Архітектура

Tuscan treasures. Gorgeous homes in the Italian countryside

Under the burning Tuscan sun roll marvelous hills, vineyards, olive groves - all postcard-perfect landscapes nestling medieval towns, rural villas, and contadino farmhouses, endless niches of dreamy dwellings exuding all the charm for which the region is revered. We’ve tracked down the best examples of such havens - from the typical to the surprising - to paint a warm-hued picture of the look and feel of Tuscan living. Inspiration abounds from these pages of achingly beautiful homes; who knows - maybe you can bring the magic of Tuscany to your corner of the world.

Tuscan Treasures. A collection of gorgeous homes in the Italian countryside

Step into some of the most beautiful havens of Tuscany. Grand patrician homes and rural hermitages alike open their doors to reveal Medici pottery, sun-kissed drawing rooms, and colorful tiled floors. With detailed captions and crisp photography, this portfolio presents each home and its interior to paint a gorgeous picture of Tuscan living.

Under the burning Tuscan sun roll marvelous hills, vineyards, and olive groves — all postcard-perfect landscapes nestling centuries-old towns, rural villas, and contadino farmhouses. We’ve tracked down the best examples of such havens to paint a warm-hued picture of the look and feel of Tuscan living.

Follow in Michelangelo’s footsteps to the Eremo Santa Maria Maddalena, a medieval hermitage nestled in the steep Arezzo hillside. Take a dip in the California-style pool of Roberto Budini Gattai, the architect who turned a modest winegrower’s house into a dazzling homage to David Hockney. Cool down in the tiled bedrooms of the Villa Villoresi, where, legend has it, Dante’s wife took refuge during the poet’s exile in the early 14th century.

This collection gathers the region’s most remarkable homes and interiors, complete with insightful captions and enthralling double spreads. Across contemporary architecture and traditional craftsmanship, minimal earthenware and decadent furniture, we discover all the natural tones and sun-kissed textures of Tuscany.

The editor:

Angelika Taschen studied art history and German literature in Heidelberg, gaining her doctorate in 1986. Working for TASCHEN from 1987, she has published numerous titles on art, architecture, photography, design, travel, and lifestyle.

The authors:

Barbara & René Stoeltie both began their careers as artists and gallery owners. With René as photographer and Barbara as writer, they have been collaborating on interior design articles since 1984, contributing to such influential magazines as Vogue, The World of Interiors, AD, Elle, House and Garden, Country Living, and House Beautiful.

About the series:

Bibliotheca Universalis — Compact cultural companions celebrating the eclectic TASCHEN universe at an unbeatable, democratic price!

Since we started our work as cultural archaeologists in 1980, TASCHEN has become synonymous with accessible, open-minded publishing. Bibliotheca Universalis brings together more than 100 of our all-time favourite titles in a neat new format so you can curate your own affordable library of art, anthropology, and aphrodisia.

Bookworm’s delight — never bore, always excite!

For centuries, writers, painters, and musicians have succumbed to the magical charms of Venice. From the lagoon - the city's life source crisscrossed by fishermen, sailors, and gondoliers - to the streets and squares that form the backdrop to the Venetians' theatrical way of life, the authors invite us to discover extravagant interiors in a tour of the palazzi, modern apartments, and private homes and gardens. Visit the colorful workshops where goldsmiths, boatbuilders, weavers, lace-makers, and other artisans craft traditional Venetian specialities. This revised edition is illustrated with 430 photographs and completed by a guidebook listing more than two hundred hotels, restaurants, and shops recommended by true Venetians.

Living Life Beautifully tells the story of how Christina founded legendary fabric company Cabbages & Roses and grew it into a lifestyle brand.

Christina talks about her inspirations and influences, and how she works these into her products. Specially commissioned photography allows us a peek into her newly acquired London apartment, and we see behind the scenes at her family home in the Bath countryside.

This 600-year-old cottage is the backdrop for constantly changing interiors - it is where Christina designs her fabrics, experiments with her new wallpapers, and gathers all her favourite antiques, inherited gems and newly sourced vintage aquisitions. In addition, Christina shows us a selection of other homes and lifestyles she finds truly inspirational, including those of Brigette Buchanan, of interiors company Odd Limited and Maureen Doherty of Egg interiors store.

About the Author

Christina Strutt runs Cabbages & Roses, a fabric company that specializes in historic rural printed fabrics for fashion, accessories and interiors. Cabbages & Roses has three shops in London plus concessions in selected Jigsaw stores, and all products are available through the website www.cabbagesandroses.com. Her previous books include Vintage Crafts, Cabbages & Roses Guide to Natural Housekeeping, Homemade Vintage and At Home with Country, all published by CICO Books. The author lives near Bath, UK.

The ‘modern’ space is so much more than simply ‘modernist’. It embraces clean lines, sophisticated colour combinations, outdoor rooms, great design objects and open areas for relaxing and eating. Living Modern Tropical applies these attributes to the lifestyles in tropical climates, where the expression of modern living has found its natural home.

