Architecture

The New York Times bestselling, award winning story of the construction of the dome of Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence and the Renaissance genius who reinvented architecture to build it. On August 19, 1418, a competition concerning Florence's magnificent new cathedral, Santa Maria del Fiore was announced: "Whoever desires to make any model or desig

After critiquing—and infuriating—the art world with The Painted Word, award-winning author Tom Wolfe shared his less than favorable thoughts about modern architecture in From Bauhaus to Our Haus. In this examination of the strange saga of twentieth century architecture, Wolfe takes such European architects as Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Le C

Go beyond décor trends to make your home beautiful, stylish, and comfortable. . .on any budget. Writing for the hands-on woman who'd rather move her own furniture than hire a designer, Myquillyn Smith--author of the The Nesting Place--helps you think through every room in your house, one purposeful design decision at a time. With

In elegant and often hilarious prose, Kunstler depicts our nation's evolution from the Pilgrim settlements to the modern auto suburb in all its ghastliness. The Geography of Nowhere tallies up the huge economic, social, and spiritual costs that America is paying for its car-crazed lifestyle. It is also a wake-up call for citizens to reinvent the places where we live and wo

Welcome to the Suburban Nation Plunge into the pivotal exploration of America's car-centric suburban phenomenon that has shaped the landscape of the North American continent over the last century. Suburban Nation stands as a prominent voice advocating change in suburban sprawl and the over-reliance on personal vehicles. Suburban

Jeff Speck has dedicated his career to determining what makes cities thrive. And he has boiled it down to one key factor: walkability. The very idea of a modern metropolis evokes visions of bustling sidewalks, vital mass transit, and a vibrant, pedestrian-friendly urban core. But in the typical American city, the car is still king, and downtown is a place that

Michael Pollan’s unmatched ability to draw lines of connection between our everyday experiences—whether eating, gardening, or building—and the natural world has been the basis for the popular success of his many works of nonfiction, including the genre-defining bestsellers, The Botany of Desire, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, and In Defense of Food. With t

Winner of the AAAS/Subaru SB&F Prize for Excellence in Science Books The wonders of engineering revealed--by the inspirational female engineer behind the Shard, Western Europe's tallest building. While our cities are full of incredible engineering feats, most of us live with little idea of what goes into creating the built environmen

In DeJean’s captivating book on the history and evolution of one of the world’s most beautiful cities, she shows just how much innovation — well before Haussmann — went into the design of the first modern city.

Architectural Graphics focuses on the techniques, methodologies, and graphic tools used in conveying architectural ideas. The book takes a look at equipment and materials, architectural drafting, and architectural drawing conventions. Discussions focus on drawing pencils, technical drawing pens, set squares/templates, circle templates/compasses, line weight/line types, d

A complete and unabridged full-color edition of the classic sourcebook on ornamental design First published in 1856, The Grammar of Ornament remains a design classic. Its inspiration came from pioneering British architect and designer Owen Jones (1809–1874), who produced a comprehensive design treatise for the machine age, lavishly illustrated in

"An excellently rounded introduction by an eminent Shinto scholar."--Library Journal Shinto, the indigenous faith of the Japanese people, continues to fascinate and mystify both the casual visitor to Japan and the long-time resident. Relatively unknown among the religions of the world, Shinto: The Kami Way provides an enlightening window into

Morse's publication is an idea book par excellence … Japanese Homes and Their Surroundings is likely to continue to be a valued resource for some time to come."--David and Michiko Young First published in 1886, this classic review of the Japanese house and garden remains an authoritative description of the architecture of the traditional Japan

Once America's capitalist dream town, Detroit is our country's greatest urban failure, having fallen the longest and the farthest. But the city's worst crisis yet (and that's saying something) has managed to do the unthinkable: turn the end of days into a laboratory for the future. Urban planners, land speculators, neopastoral agriculturalists, and utopian environmental

Longlisted for the Porchlight Business Book Awards “A smart and accessible cultural history.”-Los Angeles Times A portrait--by turns celebratory, skeptical, and surprisingly moving--of one of America's most iconic institutions, from an author who “might be the most influential design critic writing now” (LARB)

Oscar Wilde compared it to a white goddess, Evelyn Waugh to Stilton cheese. In observers from Lord Byron to Sigmund Freud to Virginia Woolf it met with astonishment, rapture, poetry, even tears-and, always, recognition. Twenty-five hundred years after it first rose above Athens, the Parthenon remains one of the wonders of the world, its beginnings and strange turns of fort

Developed out of the aesthetic philosophy of cha-no-yu (the tea ceremony) in fifteenth-century Japan, wabi sabi is an aesthetic that finds beauty in things imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete. Taken from the Japanese words wabi, which translates to less is more, and sabi, which means attentive melancholy, wabi sabi refers to an awareness o

The behind-the-scenes story of the world's most famous palace, painting a picture of the way its residents truly lived and examining the palace's legacy, from French history through today The story of Versailles is one of historical drama, under the last three kings of France's old regime, mixed with the high camp and glamour of the European courts,

In this hugely appealing book, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, acclaimed author and journalist Daniel Okrent weaves together themes of money, politics, art, architecture, business, and society to tell the story of the majestic suite of buildings that came to dominate the heart of midtown Manhattan and with it, for a time, the heart of the world. At the center of Okrent'