“A little gem of a book chronicling that most gullible of all species, the human being” – Craig Brown, Books of the Year 2019, Mail on Sunday “Dafydd Jones has focused on one of the most dominant elements of the social life of our times – how the smartphone has taken us all over. It is a timely and rather sobering look at this phenomenon, done with his usual eloquence as a photographer.” – Martin Parr.

Almost everyone uses a smartphone, and most of us are addicted. In this book, photographer Dafydd Jones shows us just how pervasive our screen addiction has become. In almost every social situation, he shows how the smartphone has killed conversation and changed the way we look at the world. ‘In the eighties and nineties’, says Jones, ‘when I photographed young people at parties or balls, I’d find them chatting each other up, or smooching in corners. Now I see them sneaking looks on their iPhones, checking on their Instagram feeds, or whatever it is they’re hooked on. They hardly talk to each other, or make eye contact at all. And it’s not just a generational thing – it afflicts the oldies too. Who knows what impact it’s having in the bedroom. It’s probably a race to see what will wipe out humanity first – global climate change or screen-induced sexual indifference.’

Until the installation of his 1973 solid-light piece, Line Describing a Cone, in Chrissie Iles Whitney’s exhibition Into The Light in 2001, Anthony McCall (England, 1946) remained one of those artists whose work circulated almost entirely in the form of two or three very well-known documentary photographs: his art was immediately recognisable, canonical even, but rarely experienced firsthand. This carefully designed and produced monograph on the Angloamerican artist seeks to lay bare the imagery that underlies his work, from Landscape for Fire (1972) to the presentation of his latest piece Coming About (2016). Through its intermingling of images and the artist’s words, this book vindicates McCall’s independence of spirit and aims to make the richness and complexity of his work apparent. In addition, the book collects for first time all the public projects the artist developed over the last decade. As it takes in the range of expressive media that the artist uses, the sequence of works maintains throughout the idea that space and time pertain to the same moment, the moment of the person contemplating them at that particular instant

Often referred to as Canada’s ‘Evergreen Playground’ Vancouver is a unique and breathtakingly beautiful city nestled between the ocean, mountains and forests. Its pristine fresh surroundings and mild laid back climate has always attracted artists, writers, thinkers and tinkers, and dreamers of every variety; over time they have left their indelible creative mark on this relatively young city. The outcome is a treasure trove of hidden sculptures, secret tree forts, quirky coffee shops, undiscovered galleries, eclectic stores, totem poles and bike lanes that wind around floatplanes and houseboats. From the glistening new glass and chrome towers of Downtown, to the worn cobblestone streets of Gastown, and the red pagodas of Chinatown, each neighbourhood in the city contributes to a rich cultural mosaic. Diversity is not only celebrated in Vancouver, but it’s as widespread as the city’s frequent rain showers. Just as the seawall, which winds its way around Vancouver’s iconic Stanley Park presents a new and fresh attraction around every corner, 111 Places Vancouver puts you on a path to discover new insights and perspectives on Canada’s beloved west coast gem.

This guide traces the history of Maggie’s cancer treatment centres and takes visitors to see how they have grown up in Britain and elsewhere to become a new type of institution; a paradigm for architecture. Founded by Maggie Keswick Jencks and Charles Jencks, both landscape designers and architects, each Maggie’s Centre is a successful example of “a hybrid of four buildings: it’s a non-hospital institute, it’s a kind of non-home house, a non-confessional religious refuge and a non-museum art gallery. However, it presents traces of all four typologies, used in a new way” (C.J., 2018). In addition to the peculiarity of being a hybrid building, the success of the Maggie’s Centre project seems to be crucial to the fact that, in order to carry out their work, the architects are provided, from the outset, with the Architectural Brief, where they find described not so much the technical and functional requirements, but rather the emotional and sensory states that the new building, intended for cancer patients and their relatives and friends, will have to guarantee. The buildings are and should all be of great visual impact due to their sophisticated architectural design, but at the same time be familiar with their domestic and welcoming spaces and should be able to encourage patients to support each other.

