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In this refreshing new study, Wright scholar Kathryn Smith does just that, exploring the grace and beauty found in all facets of Frank Lloyd Wright’s work: from office desks and chairs to his first residential commissions, from magazine cover designs to major public buildings. The concise text and brilliant colour photographs chart Wright’s entire career, beginning with his apprenticeship to Adler and Sullivan before the turn of the century. Readers witness the Prairie period, Wright’s years in Japan and California, his major designs of the late 1920s and 1930s, his Usonian houses, and the monumental late works of his last decades. Smith shows examples of Wright’s drawings, furniture, and decorative arts, too, supplementing our understanding of Wright’s aesthetic. The book concludes with a glimpse at the architect’s seldom-seen collection of Asian art, which once comprised tens of thousands of pieces – a source of much inspiration and edification for the architect and his students, and a key to understanding Wright’s views on art and nature.

Here is a broad portrait of the master builder who sought the title “greatest architect of all time.” Although it may never be possible to fully assess Wright’s legacy, Kathryn Smith’s authoritative book is a fitting testament to his lasting genius.

Kykuit-the country home of John D. Rockefeller Sr., John D. Rockefeller Jr., Nelson A. Rockefeller, and their families-stands majestically atop a hill overlooking the Hudson River. Built between 1906 and 1913 by architects Delano and Aldrich, it has just recently been opened to the public. But visitors will never see the estate in as intimate a way as it is presented in this volume. To preserve the memory of what Kykuit was like when it was a private home, photographer Mary Louise Pierson, granddaughter of Nelson Rockefeller, spent years photographing the estate: the Big House-as family members call the main residence-and its interiors, designed by the renowned Ogden Codman; the outbuildings, including the Coach Barn, which now houses an impressive collection of horse-drawn carriages and an equally noteworthy collection of vintage cars, the orangery, and the Playhouse, a Tudor-style mansion containing an indoor swimming pool, tennis court, fully equipped gym, and bowling alley; and the magnificent gardens, from the formal gardens designed by William Welles Bosworth to the golf course to the Japanese garden, and all the sculptures that three generations of Rockefellers installed on the grounds.

The text, by Ann Rockefeller Roberts, Governor Rockefeller’s daughter, recounts the history of the magnificent estate, from its founding early in the century through its recent transfer to the National Trust, focusing on how each successive generation left its stamp on the decor, the gardens, and the painting and sculpture collections. Illustrated with dozens of historical photos, ranging from the construction of the house to snapshots of family members, the text includes never before published reminiscences of five generations of Rockefellers. Complete with a family tree, a map of the gardens, and visitor information, Kykuit: The Rockefeller Family Home offers a deeply personal look at the country residence of one of America’s most distinguished families.

To respond to the unique opportunities of each client and site, Bates Masi + Architects has developed an approach rather than a devotion to a particular style. Careful study of the needs of the site and owners uncovers a guiding concept particular to each project. That concept is distilled to its essence so that it can inform the design at all scales, from massing to materials to details. The consistency of the concept is evident in the finished product. The result is an architecture that is cohesive, innovative, contextual, and full of details that delight.

Architecture of Place is the follow up to Bespoke Home, the first comprehensive survey of Bates Masi’s fifty-plus years of work published in 2016. It focuses on the firm’s recent residential portfolio. Using each house as a case study, the book documents Bates Masi’s design process with concept images, diagrams, architectural models, and narratives for each project. This book demonstrates how influences of the physical and historical context, as well as the client, are distilled into a guiding concept for each project. With over 200 pages of photos and drawings of extraordinary second homes, Architecture of Place will appeal to architects and design devotees alike.

What were Montmartre and Montparnasse really like in their hey-day, roughly between 1904, when the youthful Picasso had just arrived on the Hill of Martyrs, and 1920, when Amedeo Modigliani, justly called ‘the prince of Bohemians’, died of consumption and dissipation in Montparnasse? This book, written by an Englishman who lived in Montmartre for 30 years and knew its famous habitue intimately, gives a vivid description. It reveals the truth behind the many legends, is packed with authentic stories about writers and painters whose names are now household words, and contains much hitherto unpublished information about the life and career of Modigliani obtained from his family and friends. Much of the text was written in Montmartre amid the scenes described, and after personal consultation with survivors of the great days when Frede presided over the Lapin Agile and Libion, patron of the Cafe de la Rotonde, was beginning to rival him in Montparnasse. It is the most complete account which has yet been written in English of the birth of Cubism and other contemporary movements in modern painting, and of the lives and loves who started them.

