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After over a decade of travel, study and creative collaboration with Japan, Norm Architects’ shares their uniquely Scandinavian view of Japanese aesthetics.The book features richly illustrated dispatches from visits to Japanese landscapes, architecture and cultural sites, shedding light on the influence Japanese traditions have had on the studio’s contemporary projects, such as the Äng restaurant in Sweden or Heatherhill Beach House in Denmark. Juxtaposing images from Japan with Norm Architects’ work, the book highlights the centuries-old connections between the distinct design cultures, emphasizing mutual respect and shared philosophies. Commentary from expert collaborators in both regions provides in-depth understanding into key design principles. At once an ode to Japan, a personal travelogue, and an aesthetic manifesto, Stillness takes readers on Norm’s decade-long journey as they’ve sought to understand one of the world’s most revered creative cultures. Read more

The creative duo Charles Eames (1907–1978) and Ray Kaiser Eames (1912–1988) transformed the visual character of America. Though best known for their furniture, the husband and wife team were also forerunners in architecture, textile design, photography, and film. The Eameses’ work defined a new, multifunctional modernity, exemplary for its integration of craft and design, as well as for the use of modern materials, notably plywood and plastics. The Eames Lounge Chair Wood, designed with molded plywood technology, became a defining furniture piece of the 20th century, while the couple’s contribution to the Case Study Houses project not only made inventive use of industrial materials but also developed an adaptable floor plan of multipurpose spaces which would become a hallmark of postwar modern architecture. From the couple’s earliest furniture experiments to their seminal short film Powers of Ten, this book covers all the aspects of the illustrious Eames repertoire and its revolutionary impact on middle-class American living. Read more

Take a look through Cozy Place Coloring Book by Boo Meow!- 40 Drawings: Easy and comfy designs to enjoy.- Standard Page: 8.5 x 8.5 inches, suitable for all ages.- Single-Sided Pages: Each image is on its own page, making it easy to color and frame.- Engaging and Relaxing: Awesome for downtime or creative breaks.- Fun Gift Idea: A thoughtful and creative gift for loved ones.The Cozy Place Coloring Book features beautiful illustrations of serene nooks, cozy cottages, and hygge corners. This book is an awesome companion for a relaxed coloring session and for those who adore pocket corners and the charm of isometric drawings. Let your imagination bring warmth and color to every cozy space, creating a personal retreat filled with comfort and creativity.Relax, color, and let your style shine on every page! Read more

The Case Study House program (1945–1966) was a unique event in the history of American architecture. Sponsored by Arts & Architecture magazine, the program sought to respond to the postwar building boom with prototype modern homes that could be both easily replicated and readily affordable to the average American.Concentrated on the Los Angeles area, the Case Study Houses included 36 model homes commissioned from such major architects of the day as Richard Neutra, Raphael Soriano, Craig Ellwood, Charles and Ray Eames, Pierre Koenig, Eero Saarinen, A. Quincy Jones, and Ralph Rapson. Their criteria included “using, as far as is practicable, many war-born techniques and materials best suited to the expression of man’s life in the modern world.”The results of the program would redefine the modern home and extend influence not only across the United States but around the world. This compact guide includes all of the Case Study Houses with over 150 photos and plans, as well as a map showing locations of all sites, including those that no longer exist. Read more

In the architecture of Richard Neutra (1892–1970), inside and outside find their perfect modernist harmony. As the Californian sun glints off sleek building surfaces, vast glass panel walls allow panoramic views over mountains, gardens, palm trees, and pools.Neutra moved to the United States from his native Vienna in 1923 and settled in Los Angeles. He displayed his affinity with architectural settings early on with the Lovell House, set on a landscaped hill with views of the Pacific Ocean and Santa Monica Mountains. Later projects such as the Kaufmann House and Nesbitt House would continue this blend of art, landscape, and living comfort, with Neutra’s clients often receiving detailed questionnaires to define their precise needs.This richly illustrated architect introduction presents the defining projects of Neutra’s career. As crisp structures nestle amid natural wonders, we celebrate a particularly holistic brand of modernism which incorporated the ragged lines and changing colors of nature as much as the pared down geometries of the International Style. Read more

