With the turn of each page, Liz Fourez leads you on a tour through her family’s house, restored to its 1940s rustic farm style, and teaches you how to make each handmade decoration yourself. The projects require minimal effort, yet add instant charm to any room. With your blue jeans on and a few of the most basic supplies in hand, you’ll be on your way to your dream home in no time.You’ll learn how to make a custom wood Family Name Sign for your living room, a Wooden Boot Tray on Casters for the entryway, a Ruffled Stool Slipcover for the kitchen and a Rustic Wooden Frame for the bedroom, plus decorations for the office, bathroom, kids’ bedroom and playroom. Farmhouse style is about cultivating a connection among family, home and nature; A Touch of Farmhouse Charm helps you bring the warmth and beauty of simpler times to your modern life naturally.

    We spend 90 percent of our time inside, shuttling between homes and offices, schools and stores, restaurants and gyms. And yet, in many ways, the indoor world remains unexplored territory. For all the time we spend inside buildings, we rarely stop to consider: How do these spaces affect our mental and physical well-being? Our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors? Our productivity, performance, and relationships?In this wide-ranging, character-driven book, science journalist Emily Anthes takes us on an adventure into the buildings in which we spend our days, exploring the profound, and sometimes unexpected, ways that they shape our lives. Drawing on cutting-edge research, she probes the pain-killing power of a well-placed window and examines how the right office layout can expand our social networks. She investigates how room temperature regulates our cognitive performance, how the microbes hiding in our homes influence our immune systems, and how cafeteria design affects what—and how much—we eat.Along the way, Anthes takes readers into an operating room designed to minimize medical errors, a school designed to boost students’ physical fitness, and a prison designed to support inmates’ psychological needs. And she previews the homes of the future, from the high-tech houses that could monitor our health to the 3D-printed structures that might allow us to live on the Moon.The Great Indoors provides a fresh perspective on our most familiar surroundings and a new understanding of the power of architecture and design. It's an argument for thoughtful interventions into the built environment and a story about how to build a better world—one room at a time.

    Chapter by chapter, learn how to tackle it all—relationships, clutter, health, communities, inner balance, and more—by looking within your immediate environment to make direct connections in your life.The Holistic Home is based on an original lifestyle concept focused on creating a dynamic, healthy, and thoughtful space within yourself and your home by combining three planes of action—mind, body, and spirit—that result in profound change.The condition of the mind affects the psychology of how you dwell: subconscious influences, decorating with intention, and allowing your emotional issues and challenges to manifest in your space. The physical aspects of your design space, such as furniture positioning, design elements, sustainability, wellness, and organization, are representative of your relationship with your body. And finally, the spirit refers to all the invisible energies within you and your home—feng shui, atmosphere, and the soul of your home.Years ago, author and holistic feng shui expert Laura Benko was diagnosed with a rare cancer. Around that time, a book serendipitously fell on her head. She took this as a much-needed sign to devote the next decade of her life to research and hundreds of transformative holistic design consultations. Her clients’ real-life, inspiring stories, along with specific actions and tips, have become the foundation for The Holistic Home.

    

    Based on John Dewey's lectures on esthetics, delivered as the first William James Lecturer at Harvard in 1932, Art as Experience has grown to be considered internationally as the most distinguished work ever written by an American on the formal structure and characteristic effects of all the arts: architecture, sculpture, painting, music, and literature.

    Etcetera draws on five of Sibella's favourite color themes as a framework for the display of her impeccable eye for detail and her bowerbird tendencies.Each section will draw you into Sibella's world of color and texture through inspirational room settings, to the most intimate of details.

    The book is organized in a fresh and sensible way, looking at how the rooms are actually used, not at what they are called. Step-by-step instructions for each project are included, plus an extensive resource section. 200 color illustrations.

    The chapters follow a progressive sequence that teaches basic skills through practical, accessible exercises–how to handle a brush, achieve the right paint consistency, mix color, and create dimension–building a solid foundation that readers can rely on as painting projects grow more challenging. A special feature is the artwork and commentary of real students, which helps beginners set realistic goals and shows them how other artists at the same level of experience have worked through inevitable setbacks to achieve success.

       Pattern is the strongest element in any room. In Living with Pattern, Rebecca Atwood demystifies how to use that element, a design concept that often confounds and confuses, demonstrating how to seamlessly mix and layer prints throughout a house. She covers pattern usage you probably already have, such as on your duvet cover or in the living room rug, and she also reveals the unexpected places you might not have thought to add it: bathroom tiles, an arrangement of book spines in a reading nook, or windowpane gridding in your entryway. In this stunning book, beautiful photography showcases distinct uses of pattern in homes all over the country to inspire you to realize that an injection of pattern can enliven any space, helping to make it uniquely yours.