In celebration of the 200th anniversary of the birth of one of Victorian Britain’s greatest thinkers, the art critic and social reformer John Ruskin, the distinguished Ruskinian Robert Hewison introduces Ruskin’s ideas and values through revelatory studies of the people and issues that shaped his thought, and the ideas and values that in turn were shaped by his writings and personality. Beginning with an exploration of the rich tradition of European art that stimulated his imagination, and to which he responded in his own skilful drawings, Ruskin and his Contemporaries follows the uniquely visual dimension of his thinking from the aesthetic, religious and political foundations laid by his parents to his difficult personal and critical relationship with Turner, and his encounters with the art and architecture of Venice. Victor Hugo makes a surprising appearance as Ruskin develops his ideas on the relationship between art and society. Ruskin’s role as a contemporary art critic is explored in two chapters on Holman Hunt, one focussing on the Pre-Raphaelite’s The Awakening Conscience, one examining his later Triumph of the Innocents. The development of Ruskin’s role as a social critic is traced through his teaching at the London Workingmen’s College and his foundation of the Guild of St George, a reforming society that continues to this day. Oscar Wilde came under his personal influence, as did Octavia Hill, a founder of the National Trust. The evolutionary theories of Charles Darwin are shown to have been deeply unsettling to Ruskin’s worldview. The book concludes with a demonstration of the profound influence of the Paradise Myth on all of Ruskin’s writings, followed by an exploration of the concept of cultural value that shows why Ruskin’s ruling principle: ‘There is no wealth but Life’ is as relevant to the 21st century as it was to the 19th.

In celebration of the 200th anniversary of the birth of one of Victorian Britain’s greatest thinkers, the art critic and social reformer John Ruskin, the distinguished Ruskinian Robert Hewison introduces Ruskin’s ideas and values through revelatory studies of the people and issues that shaped his thought, and the ideas and values that in turn were shaped by his writings and personality. Beginning with an exploration of the rich tradition of European art that stimulated his imagination, and to which he responded in his own skilful drawings, Ruskin and his Contemporaries follows the uniquely visual dimension of his thinking from the aesthetic, religious and political foundations laid by his parents to his difficult personal and critical relationship with Turner, and his encounters with the art and architecture of Venice. Victor Hugo makes a surprising appearance as Ruskin develops his ideas on the relationship between art and society. Ruskin’s role as a contemporary art critic is explored in two chapters on Holman Hunt, one focussing on the Pre-Raphaelite’s The Awakening Conscience, one examining his later Triumph of the Innocents. The development of Ruskin’s role as a social critic is traced through his teaching at the London Workingmen’s College and his foundation of the Guild of St George, a reforming society that continues to this day. Oscar Wilde came under his personal influence, as did Octavia Hill, a founder of the National Trust. The evolutionary theories of Charles Darwin are shown to have been deeply unsettling to Ruskin’s worldview. The book concludes with a demonstration of the profound influence of the Paradise Myth on all of Ruskin’s writings, followed by an exploration of the concept of cultural value that shows why Ruskin’s ruling principle: `There is no wealth but Life’ is as relevant to the 21st century as it was to the 19th.

Over the past three decades, Cuban performance artist Tania Bruguera (born 1968) has consistently and inventively blurred the line between art and activism. She first gained notoriety for her 1997 solo performance The Burden of Guilt (El peso de la culpa), a response to the mass suicide of a group of Indigenous Cubans who had consumed soil to demonstrate resistance to Spanish occupation. Subsequent works have frequently put her in conflict with the Cuban government: most notoriously, in Tatlin’s Whisper #6, performed in her native Havana in 2009, she set up a stage for audience members to speak uncensored for one minute.