Wherever you live, this visual sourcebook of contemporary interiors in the tropics offers hundreds of photographs and design ideas that will provide inspiration for every room in the house.

The book's sections focus on the lifestyle qualities most enjoyed in tropical spaces:
• Nature: setting; integration; views; plants
• Water: swimming pools; reflecting pools; ponds; natural
• Architecture: indoor | outdoor; hillsides | levels; open plan; partitions
• Elements: stairs; storage; lighting; windows | skylights; doors | screens
• Light: filtered; dappled; shaded; pure; layered | indirect; soft
• Function: living; lounging; cooking | eating; entertaining; work; bathing; sleeping
• Furniture: bright; modern; exotic; outdoor; wood; built-in
• Details: bold; white; natural; pattern; art | objects; texture; fabrics
• Materials: wood; tiles; stone; glass; brick; concrete; metal; mixed-media
• Outdoors: terraces; patios; gardens; courtyards; outdoor rooms; paths | walkways; balconies

A sumptuous survey of houses built with a strong connection to the oceans, lakes, rivers, and pools around them

Living on Water showcases the finest examples of residential architecture that have one thing in common - their special relationship to that most essential of elements: water. These homes have been designed with water as a fundamental key to their very essence - whether built with a water view, built on water itself, or built to be reflected in water - and the results are stunning. This is a global tour that provides endless inspiration.

"...Let water in, where possible, not hope to subdue Mother Nature... Live with the water, rather than struggle to defeat it."—New York Times

A glorious celebration of vibrant twentieth-century design, color, and pattern, Living Retro offers a privileged glimpse into a selection of fabulous retro-inspired homes around the world, from Palm Springs to Paris.

Our passion for retro style shows no signs of fading. From the cerebral elegance of mid-century modern and the spare simplicity of Scandinavian retro design to the flamboyant opulence of the 1970s, retro interiors still exert enormous appeal.

In this glorious book, Andrew Weaving visits 18 inspiring and varied locations that showcase the Living Retro style. Take a tour of a minimalist loft in London, admire the spare simplicity of Scandinavian mid-century modern and enjoy the colorful, playful chic of Palm Beach in the 1960s – the carefully chosen locations around the globe illustrate the many facets of a look that ranges from sophisticated glamour to pared-down elegance.

About the author

Andrew Weaving is the owner of Century Design in London. The gallery specializes in mid-century modern design, focusing on both originals and re-editions, plus some work by new designers. His other books include Understanding Modern, Playful Home and the best-selling Modern Retro (also published by Ryland Peters & Small). A passionate collector of all things retro, Andrew lives in London and France and owns historic mid-century modern homes in Florida and Palm Springs as well as an Art Deco beach house in Essex.

An inspiring selection of rooftop gardens and rooftop terraces from around the world with plant listings

Rooftop gardens and rooftop terraces let you reach for the stars and the only limit on what you can design in your exclusive oasis is your imagination. Rooftop gardens also inject a lovely note of green into the cityscape and improve the microclimate. People grow their own vegetables or use grass and shrubs to frame an opulent lounge area or pool. This book showcases private rooftop gardens and terraces from around the world. You’ll see everything from spectacular high-rise penthouses and clever retrofit solutions to award-winning sustainable homes. They all convey the unique feeling of living between heaven and earth. Peace and relaxation are the focus in these slices of paradise, places where you can quite literally sit back and watch the world go by.

Ashley Penn is a Chartered Member of the Landscape Institute in the United Kingdom where he worked for many years as a landscape architect. He has written extensively for the Landscape Architects Network, a website that offers high quality online content to people who want to learn more about landscape architecture and the environment, as a volunteer since 2012 and is currently the Content Director.

He studied horticulture before specializing in landscape design as an undergraduate. Upon graduation, he was awarded the Turner Prize for Innovation in Design. While studying his Post Graduate Diploma in Landscape Architecture, Ashley developed interests in landscape history and green technologies, including green roofs and green walls. He has written many articles about green roofs for Landscape Architects Network. He currently resides in Nokia, Finland, where he works as a freelance landscape designer.

Experience these open-air sanctuaries in a variety of different styles — from sumptuous cascades of flowers to minimalist design
A beautiful reference book for anyone with a balcony or garden

• Beautiful, stylish, contemporary spaces to live and work
• A large-format coffee table book including nearly 300 photographs
• A new book in the same internationally successful series as Interiors Country & City and Quiet Living and by the same authors as Vintage Style

A brand new interiors book, by Piet Swimberghe and Jan Velinde, showcasing beautiful living spaces.

In recent years a new generation of artists and designers has discovered that garden plants - from moss and grass to fullgrown trees - can become astonishing works of living sculpture. Iconoclast garden designer Paul Cooper has gathered together the best examples of this exciting new art form while overturning many preconceptions about what is possible in the context of both gardening and art, showing that every garden has the potential to include dramatic and lasting sculpture.