    Japan Style introduces 20 special residences. With more than 200 color photographs, this book showcases the stunning beauty of old homes, and reveals how they are cared for by their owners.Traditional Japanese homes, with superbly crafted fine wood, great workmanship and seasonal interior arrangements, have an aesthetic of infinite simplicity. Unlike Japanese inns and historical buildings, the houses featured in this book are private property and are not open to public viewing. Japan Style offers a rare glimpse into the intimate world of the everyday Japanese and fascinating insight into the traditional architecture of Japan.

    It is also a book they may want to keep out of view of their professors, for it expresses in clear and simple language things that tend to be murky and abstruse in the classroom. These 101 concise lessons in design, drawing, the creative process, and presentation--from the basics of "How to Draw a Line" to the complexities of color theory--provide a much-needed primer in architectural literacy, making concrete what too often is left nebulous or open-ended in the architecture curriculum. Each lesson utilizes a two-page format, with a brief explanation and an illustration that can range from diagrammatic to whimsical. The lesson on "How to Draw a Line" is illustrated by examples of good and bad lines; a lesson on the dangers of awkward floor level changes shows the television actor Dick Van Dyke in the midst of a pratfall; a discussion of the proportional differences between traditional and modern buildings features a drawing of a building split neatly in half between the two. Written by an architect and instructor who remembers well the fog of his own student days, 101 Things I Learned in Architecture School provides valuable guideposts for navigating the design studio and other classes in the architecture curriculum. Architecture graduates--from young designers to experienced practitioners--will turn to the book as well, for inspiration and a guide back to basics when solving a complex design problem.

    In cabin getaways of the imagination, the cares of the world recede, time slows down, and the day's pace is set by leisure and quiet activities.Compact Cabins presents 62 design interpretations of the getaway dream, with something to please every taste. Best of all, these small footprint designs are affordable and energy efficient without skimping on comfort and style. The cabins range in size from a cozy 100 square feet to a more spacious but still economical 1,000 square feet, and all include sleeping accommodations, kitchen and bath facilities, and a heat source. Complete chapters on low-maintenance building materials, utilities and appliances, and alternative energy sources supply readers with the options for living efficiently in small spaces.For every design, readers will find floor plans with detailed suggestions for designing the space for optimal use. These plans are flexible; many feature modular elements that can be mixed and matched to accommodate a particular owner's needs or hobbies. Features such as an outdoor fireplace, covered porch, or external storage locker might work nicely in several cabin designs. It's all about enhancing and maximizing small spaces to suit individual needs and preferences.Build small. In this time of uncertain energy costs, global warming, and tighter budgets, building small is a theme that resonates with second-home owners. Gerald Rowan shows readers how to achieve their cabin dreams on a small footprint.

    And as one of Pinterest's top influencers with over 2.4 million followers, people are taking note.Praised by design star Jonathan Adler as "a true talent with a keen eye," Will guides you through making the most of the cornerstone of your life – where you live. He starts by giving you jumping-off points for considering how to use color. Next, he arms you with the know-how needed to replicate the looks through using ten color cocktails, from soft and delicate pastel hues to bright and bold color statements.Each color scheme begins with Will sharing his personal photographs and the memories that inspired each palette. He then goes on to show how these inspirations can be used in real-life decorating via easy-to-translate examples, complete with color checklists, swatch scrapbooks, illuminating room analyses and nuggets of Will's color secrets.More than 350 brand new color photographs invite you into homes both big and small across the world. Bright Bazaar's take on color is packed with personality and heart, playful but informative, and brimming with useful decorating ideas to make any home more beautiful.

    Biomimics study nature's most successful ideas over the past 3.5 million years, and adapt them for human use. The results are revolutionizing how materials are invented and how we compute, heal ourselves, repair the environment, and feed the world.Janine Benyus takes readers into the lab and in the field with maverick thinkers as they: discover miracle drugs by watching what chimps eat when they're sick; learn how to create by watching spiders weave fibers; harness energy by examining how a leaf converts sunlight into fuel in trillionths of a second; and many more examples.Composed of stories of vision and invention, personalities and pipe dreams, Biomimicry is must reading for anyone interested in the shape of our future.

    Welcome to the straw bale house! Whether you build an entire house or something more modest-a home office or studio, a retreat cabin or guest cottage-plastered straw bale construction is an exceptionally durable and inexpensive option. What's more, it's fun, because the technique is easy to learn and easy to do yourself. And the resulting living spaces are unusually quiet and comfortable.The Straw Bale Housedescribes the many benefits of building with straw bales:super insulation, with R-values as high as R-50 good indoor air quality and noise reduction a speedy construction process construction costs as low as $10-per-square-foot use of natural and abundant renewable resources a better solution than burning agricultural waste straw, which creates tons of air pollutants