Featuring a die-cut cover, Tania Bruguera: Let Truth Be, Though the World Perish includes her most significant performances and installations, as well as a new work designed for Milan’s Padiglione d’Arte Contemporanea.

Texts by: Diego Sileo, Tanya Barson, Fernanda Brenner, Cecilia Fajardo Hill, Tom Finkelpearl, Alistair Hudson, André Lepecki, Roberto Pinto, Gabriela Rangel, Rafael Rojas, Suset San­chez, Lucia Sanroman, Alain Vanier, Catherine Wood.

Text in English and Italian.

Building on her experience following a several-week trip to Taliesin West, Kora Bürgi investigates Frank Lloyd Wright’s architecture and traces his work in the USA and Switzerland. The result of the field research is a presentation of his influence on the Central Swiss architectural landscape – a theme that has not been studied before. That influence ranges from partial copies of elements of Wright’s architecture to own interpretations of his architectural ideas.
This publication analyses 14 buildings in Central Switzerland – from the Heimbach school and the Villa Schnyder (both in Lucerne) to the residential buildings in Brodhubl (Canton of Obwalden) – including Wright’s influence on various architects, such as Josef Gasser, Lisbeth Sachs and Otto von Deschwanden. The author also sheds light on the distribution of Wright’s urban-planning principles and the future of his architecture in Switzerland.

Text in German.

The Lake District delights its visitors with a series of superlatives: England’s largest national park, highest mountain, deepest lakes and now a new World Heritage status. One of Britain’s best-loved and most visited locations unveils its secrets. This unusual guidebook explores 111 of the area’s most interesting places, it leaves the well-trodden paths to find the unknown: marvel at a stained glass window which inspired the American flag, let others flock to Hill Top while you explore Beatrix Potter’s holiday home, walk through ancient forest to talk to fairies and swim with immortal fish. Pause to wonder at a stunning lake where a President proposed, view a constellation of stars like nowhere else, find out why exotic spices are used in local cuisine.

The long-awaited definitive work on master wood engraver Paul Landacre (1893–1963), a key figure of California modernism.

With his virtuosic prints of rolling California hills, classically inspired nudes, and natural and manmade forms — from a seashell to his own printing press — Paul Landacre elevated wood engraving to a high art form in twentieth-century America. Landacre’s ceaseless stylistic innovation placed his work in dialogue with California contemporaries like Edward Weston and Henrietta Shore; he was, in fact, central to an artistic milieu that has been described as a “small Renaissance, Southern California style.” It is fitting, too, that the velvety blacks and dazzling whites of Landacre’s prints can recall the images of the silver screen — for the artist’s rustic bungalow on a Los Angeles hill was but a stone’s throw from Hollywood, and his early patrons and supporters included such luminaries as the director Delmer Daves and the actress Kay Francis. This handsome two-volume set, illustrated with generously sized, high-quality reproductions, offers a definitive catalogue not only of Landacre’s individual wood engravings but also of his early linocuts, his celebrated book illustrations, and his experimental works in other media, including painting, drawing, and lithography. Yet this is much more than a catalogue raisonné — the fruit of more than 30 years of research, it brings to life the bohemian world in which the artist lived, and the rich cultural and artistic context of his work. Landacre’s prints are already prized by curators and collectors; this landmark publication will give him his rightful place in the firmament of American art.

Sheffield is yet to be discovered. Were you aware that football’s first professional rule book was written in Sheffield, and that it is home to the oldest ground in professional use? Did you know that climbers the world over come to Stanage Edge for the challenges offered by one of the world’s most fearsome millstone grit escarpments? Did you know that the Arctic Monkeys grew up in Sheffield, and that you can see the room at Yellow Arch Studios where they rehearsed as schoolboys and cut their first album? Did you know that the steepest hill in the entire 2012 Tour de France is in Sheffield? Did you know that Sheffield’s craft breweries produce some of the finest beers in the world? Did you know that you can walk out of the centre of Sheffield, through parkland, and directly into open countryside? You need this book fast then, don’t you, you soft ‘aporth!