Living Systems surveys a wide array of innovative approaches to material technologies within the field of landscape architecture. The selected projects and materials exhibit a contemporary demand for technological landscapes and the collaboration between designers, engineers, scientists and ecologists. The book proposes a synthesis between technology and theory, focusing on growth, flow, metabolism, climate, and atmospheric phenomena.

Projects and materials are cross-referenced according to performance criteria, processes, and properties. Each of the 36 international projects and 23 material technologies is presented with drawing details and construction photographs. Descriptions of key processes and adaptive qualities provide an analysis of the various complex systems featured, such as vertical growth structures, flood prevention, stormwater infiltration and erosion control.

Projects featured include works by West8, GROSS.MAX, Weiss-Manfredi Architects, Field Operations, Kathryn Gustafson, and Vogt Landschaftarchitekten.

Today, more than ever, multifamily housing is recognised as vital to modern, urban communities. This type of housing requires immense dexterity from an architectural perspective, because while promoting a sense of community living, a sense of aesthetics must also prevail. 

Classic style and impeccable attention to detail are hallmarks of the work of interior designer Matthew Patrick Smyth. His comfortable, timeless rooms are tailored to fit his clients’ personalities and lifestyles, whether they are dynamic young couples with children or cultured art collectors. Smyth masterfully blends contemporary pieces with antiques to endow each space with a sense of solidity and history while maintaining a completely fresh, modern sensibility.

Smyth credits his mentor David Easton for teaching him how to see the intrinsic value of any given piece and to successfully mix furnishings with similar lines, materials, and forms even when they are products of different centuries. Easton also embedded in Smyth a love for travel - leading to the designer’s devotion to all things French that permeates his work. Smyth opened his own firm in New York in 1987 and now works with clients around the globe. His designs - characterized by refined, flawless interior architecture - are seen in grand Shelter Island mansions, classically proportioned San Francisco townhouses, and demure Parisian pied-à-terres alike.

In this lavishly illustrated volume, Smyth reveals his own design tips, rules, and approaches to meeting challenges offered by uniquely shaped spaces. He focuses on editing collections to better showcase individual works, the personal nature of color selection, adding - or restoring - historical references, and finishing a space off with glorious, often unexpected fabrics and trims. Over two hundred color photographs showcase a wide variety of styles, from a nature-infused Aspen vacation home to the quintessential Upper East Side apartment to a London flat that smoothly blends its owner’s inherited collection of Renaissance art with fine Indian pieces.

The tropics are a way of life. Embracing outdoor surroundings as much as indoor possibilities, tropical houses have become a source of new impulses for architecture, interiors, and furniture design worldwide.

The tropics are not only an address, but also a way of life. Living Under the Sun is a stunning showcase of modern tropical interiors and architecture that meld local design tradition and bold innovation in compelling ways.

More than anywhere else on earth, the tropics demand an architecture that can bridge the gap between what is outside — sea, sand, sky, and sun — and what lies within. The villas, family homes, artists’ ateliers, beach shacks, and urban pieds-à-terre featured in the book embrace their outdoor surroundings to offer fresh, often surprising indoor possibilities that are ideally suited to their climates. The elegantly easy-going work featured in Living Under the Sun exemplifies how to create tranquil settings to soothe our hectic lives, regardless of our geographical location.

Where is paradise: at the end of the earth or at home on the sofa? For many, the word paradise conjures up images of a sunny beach with palm trees. For others, it might mean pristine nature, a lively city with much to see and do, lazing in a hammock, or relaxing anywhere with a cool sea breeze. All of these versions of paradise can be found in the tropics.

Tropical regions around the globe have always offered an extraordinarily diverse range of impressions and inspirations. Yet only recently have countries such as Brazil, Colombia, Thailand, and Australia begun to gain international recognition as go-to sources for contemporary design ideas. Today, the tropics offer style aficionados at least as many, if not more, new things to discover than classic design destinations such as Italy or Scandinavia with their established brands.

Living Under the Sun is the first comprehensive showcase of modern tropical living styles and their designers. Presenting tropical interiors at the nexus of timeless tradition and self-confident freshness, the book brings their colors and elegantly easy-going ambience to life. It captures the refreshingly different coziness of rooms that seem to flow seamlessly into the exteriors surrounding them and are thus ideally suited to local climates and weather occurrences such as tropical storms.

Living Under the Sun features striking living and working spaces in Asian, Latin American, and Australian homes and villas that meld aesthetics with functionality in exceptional ways. The book also explores the myriad stylistic devices that characterize tropical interior design such as precious woods, natural stone tiles, colorful glass mosaics, and abundant vegetation in the form of orchids, ferns, and other lush plants. It includes stunning examples of shady green patios, stylish terraces, and enviable gardens.

Readers of Living Under the Sun are sure to revel in the tropical charm of the book’s select interiors, décor, and design. Perhaps they will even be inspired to create their own paradise at home.