Pentreath is renowned as one of the foremost designers of new traditional buildings and country houses in the world. In celebration of his London-based firm’s twentieth anniversary, Pentreath presents his authentically, yet playfully, classical approach.This is the first of Pentreath’s books to present his own output in its entirety—from his personal residences in Dorset, London, and Scotland that brought him international fame to many old and new houses that he has designed and some of the larger, town-scaled projects that make his practice unique in the world of traditional design. Although the results range from his colorful and romantic versions of the English country cottage to traditional splendor, there are underlying ideas that inform the breadth of his output—a sense of scale, proportion, craft, detail, sustainability, and appropriateness—that have a universal relevance today.Pentreath has authored as well as taken all photographs in this book, which looks at some thirty case studies, large and small, including many previously unpublished works. The designs encompass an understanding of materials, texture, classical and vernacular detail, color, richness, and simplicity by turn—as exemplified in both sumptuous and honest interiors, grand country houses, and pragmatically organized town plans. While being steeped in a learned classicism, Pentreath’s work is celebrated by young and old around the world, as exemplified by his coverage in major media outlets. Read more

The life of Antoni Gaudí (1852–1926) was full of complexity and contradictions. As a young man he joined the Catalonian nationalist movement and was critical of the church; toward the end of his life he devoted himself completely to the construction of one single spectacular church, La Sagrada Família. In his youth, he courted a glamorous social life and the demeanor of a dandy. By the time of his death in a tram accident on the streets of Barcelona, his clothes were so shabby that passersby assumed he was a beggar.Gaudí’s incomparable architecture channels much of this multifaceted intricacy. From the shimmering surface textures and skeletal forms of Casa Batlló to the Hispano-Arabic matrix of Casa Vicens, his work merged the influences of Orientalism, natural forms, new materials, and religious faith into a unique Modernista aesthetic. Today, his buildings enjoy global popularity and acclaim; his magnum opus, the Sagrada Família, is the most-visited monument in Spain and seven of his works are UNESCO World Heritage Sites.Packed full of expert texts and hundreds of full-color illustrations, including new photography, this book presents Gaudí’s complete oeuvre. Like a personal tour through Barcelona, we explore his residential, religious, and public projects. We see how the “Dante of architecture” was a builder in the truest sense of the word, crafting extraordinary constructions out of minute and mesmerizing details, transforming fantastical visions into realities on the city streets. Read more

The mother-and-son founders of powerhouse interior design firm Clements Design have mastered interiors of a spare yet sumptuous sophistication mixed with California ease that are highly sought after by a star-studded clientele, including Ellen DeGeneres, Adam Levine, Bruno Mars, Kendall Jenner, and Jennifer Lawrence. In their first book, Clements Design showcases eight outstanding residences that embody the Clements style: understated elegance, sensuous austerity, Zen-like simplicity, easy glamour, and grand intimacy. Clements creates rarefied environments that are ultra-luxurious but never pretentious. Instead, their pared-down rooms are remarkably cozy and relaxed due to the blend of natural materials, muted colors, and matte surfaces and textures, especially from wood, stone, and nubby textiles—perfect for the indoor-outdoor lifestyle of their clients. A Clements home is the perfect backdrop for jaw-dropping art collections that may include Picasso, Morandi, Warhol, and Twombly, and for entertaining in spacious, expansive rooms populated by Rick Owens daybeds, Prouvé chairs, Giacometti light fixtures, Asian sculptures, and Persian rugs in pale shades, all blended with exceptional antiques carefully placed about the spaces. Serenity reigns over all, filling the viewer with a peaceful calm that is priceless. Personal accounts of working with Clements Design and living in their interiors from, among others, Ellen DeGeneres and Adam Levine, complement the glorious photography. Eight Houses: Clements Design offers a simple life set in an environment of exceeding high style and taste. Read more