More than other painters, the Impressionists wanted to shake off the dust of the studio, and swarmed the noisy streets of Paris, filling the cafés and living in garrets and humble little dwellings on the hill of Montmartre, which still seemed like the countryside at the time, its slopes covered with vineyards and vegetable gardens. Nor did they limit themselves to the city, planting their easels in the clearings of the forest of Fontainebleau, on the coast of Normandy, in the rustic villages in the Oise Valley and in Bougival and Argenteuil on the banks of the Seine. Like their Naturalist friends Zola and Maupassant, they liked to mix with the locals so they could experience the places directly, painting everywhere, even on a boat, like the one where Monet had his floating studio.

Munch’s Missing! Find the artist hidden in 12 vibrant illustrated scenes which are inspired by the artist’s life, and the themes in his art. Spot him on the hill where he famously heard that resounding scream; find him hidden on stage amongst actors performing an Ibsen play, and search him out in the forest near his home in Ekely. Every scene is jammed with artists and creatives who have been influenced by Munch.

While the magical illustrations by Celyn Brazier offer a playful introduction to the artist, they are a unique piece of art in themselves. Accompanying text opens up the stories behind the illustrations, and explores further Munch’s life and art, and the influence he had. 

This raucous art journey celebrates the startling relevance of Munch who brought us the selfie and liberated us to scream out!

Mie Olise Kjærgaard (b. 1974) conquers an artistic domain closely linked to the idea of the genius male painter: expressive, figurative, large-scale paintings. Composed of turbulent brushstrokes, her works on their huge canvases exude a wildness and power. Kjærgaard is utterly convincing in her adoption of the genre and translates the expressive force of gestural painting into a world of female experience. Her works depict active women in sportswear and flip-flops, their hair standing wildly on end. They ride mythical creatures, hang from the railings of ships, play a round of tennis, or hurtle through the neighbourhood on skateboards. Ferocious Expeditions brings together her works from recent years, accompanied by texts that give insight into the work of this Danish painter.

Australia’s wine history dates back almost 250 years, to the arrival of the First Fleet in 1788. The first commercial wine region, the Hunter Valley in New South Wales, was created a mere 40 years later, and by as early as the 1850s small amounts of wine were being exported to the UK. In the modern era, Australian wine became known for fortified wine styles modelled on Port and Sherry. These were the main wine styles consumed for several decades, but by the mid-1990s nearly all grapes were going into table wine and Australia was the sixth largest global exporter of wine. Vibrant, varietally expressive and affordable wines introduced new generations of drinkers to the joys of wine. The popularity of Australian wine has ebbed and flowed over the years but experimentation, innovation and the illumination of newer regions has created a quiet revolution, challenging preconceptions of what is possible.

In The Wines of Australia, sommelier Mark Davidson tastes his way round this new Australian wine world. European immigration was an important factor in the development of wine but it also had a dramatic and negative impact on the indigenous peoples, an issue that Davidson addresses in a chapter on history and culture, explaining how the wine industry is taking steps to involve First Nations peoples in grape growing and winemaking. The growing environment, including the critical question of climate change, is tackled, and today’s most important grape varieties, along with those that can take Australian wine into the future, are profiled. This is followed by a chapter explaining why the country is home to some of the oldest vines in the world. Every region is clearly delineated, its key producers introduced and their wines assessed. The Wines of Australia captures the character of one of the most exciting wine-producing countries on the planet.

Rambusch: The First 100 Years, 1898–1998 chronicles the growth of an independent, workshop-based, family business now being run by a fourth generation. This book offers the definitive history of the company started by Danish-born Frode Christian Valdemar Rambusch (1859–1924) in New York. Beginning with his efforts in decorative painting and murals, the story expands into lighting design and continues with a study of subsequent generations building upon – and further expanding – these fields of work into other media. The narrative also provides focus on more than two dozen artisans responsible for making the objects and interiors often requested by well-known architects.

Few American firms have flourished as this company has in the United States. Now in the 21st century, the firm inspires similar collaborative efforts between architects, designers, and craft studios to work together for the decorative arts to regain their place in the finishing of our nation’s buildings.

Notable for its longevity and still going strong, the story of Rambusch needs to be told, especially while generations who have institutional memory can tell it.