Britain and Ireland have so much to offer. The Gulf Stream is responsible for the development of many unique natural landscapes, and Britain’s countless natural wonders have one thing in common: the colour green. Whether in Ireland, Scotland, or England, whether on the Shetland Islands or on the Isle of Man – green prevails everywhere. The islands’ vast moors, steep cliffs and gentle hills are not only the habitat of many animals, but also of abundant flora – prospering here in all its diversity. The rich fauna is comprised of birds of prey such as the red kite and the peregrine falcon, while sheep and ponies are found on the mainland, and seals and northern gannets in the coastal regions. UNESCO protected areas and national parks such as Wester Ross and Galloway, Snowdonia and Dartmoor, Copper Coast and Killarney give a glimpse of the unique beauty of the nature of the British Isles.

This book challenges the conventional idea of what constitutes the physical form of the contemporary city. Observing the absence of extended urban fabrics – the missing urbanism – in the new global cities developed today, it argues that these cities are merely statistical accumulations of density that lack the positive attributes of a genuine urban condition. Cities as urban places cannot be made by individual buildings alone but rather depend on the intertwined combination of an architecture that is bound to the creation of public spaces and streets, and engaged in the structure of urban blocks to form a complex field pattern of interactive solids and voids. Broad in scope, the book explores the nature of the fundamental relationship between architecture and urbanism as one of spatial formation. As an independently designed entity, the city forms the ordering framework in which architecture is partially subordinated to the mutual sustainability of the overall urban fabric. If a new urban architecture is to be an integral constituent of public place making, it must be composed using a radically different paradigm of positive, figurally constructed ‘space’ rather than the indefinite background of ‘anti-space’ as exemplified in the chapter on Mies van der Rohe’s architectural quest for the ineffable modern void. These two different spatial models are explored in depth in the eponymous article, ‘Space and Anti Space,’ first published in the Harvard Architectural Review in 1980, which forms the core of the book and postulates that the underlying attitudes toward spatial formation, at both domestic and urban scales, determine our ability to shape place and human experience. In a series of essays, articles and urban projects extensively illustrated by plans, analytic diagrams, and dramatic images, this book makes a visual and verbal argument for the steps that need to be taken to re-urbanise the city in order to achieve an urbanity consisting of multiple discrete places that depend on the essential concept of contained geometrical space. These spatial ideas are illustrated in this book in three proposals: for Rome, in ‘Roma Interrotta,’ 1979; Paris, the ‘Consultation Internationale pour L’Aménagement du Quartier des Halles,’ 1980; and New York in the ‘World Trade Center Site Innovative Design Study,’ 2002.

A compact, portable drawing resource book of over 200 highly illustrated pages of sketching and drawing techniques, the book is crafted to be a companion tool which is tucked in your travel gear and referred to regularly. The book is durable with helpful colour-coded pages to cross reference with demonstrated drawing tools. The book is organised into three Drawing Chapters: First, Tools +Techniques, from black and white to colour drawings: Second, Methods, where perspective drawing rules are established, followed by Learning from The Masters to learn colour theory and composition, then drawing Cityscapes + Landscapes, Aerial Perspectives, with demonstrations of Quick Draw and Slow Draw techniques: Third, Drawing as a Way of Thinking, where Analytical Sketching, Sequential Serial View drawings and Developing Design Proposals Using the Story Board Method are illustrated.

For centuries artists and designers have recorded places, people, and life in travel sketchbooks. Over a period of fifty years, Laurie Olin, one of America’s most distinguished landscape architects, has recorded aspects of France: its cities and countryside, streets and cafés, ancient ruins, vineyards, and parks – from humble to grand, things that interested his designer’s eye – taking the time to see things carefully. Paris in its seasons, agriculture in Provence and Bordeaux, trees, dogs, and fountains, all are noted over the years in watercolour or pen and ink.

Originally intended for the pleasure of merely being there as well as self-education, this personal selection from his many sketchbooks is accompanied by transcriptions of notes and observations, along with introductory remarks for the different regions included: Paris, Haute Loire, Provence, Haute Provence, Normandy, Aquitaine, and Entre des Meures.