Krista Schrock and David John Dick, founders of DISC Interiors, masterfully combine traditional inspiration with contemporary elegance.Headed by principals Krista Schrock and David John Dick, DISC Interiors is an interior and furniture design firm based in Silver Lake, Los Angeles. DISC Interiors strives to create homes of calibrated simplicity that balance the push and pull of modern life, address a sense of place and persons rather than any particular period or style, and balance the traditional with the modern and aesthetics with function. DISC Interiors favors earthy color palettes that transition like seasons, and organic textures that patina gently like metals that burnish with touch, leathers that soften, and floorboards that reveal more of a home's soul with every year. The homes they design are filled with vintage furniture and rugs juxtaposed against custom upholstery to feel contemporary yet classic and familiar.The projects designed by DISC Interiors represent a one-of-a-kind combination of traditional details and contemporary chic, and Portraits of Home is inspiring for all those seeking both contemporary and traditional solutions to twenty-first-century living. Read more

Famed for his motto “less is more,” Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1886–1969) was one of the founding fathers of modern architecture and a hotly-debated tastemaker of twentieth-century aesthetics and urban experience. Mies van der Rohe’s philosophy was one of underlying truth in pure forms and proportions. With the help of contemporary technological and material developments, he sought a stripped-down purity to architecture, showcased by the likes of the Seagram Building and Farnsworth House. Some spoke out against this stark approach as the precursor to bland, generic cityscapes. Others cite Mies van der Rohe as the ultimate master of an abidingly elegant essence. This book presents more than 20 of Mies van der Rohe’s projects from the period 1906–1967 to introduce his groundbreaking practise and influence in both America and Europe. Read more

Building spaces of equilibrium: Norm Architects’ humane simplicity creates environments that feel as good as they look. Guided by ideas of wellbeing, the essence of Norm Architects’ style is balance: richness focused by restraint, simplicity imbued with warmth, complexity heightened by order. Be it architecture, interiors, or furniture, Norm’s unique brand of soft minimalism speaks to the mind as much as the body, creating spaces for people. The first monograph by Norm Architects, Soft Minimal is their own curation of works that have made them key figures of Nordic design. It presents residential and commercial projects throughout Scandinavia, Italy and Japan as Norm reflect on Nordic traditions, modernist principles, and the importance of natural materials. Exploring a creative process that makes the visual speak to all senses, the book becomes insightful, inspirational, and deeply poetic. Read more

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Acclaimed as the “father of skyscrapers,” the quintessentially American icon Frank Lloyd Wright (1867–1959) was an architect of aspiration. He believed in giving cultivated American life its fitting architectural equivalent and applied his idealism to structures across the continent, from suburban homes to churches, offices, skyscrapers, and the celebrated Guggenheim Museum.Wright’s work is distinguished by its harmony with humanity and its environment, a philosophy he called organic architecture, and which found its paradigm at Fallingwater, a house in rural Pennsylvania, cited by the American Institute of Architects as “the best all-time work of American architecture.” Wright also made a particular mark with his use of industrial materials, and by the simple L or T plan of his Prairie House which became a model for rural architecture across America. Wright was also often involved in many of the interior elements of his buildings, such as the furniture and stained glass, paying particular attention to the balance between individual needs and community activity.Exploring Wright’s aspirations to augment American society through architecture, this book offers a concise introduction to his at once technological and Romantic response to the practical challenges of middle-class Americans. Read more

A celebration of the recent work of McALPINE, the award-winning architectural and interior design firm, with a collection of residences embracing modernism, classicism, and romanticism.The work of renowned firm McALPINE has always communicated the power of romanticism, speaking directly to the heart through the beauty and poetry of the home. Tapping diverse influences, the residences draw from architectural languages ranging from Elizabethan and Dutch to colonial Caribbean and agrarian American. The book opens with Bobby McAlpine’s own newly designed house, featuring exquisite spaces that are modern in expression but classical in order and balance. Other projects include a white-on-white neoclassical pavilion-by-the-sea in the Bahamas; a masonry dwelling in the rolling hills of Virginia; a quintessential American country house in Tennessee that combines the familiarity of a farmhouse with crisp minimalism; and an exuberant house sited on the edge of a pastoral golf course in Alabama. Freely choosing from architecture’s treasury, the assembly of houses is familiar, bold, and surprising, all at the same time—reflecting the complexity of the human experience. Read more