“Capturing the spirit of every Glastonbury since 1992, this coffee table book from award-winning photographer Liam Bailey brings together three decades of revelry and wonder among festivalgoers on Somerset’s most famous dairy farm.” Redonline.co.uk

“…Iconic Photos That Capture the Messy Essence of Glastonbury.”VICE

“The book’s images capture the rugged anarchy that spreads through Somerset each year around the solstice.”MSN

“There are many books about the music scene but few that show punters in all their beautiful variety. Liam Bailey’s long-term documentation has really paid off – this book about the craziness of Glastonbury Festival is terrific.” – Martin Parr

Glastonbury is the striking distillation of over 30 years’ unprecedented photographic access to the world’s largest green-field music and performing arts festival. In over 120 memorable images, Liam Bailey invites us to share his experiences of being among its diverse tribes.

Although Glastonbury has evolved into a sprawling fixture of the British summer calendar, this famously vibrant event is still powered by the belief in alternative communal culture. It is this special energy that has kept Bailey returning every year since 1992. Above all, this ‘access all areas’ visual diary makes a case for the positive human potential of over 200,000 people being able to get together in the open air – to enjoy music, performance and each other.

Bailey’s work has been exhibited in the UK and abroad, and appeared in magazines and newspapers including The Independent, The Guardian and Condé Nast Traveller.

Hut! Read all about today’s greatest gridiron stars in this exciting book full of action-packed photos.
Stars of the NFL includes profiles of 28 top players. This includes great quarterbacks like Jalen Hurts and Patrick Mahomes, other offensive powerhouses like Tyreek Hill and Travis Kelce, defensive mainstays like Aaron Donald and T. J. Watt, and special team standouts like Justin Tucker. Learn about their life stories, their unique styles of play, and their defining moments on the field. Brimming with colourful photos and key stats, Stars of the NFL joins Abbeville’s growing lineup of sports books for young readers, including Stars of World Soccer, Stars of the NBA, and Stars of Major League Baseball.

Great food culture starts at home – especially when it’s from the chef’s home kitchen and garden! Be inspired by this unique and visually stunning book, which takes a behind-the-scenes look into the home kitchens (and gardens) of 22 of Australia’s celebrity chefs. Notable mentions include Frank Camorra (MoVida), Brigitte Hafner (Graceburn House & Tedesca Osteria in Red Hill, on Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula), Tony Niccolini (Italian Artisans), Scott Pickett (Estelle, Matilda, and Audrey’s in Sorrento), and of course many others. Each chef is interviewed by renowned architecture and design writer Stephen Crafti, and each profile is captured through gorgeous, intimate imagery by celebrated photographer Catherine Sutherland. Featuring fabulous, inspiring conversations with each chef in their personal living spaces, while they are preparing a meal in their stunning kitchen, and with a close look at their kitchen’s architectural design, and garden style, this book celebrates not only some of Australia’s finest chefs, but also the architects who make these chef’s kitchens a pleasure to work in. The chefs and architects answer important questions, such as what makes a great kitchen as much as a great meal; what makes these kitchens unique; what are some of the less obvious things that need to be addressed in a kitchen design; what is the range of fresh produce, ie herbs and spices, as well as vegetables that is best planted in a successful kitchen garden; and so much more. This beautifully illustrated book is filled with inspiration for foodies (included are recipes from the chefs), gardeners and design aficionados, and a peek into the secret lives of these celebrities.

Perhaps the most influential political essay ever written, Unto This Last was one of the defining texts of British socialism, and was a decisive experience in the lives of Gandhi and Martin Luther King, amongst many others.

Ruskin’s lessons are as urgently needed today as ever. His attack on the greed and short-termism of unbridled capitalism, and on the pursuit of money instead of true wealth, are every bit as inspiring and challenging as they were when Unto This Last was first published 150 years ago.       
A new introduction by Andrew Hill, Associate Editor and City Editor of the Financial Times, and editor of the Lombard column, discusses the value of the essay in an age of credit crunch. A foreword by the Master of the Guild of St George, Ruskin’s association for social reform, sets out what Ruskinians today can do and are doing.