Hargreaves Associates has been on the forefront of landscape architectural practice since its founding in 1983, creating a narrative approach to place making that layers history, ecology, and environmental phenomena. This book, featuring the built work of Hargreaves Associates explores how they create meaning through dynamic, interactive, and exultant landscape. Whether reductive or rich, highly programmed or passive, culturally interpretive or teeming with the phenomena of nature’s own systems, the built landscapes of Hargreaves Associates in this volume seek the power of connection to our day-to-day lives.

Chapter 1: Urban Play: A Project from Start to Finish: What does a landscape architect do exactly? Here, we peel back the finished project, which has won several design awards, to show the major steps in the making of the garden. We start with the clients wishes for an outside play area for their young twin girls that will be visually pleasing when viewed from the living rooms several stories above. And the condition of the site: an odd-shaped and impossibly steep and tilted small plot covered in brambles. We present a ‘before’ picture, early drawings, problem solving, the gradual articulation of the design, how the Blasens work together, choice of fabrication materials, planting design, the construction period, and the final finished garden and how it is used. Illustrations throughout.

Chapter 2: Gardens: From the Mountains to the Shore: This photographic presentation of a dozen gardens is the bulk of the book. Some projects are covered in 2 spreads; others in 3 spreads, one in 5 spreads. The gardens range from a city courtyard to a beach garden, to an 22-acre estate with a California wildflower meadow, and an extensive green roof on a Herzog & de Meuron designed house that s set into a natural hillside. Some have been published in top design magazines; a few particularly exciting new large projects are now being published for the first time. Each project is introduced with a) descriptions of the garden and how the clients use it and b) a paragraph about the planting design and key plants.

Chapter 3: Lexicon: The Blasens Aesthetic: This chapter-an alphabetical list of terms/phrases that appear often in the Blasens conversations about their work investigates the Blasens aesthetic. We hear what they most deeply care about, often in their own words: for example, seamlessness of design, color, geography, lightness, plants that thrive where they are, rhythmic sequencing of experiences in a garden, retaining what already is. And also their influences in the art, design, and architecture worlds, and what’s catching their attention right now. This collage of fragments builds a fascinating picture of their sensibilities, and how they earned the title of the new tastemakers in House and Garden magazine. Small photographs, for many entries, give examples.

Langenbach, who became known for his photographic documentation of the Textile Milltowns of New England, Great Britain and India, under a series of grants and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, has now turned his attention to the iconic historic landscape of Rome. Inspired by the extraordinary engravings of the ruins of Ancient Rome by Giambattista Piranesi, Langenbach uses modern-day digital photography to document the same views that Piranesi captured over a quarter of a millennium ago, displaying some of the most iconic ruins of an ancient civilisation on the planet.

Sensitively balancing historic preservation with contemporary innovation, Ahearn’s timeless houses feel deeply connected to the stylistic character of their locales, even as their programs and plans celebrate how we live now. In these pages, Ahearn takes us on a journey through the award-winning private residences and public environments that he has created over his 45-year career. He entertainingly explains how his uniquely urbanistic point of view and novel, narrative-driven process help clients live out their dreams, in homes that recall the past, engage with the present, and look to the future.

Denise Scott Brown has shaped the course of contemporary architecture since the 1960s. She has chartered a rebellious course across three continents – from childhood in 1930s South Africa to education in 1950s England to teaching and practice in the United States. Scott Brown is both renowned and misunderstood for her designs and theories, many developed in collaboration with her companion in life and work, Robert Venturi. From her 1972 research studio on Las Vegas emerged the legendary book Learning from Las Vegas, whose visuals and social impact remain as important today as then. As a younger generation of architects and urban designers engages the complexity she defined, Scott Brown continues to raise her voice as a fierce critic of a modernism ignorant of context, history, and joint creativity. The time has come to rediscover her undogmatic formal language, careful urban interventions, and adventures in mannerism. This groundbreaking new book features previously unpublished material and offers an entirely fresh view of Scott Brown’s achievements as a preeminent architectural designer, urbanist, theoretician, and teacher. A fantastic guide to her life and ideas, it also reveals her humanism, complexity, and wit. Published to accompany an exhibition at Architekturzentrum Wien, November 2018-March 2019.