Three hundred years ago, intellectuals of the European Enlightenment constructed a mythology of technology. Influenced by a confluence of humanism, colonialism, and racism, this mythology ignored local wisdom and indigenous innovation, deeming it primitive. Today, we have slowly come to realize that the legacy of this mythology is haunting us.Designers understand the urgency of reducing humanity’s negative environmental impact, yet perpetuate the same mythology of technology that relies on exploiting nature. Responding to climate change by building hard infrastructures and favoring high-tech homogenous design, we are ignoring millennia-old knowledge of how to live in symbiosis with nature. Without implementing soft systems that use biodiversity as a building block, designs remain inherently unsustainable.Lo—TEK, derived from Traditional Ecological Knowledge, is a cumulative body of multigenerational knowledge, practices, and beliefs, countering the idea that indigenous innovation is primitive and exists isolated from technology. It is sophisticated and designed to sustainably work with complex ecosystems.With a foreword by anthropologist Wade Davis and four chapters spanning Mountains, Forests, Deserts, and Wetlands, this book explores thousands of years of human wisdom and ingenuity from 18 countries including Peru, the Philippines, Tanzania, Kenya, Iran, Iraq, India, and Indonesia. We rediscover an ancient mythology in a contemporary context, radicalizing the spirit of human nature.The tactile reading experience of Lo—TEK reflects the ingenuity of carefully selected projects with sophisticated design details: copper highlights the value of ancient knowledge, a cardboard hardcover echoes rawness, and the Swiss binding showcases an open spine and reveals the construction of the book, just as the book discloses hidden technological knowledge. Read more

The Touch is a new collaboration between Nathan Williams of Kinfolk and Jonas Bjerre-Poulsen of Norm Architects that welcome readers into over 25 inspiring spaces where interior design is not only visually appealing but engages all of the human senses. Through beautiful homes, hotels, museums, and retail stores―from contemporary designs by Ilse Crawford and Bijoy Jain to classic cases by Arne Jacobsen―readers are invited to explore how experiencing elements such as light, nature, materiality, color, and community can deliberately bring us back to our senses and imbue every day with a richer quality. In addition to stunning photography and interviews with design industry leaders as John Pawson and David Thulstrup, the book also details philosophical and art history references that reflect the tradition of design and color theory. For a deeper understanding of the concepts explored, The Touch includes an appendix which profiles architects such as Lina Bo Bardi and Richard Neutra. Heritage design pieces that helped influence this movement are also listed in the book. The Touch―Spaces Designed for the Senses by Kinfolk & Norm Architects. Published by gestalten. Read more

Frank Lloyd Wright is not only synonymous with architecture, his name is also synonymous with the American house in the twentieth century. In particular, his residential work has been the subject of continuing interest and controversy. Wright's Fallingwater (1935), the seminal masterpiece perched over a waterfall deep in the Pennsylvania highlands, is perhaps the best-known private house in the history of the world. In fact, Wright's houses-from his Prairie style Robie House (1906) in Chicago, to the Storer (1923) and Freeman (1923) houses in Los Angeles, and Taliesen West (1937) in the Arizona desert-are all touchstones of modern architecture. For the first time, all 289 extant houses are shown here in exquisite color photographs. Along with Weintraub's stunning photos and a selection of floor plans and archival images, the book includes text and essays by several leading Wright scholars. Frank Lloyd Wright: The Houses is an event of great importance and a major contribution to the literature on this titan of modern architecture. Read more

A building by Frank Lloyd Wright (1867–1959) is at once unmistakably individual and evocative of an entire era. Notable for their exceptional harmony with their environment, as well as for their use of steel and glass to revolutionize the interface of indoor and outdoor, Wright’s designs helped announce the age of modernity, as much as they secured his place in the annals of architectural genius.This meticulous compilation from TASCHEN’s previous monograph assembles the most important works from Wright’s extensive, paradigm-shifting oeuvre into one authoritative overview of America’s most famous architect. Based on unlimited access to the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation’s archives at Taliesin West in Arizona, the collection spans the length and breadth of Wright’s projects, both realized and unrealized, from his early prairie houses, the Usonian concept homes, and the extraordinary Fallingwater to the Tokyo years, his designs for administrative buildings and places of worship, and later high-profile projects like the Guggenheim Museum in New York, as well as his fantastic visions for a better tomorrow with “The Living City.” Read more

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