Over the course of 60-plus years, Erwin Hauer has created modular sculptures that feature penetrations and prominent interior voids yet, remarkably, are bonded by continuous surfaces. The modules of these sculptures contain the seeds of infinity: what Hauer calls ‘continua’. Still Facing Infinity covers the full scope of Hauer’s artistic oeuvre, from early two-dimensional works that double as room dividers to three-dimensional, space-filling sculptures that are conceptually similar to innovative architecture and engineering (works by Antoni Gaudi, Félix Candela, and Frei Otto) as well as advanced mathematical concepts (triply periodic infinite surfaces without self-intersections). Hauer offers detailed presentations in writings as well as in abundant photographs of a number of significant works, including Jerusalem Tower and Infinite Surface I-WP, the basis for numerous tabletop and large-scale sculptures as well as for two independent series that explore multiple iterations of the infinite surface concept.

Documentary photographer William E. Crawford spent three decades documenting Vietnam, and in particular Hanoi, its people and the surrounding countryside. As one of the very first Western photographers to work in post-war North Vietnam, Crawford was drawn back to the country numerous times at regular intervals between 1985 and 2015 to record this fascinating country’s culture, people, and society with beautiful, compelling and intimate photographs, concentrating on colonial and indigenous architecture, urban details, portraits, and landscapes. In 1986, the Vietnam’s Communist leadership began to shift from a Soviet-style central planning model toward free-market economic reforms. As a result, Hanoi has been transformed over the last three decades, becoming an example of how traditional Asian and developing cities have often been torn down or allowed to crumble – only to re-emerge in a ‘modernised’ form. Unlike photo-journalism, which is interested in the theatre of the moment, Crawford’s evocative and powerful photography chronicles life throughout Hanoi and its surrounds over the course of the last three decades. Filled with full-colour photographs and informative essays on his experiences and the people he encountered, Crawford’s work – showcased in this beautifully presented volume – provides a unique visual catalogue of the evolution of a city and its inhabitants, and in particular the complex historical area known as The 36 Streets.

On the slope of a gentle hill on the northern boundary of the Po basin in Northern Italy stands a remarkable house. A modernist villa in the middle of a park, with its metallic façade shining above an enormous circular base of reddish stone. The extraordinary structure of the Casa Girasole (The Sunflower) follows the way of the sun across the sky – and the inhabitants’ vista over the surrounding landscape – during the day, driven by an electric motor that can turn the entire house by 360°. It was built in the early 1930s by the Italian architects Angelo Invernizzi and Ettore Fagiuoli and is an important example of Italian Futurismo in architecture. Preserved entirely in its original state, including the original furniture and curtains, it makes traceable the fascination for modern technology, but also the already slightly broken optimism, of that period. The documentary film I Girasole: A House Near Verona by Christoph Schaub and Marcel Meili enables the viewer to take part in a day at the house that turns around its vertical axis once. The movie introduces both the architecture and atmosphere of the building, its various rooms, furnishings and decoration. It gives a memoir of the house’s history and of the time and feeling of life in which it was conceived. The film was awarded the 1st prize at the 1995 biennale Film and Architecture in Graz (Austria). The DVD is complemented by a booklet with introductory essays and illustrations. Film in original Italian version and alternative versions with English, German and French subtitles. Text in booklet in English and German.

Le Corbusier’s Chapel of Notre Dame du Haut in Ronchamp, eastern France, is one of the most unique and surprising religious buildings of the twentieth century. Replacing an earlier church that had been destroyed in the Second World War – a church that itself had been built on the site of a fourth-century Christian chapel – Le Corbusier transformed an ancient pilgrimage site into a dramatic work of modern art. In this insightful and beautifully illustrated volume, Maria Antonietta Crippa and Françoise Caussé explore the particular set of circumstances that led one of the twentieth century’s most famous exponents of urbanism to create an ethereal space of worship on a remote hill in the French countryside. As well as putting the chapel into its historical context and exploring the controversies and arguments that have surrounded it, this book – part of a series that began with Matisse: The Chapel at Vence (RA Publications, 2013) – features stunning new photographs that capture the genius of Le Corbusier’s design.