Siam 1890. Blue-stocking Julie Gallet is an independent-minded Parisian who has made what her English mother describes as an imprudent match. Following her husband to the Far East, she comes to stay with Michael Crawfurd, her British diplomat cousin and discovers a glittering city of golden spires and colonial intrigue as the Kingdom is caught between France’s territorial ambitions and England’s quest for supremacy and influence in Asia. Resisting her family’s entreaties to return home, Julie settles in Bangkok, becomes a French teacher to the ladies of the Royal Court and becomes passionately involved in Siamese life and affairs. Her frank and irreverent journal recounts her growing political awareness along with the awakening of her sensuality. While Paris and London play a game of global chess with the Siamese as their pawns, both she and Michael find their national and personal loyalties tested. Their lives and loves take unexpected turns, and Siam struggles to retain its independence against a ruthless and formidable opponent. Blending fact and fiction, Siamese Tears is a faithful account of the events leading to the Paknam incident through the eyes of those who witnessed them.

On Charles II’s restoration to the throne in 1660, four of his supporters were provided with plots of land in a leafy suburb of London, on which to build their extravagant town palaces. The only one to survive – built for the poet and courtier Sir John Denham and now situated in the heart of Piccadilly – was to become the home of the Royal Academy of Arts, its exhibitions and its Schools. This important study charts the history of the estate through its various owners, including the 3rd Earl of Burlington, who gave the house not only its name but also its distinctive and influential architecture. In his day, the house was host to leading scholars and celebrities, who met within Burlington’s cutting-edge creation, which remains an unparalleled examplar of the Palladian style in England. Former Director of Collections at the RA, Nicholas Savage examines 350 years of social and architectural history, as well as revealing the next phase in the life of the estate, as the Royal Academy opens up Burlington House as never before in an exciting redevelopment led by Sir David Chipperfield CBE RA to celebrate the institution’s 250th anniversary.

In recent years David Hockney has returned to England to paint the landscape of his childhood. East Yorkshire’s stern hillscapes, craggy drystone walls and endless windswept moors make for a stimulating muse, and Hockney’s work captures the character of this scenery with expert precision.

Although his passionate interest in new technologies has led Hockney to develop a virtuoso drawing technique on an iPad, he is still regularly accompanied by a trusty sketchbook. This invaluable tool allows him to work quickly, capturing the changing light and the fleeting effects of the weather. Executed in watercolour and ink, these panoramic scenes have the spatial complexity of finished paintings: the broad sweep of sky or road, the patchwork tapestry of land. Yet unlike a painting completed in the studio, far-removed from the landscape that inspired it, these sketches convey the immediacy of Hockney’s impressions. And as indicated by views down village streets and across kitchen tables, his rooted local knowledge and fondness for the area around the East Yorkshire Wolds always shines through.

If you know the region, the location of these sketches is unmistakable. If you don’t, its features will come to life in these pages, animated by Hockney’s incomparable skill.

Badain Jaran: more than 19,000 square miles of endless openness, sand dunes up to 1,600 feet tall and mysterious saltwater lakes. Badain Jaran is part of the Alashan desert, south-west to the Gobi in the Inner Mongolia province of China. It is a place that has been discovered by American scientists on satellite images in the 1980s only, and that has miraculously been kept hidden to most people since. In 2009-12, photographic artist Carlos Crespo realised a vast photo essay on the unique, spectacular, and very remote landscape of Badain Jaran. Crespo had to deal with extreme cold in winter and violent sandstorms in spring and autumn in a barely inhabitable environment. Over time he got in contact with some of the few Mongolian herdsmen living on the fringes of the desert and won their confidence and sympathy. This allowed him also to make portraits of these people and document their way of living. The new book Badain Jaran is meant to make this extraordinary place a symbol and metaphor for all untouched natural sites, reflecting their importance and the necessity of their protection from being turned into ever more tourist attractions. Text in English & German.

