how to combine these elements to create stunning and sculptural gardens. Through stunning photography, "Planting Moods" shows how to create a particular atmosphere. And "Year-Round Planting" emphasizes the importance of choosing plants that have value throughout the seasons.

    You'll learn about styles like Art Deco, Modernism, and High-Tech, and find inspiration in galleries of LEGO models. Then take your turn building 12 models in a variety of styles. Snap together some bricks and learn architecture the fun way!

    These operative verbs abstract the idea of spatial formation to its most basic terms, allowing for an objective approach to create the foundation for subjective spatial design. Examples of these verbs are expand, inflate, nest, wist, lift, embed, merge and many more. Together they form a visual dictionary decoding the syntax of spatial verbs. The verbs are illustrated with three-dimensional diagrams and pictures of designs which show the verbs 'in action'.This approach was devised, tested, and applied to architectural studio instruction by Anthony Di Mari and Nora Yoo while teaching at Harvard University's Career Discovery Program in Architecture in 2010. As instructors and as recent graduates, they saw a need for this kind of catalogue from both sides - as a reference manual applicable to design students in all stages of their studies, as well as a teaching tool for instructors to help students understand the strong spatial potential of abstract operations.

    He identifies a “global style” of architecture—as practiced by Norman Foster, Richard Rogers and Renzo Piano—analogous to the international style of Le Corbusier, Gropius and Mies. More than any art, today’s global style conveys both the dreams and delusions of modernity. Foster demonstrates that a study of the “art-architecture complex” provides invaluable insight into broader social and economic trajectories in urgent need of analysis.From the Trade Paperback edition.

    

    Her keen eye and vivid writing have reinforced to readers how important architecture is and why it continues to be both controversial and fascinating.In her new book--which gathers together the best of her writing, from one of her first pieces in the New York Times in 1962 on le Corbusier's Carpenter Center at Harvard, to essays in the New York Review of Books, to more recent writing in the Wall Street Journal--Huxtable bears witness to some of the twentieth century's best--and worst--architectural masters and projects.With a perspective of more than four decades, Huxtable examines the century's modernist beginnings and then turns her critic's eye to the seismic shift in style, function, and fashion that occurred midcentury--all leading to a dramatic new architecture of the twenty-first century. Much of the writing in On Architecture has never appeared in book form before, and Huxtable's many admirers will be delighted to once again have access to her elegant, impassioned opinions, insights, and wisdom."Looking back, I realize that my career covered an extraordinary period of change, that I was writing at a time in which architecture was changing slowly but radically--a time when everything about modernism was being incrementally questioned and rejected as we moved into a new kind of thinking and building." And while it was a quiet, nearly stealth revolution, it was a absolutely a revolution in which the past was reaccepted and reincorporated, periods and styles ignored by modernism were reexamined and reevaluated. History and theory, once considered irrelevant, became central to the practice of architecture again."

    Hence a new architectural discourse has emerged: landscape urbanism.In The Landscape Urbanism Reader Charles Waldheimwho is at the forefront of this new movementhas assembled the definitive collection of essays by many of the field's top practitioners. Fourteen essays written by leading figures across a range of disciplines and from around the worldincluding James Corner, Linda Pollak, Alan Berger, Pierre Blanger, Julia Czerniak, and morecapture the origins, the contemporary milieu, and the aspirations of this relatively new field. The Landscape Urbanism Reader is an inspiring signal to the future of city making as well as an indispensablereference for students, teachers, architects, and urban planners.

    Throughout, gorgeous photographs of rooms with rare collections, floor-to-ceiling shelves, and stacks upon stacks of books inspire readers to live better with their own collections.Praise for Bibliostyle"Featuring enviable private libraries and packed floor-to-ceiling shelves, this beautiful volume makes a compelling case for books as d�cor."--New York"Freudenberger spotlights the splendid, enviable personal libraries of literary figures whose owners obviously care about their book collections and have actually read them, too."--The Boston Globe"This is a coffee table book that makes you think as well as admire and desire."--Sydney Herald"Offers a look into the fabulous homes of book lovers the world over, showcasing how their interior design is built around the tomes they love most."--CN"The photographs of rooms with rare collections, floor-to-ceiling shelves, and stacks upon stacks of books will inspire readers to live better with their own collections."--Publishers Weekly "Nina Freudenberger teams with Sadie Stein of The New Yorker and photographer Shade Degges of Architectural Digest to showcase beautiful photographs of the private libraries of book lovers from all over the world."--BookRiot

    It discusses the Garden Cities movement and the suburban developments it generated, the German-Russian architectural experiments of the 1920s, the place of the avant-garde in the plastic arts, and the uses and pitfalls of seismological approaches to architecture, and assesses the prospects of socialist alternatives.

    In entirely new photographs taken especially for this book by two leading architectural photographers under the direction of co-editor David Larkin, such internationally famous buildings as the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Fallingwater and Wright's homes Taliesin, Taliesin West, and the Oak Park Home and Studio are seen afresh, benefiting from the photographers' special access. Several lesser-known residences, such as Auldbrass Plantation in South Carolina, an array of wooden buildings that is Wright's American alternative to antebellum architecture, the William H. Winslow house in River Forest, Illinois, one of the architect's earliest and most surprisingly decorative houses, and the Kenneth Laurent house in Rockford, Illinois, a masterful curvilinear design, are seen in full color and demonstrate dimensions of Wright's work less often seen before. Public buildings, such as the dramatic concrete, glass, and steel Marin County Civic Center and Beth Sholom Synagogue show Wright as engineering virtuoso as well as creative architect. In addition to these existing masterworks, only the most famous of which are open to the public, the book covers buildings that have been demolished, notably the Larkin Company Administration Building, Midway Gardens, and the Imperial Hotel, which are represented here by drawings and rich archival photographs. Each of the buildings is presented from conceptual sketch, plan, or drawing to finished masterwork, andeach is accompanied by an in-depth essay detailing the development of the work. Extensive quotes from Wright's writings, unpublished talks, and private letters to the clients give valuable insight into the architect's own thinking about each commission. Never before has Wright's architecture been presented so elaborately in one volume.