This book is another high-calibre volume in IMAGES’ acclaimed Master Architect Series of monographs. The Architecture of Adrian Smith: Toward a Sustainable Future showcases a body of work that has made a significant contribution to contemporary world architecture. Adrian Smith has brought design solutions with enduring value to the entire planet. He’s designed buildings in China, England, Germany, Brazil, Kuwait, Canada, Korea, Guatemala, Bahrain, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Dubai and the United States. His expertise covers areas as broad as operations, marketing, finance, and professional services. He is truly one of the few architectural polymaths, a person who has a great diversity of skills and immense intellect. Smith is perhaps most recognised for designing exceptionally aesthetic and functional tall buildings. He understands scale, community, and context as few others do. He is passionate about (and celebrates) well designed buildings of all shapes and sizes, and has earned accolades for designing the tallest building in the world. Some of Smith’s most renowned works include Banco De Occidente, United Gulf Bank, Rowes Wharf, 10 Ludgate, Jin Mao Tower, Burj Dubai, and Pearl River. When it comes to important buildings, Adrian Smith and SOM have provided us a beacon by which to steer. In these richly illustrated pages, Adrian Smith illuminates, showing us how to engage, energise, and inspire students, architects, and clients to do and to be their very best.

“The well-judged employment of classical detail in a new home has an additional significance that cannot be underestimated. It is an expression of an informed personal choice and an evocation of the delight in the human senses. This is true of all the houses featured in this book.” Jeremy Musson
“The architects and craftsmen that Phillip has featured in this wonderful book all have a love for classical detail. The art is alive and well, as can be attested to in these pages.” David Easton
In The Art of Classical Details, Phillip James Dodd takes a close-up look at some of the finest examples of contemporary classical architecture. The book consists of two chapters: The Essays and The Projects. Starting with a foreword by renowned decorator David Easton, The Essays are written by some of today’s most sought after architects, scholars and craftsmen. Accompanied by sumptuous full page photographs and renderings that illustrate a use of fine materials, intricate detailing, and superb artisanship, these insightful texts are essential reading for anyone with an interest in the theory, practice and craft of classical design. The Projects presents an illustrated look at 25 of today’s finest classically-designed homes. Employing the theories prescribed in the writings of the first chapter, this portfolio of contemporary buildings exhibits the work of some of the most recognisable and celebrated architects in Great Britain and the United States. The work featured in within this book demonstrates the timeless beauty of classicism, and delights in the role that superbly crafted details play in creating art.

This latest compilation volume for The Images Publishing Group reveals an enticing glimpse into the exquisite architectural works of innovative and skilled contemporary classicists. While remaining loyal to traditional classical design, the architectural projects featured within display a remarkable talent for versatility and adaptability within the fundamental classical language of architecture. This richly photographed book masterfully presents a number of preeminent classicists, who offer unique insight into their interpretation of the theory of classical design in their works. This compilation also highlights the collaboration between the architects’ application of excellent detailing, the use of fine material, and exceptional craftsmanship, and how, all the while, they are creating a refined and seamless fusion with the surrounding landscape and environment.

What sort of home would you create for yourself if you could build whatever you wanted – if money, as they say, were no object? Over the course of his firm’s 30-year history, American architect Mark P. Finlay has been in the rare, privileged position of helping clients answer that very question. Designing dream homes for some of America’s wealthiest and most sophisticated families – people not only of great means but of tremendous taste – Finlay creates properties that manage to find intimacy in even the grandest of spaces and grandeur in their intimate moments. Even in his luxurious residences, a certain subtle elegance and graceful simplicity reign. Finlay works in the United States’ most storied pastoral locations – coastal New England, Virginia horse country, the Rocky Mountains, the South Carolina lowlands – making homes that lay lightly on the land no matter their size. Whether historic restorations or ground-up constructions, his attention to detail and focus on fine craftsmanship make the buildings look and feel as if they’ve lived on their sites for centuries.

An absolute must for readers designing their own dream homes – and anyone who has ever indulged in the guilty pleasure of trying to get a glimpse of a hidden estate by peering through tall privets or over picket fences – this monograph grants exclusive access past the stone walls and beyond the guardhouses of affluent communities across the country. It invites readers into the manicured gardens and perfectly proportioned spaces of his clients’ houses to tell the stories of these properties, illustrating Finlay’s particular passion for creating residences that not only telegraph a distinct sense of place but also convey a unique appreciation of, and understanding for, their owners’ aspirations.