Архитектура

280 color illustrations, 150 B/W plans & drawings

Museums, universities, schools, libraries and other educational centrescultural facilities are the public face of a society. Here are Today's most creative educational and cultural buildings, all designed to blend form and function. Dozens of outstanding projects from around the world are shown with full-color photography and construction plans that reveal the essential aspects of planning these very public buildings. Today's Culture Facilities is truly a snapshot of our times, an architectural record of our most prized institutions.

Eduard Broto, Phd in Architecture and active member of the COAC architecture association. He has carried out extensive research and analysis into the way architecture is evolving in response to the new challenges created by a rapidly changing world. Author of many articles about architectural trends, and supervisor of NEW HOUSING CONCEPTS. This compilation illustrates new trends in single-family housing. He lives in Barcelona.

The architecture used to create educational environments strongly influences how well both students and teachers perform. Spaces that stimulate while at the same time helping students to concentrate, in the long-run, will make a valuable contribution to shaping the societies we live in. This book presents a collection of schools, universities and institutes, designed to encourage, stimulate and focus the minds of their users. Full-colour photographs of the projects, together with plans and explanations from the architects themselves guide readers through this instructive resource, and provide inspiration for architects and designers and all involved in the immensely important field of education.

This book takes a new look at the uses of wood in home construction. Each of the featured projects is clearly explained by the designers themselves and share the highest degree of architectural quality in the innovative application of wood. Sophisticated residences, contemporary family homes, and small but remarkable wood cabins represent the variety of domestic dwellings discussed. This latest review also includes outstanding photography and working plans, with a concise text that successfully conveys the main features of each building and how the the use of wood can enhance the defining characteristics of the design.

A perfect companion volume to Country Houses Today and Beach Houses Today, with the same commitment to innovating seen in each of the dozens of projects included. With particular emphasis placed on all of the technical aspects involved in the design and construction processes, all beautifully illustrated with outstanding color photographs, this book is an absolutely vital work for any Architect or Interior Designer.

This beautiful book draws on the rich collections of the Musée de la Toile de Jouy to produce the first-ever complete history of these textiles. The illustrations include original designs conserved in the museum, exceptional historical examples of clothing and furniture, documents relating to their manufacture and to the founding of the company, and examples of contemporary uses.

When printed and painted cottons from India first appeared in France in the 17th century, there was a reaction to their enormous commercial success and an embargo was placed on their import. In 1759 this ban was lifted, and the Manufacture Royale de Jouy was founded to produce printed cotton fabrics that could compete with the popular imported ones. Within a few years, the factory was the biggest of its kind in Europe and some 30,000 designs were created, many of them the work of renowned 18th-century artists such as Fragonard and Boucher.

The Toile de Jouy textile has become increasingly popular among designers and decorators, who incorporate its classic patterns in upholstery, wallpaper, linens and stationery. For anyone interested in the history of textiles or design, or looking for fresh ideas for interior decor, this book will be an inspiration and a fascinating reference.

Originally referring only to the famed fabrics of Jouy-en-Josas,‘toiles de Jouy’ has today become the catch-all term for the delightful printed cottons preferred by the aristocratic elite in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century France, made famous by the palaces of Marie-Antoinette and Empress Josephine. Sarah Grant introduces the design, dyeing, and printing processes that created these textiles, and their role in interior decoration and clothing, both then and now. Sumptuous new photography of the V&A’s extensive toiles collection illustrates the cottons’ diversity – floral, literary, antique, allegorical, bucolic and ‘exotic’, among others – offering inspiration to everyone with an interest in textiles and interiors.

Powder room, comfort station, privy, loo, dunny – the infinite variety of names we invent for this universal necessity, the toilet, is matched by an extraordinary variety of designs worldwide, from miniature log cabins in the Canadian wilderness to state-of-the-art cubicles in Japan, and from huts on stilts in the Caribbean to solar-powered sanitaryware in New Zealand. This amusing but also highly informative photographic journey reveals the idiosyncrasy and inventiveness that characterize the construction of the humble toilet around the globe. Along the way, the reader encounters every possible permutation, from the traditional English 'thunderbox’ to the Swazi thatched 'beehive’ hut, and discovers the fascinating cultural and historical differences that can make our travels to other countries so enjoyable.

Tokyo constitutes the most populated metropolitan area on the planet, it houses 33 million inhabitants.

It is also, possibly, the megalopolis with the highest proportion of recent architecture, what is a result of two significant events: The earthquake of 1923 and the bombardments of World War II.

The economic development that took place after the war gave rise to a modern city that stands out on account of its complex infrastructures. In no other city are the boundaries between inside and outside, public and private, up and down as blurred as in Tokyo; this lack of frontiers has shaped an urban setting without parallel which is reflected equally by the most state-of-the-art skyscraper and the most intimate store. This amalgam of architectural typologies has established itself as a reference point for designers from all over the world.

Projects are listed in alphabetical order to the architects and designers, presented in a very clear layout. Plans show the layouts of the buildings and single rooms.

Featuring a total of 104 restaurants with superlative design selected from the restaurants opened between January 2004 and April 2005.

Featuring the interiors of 100 wining and dining establishments newly opened or renovated between January 2005 and April 2006.

In Tokyo, many restaurants close because of excessive competition every year. On the other hand, new restaurants trying to meet consumer's diversifying tastes and lifestyles open. In this book, restaurants in Tokyo which are newly opened or renovated between January 2005 and April 2006 in Tokyo are introduced with a multitude of high-quailty colour photos and drawings.

Covering 159 restaurants in Tokyo that have high quality in architecture, interior design, furniture and lighting design.

Konichiwa cool!

So you love sushi, sleep on a futon, drink green tea—why not take your Nippon-adoration one step further by infusing your surroundings with a few Japanese touches? The best place to start is this look book bursting with full-page color photographs of apartments, houses, and hotels throughout the city. Whether it`s a high-rise apartment overlooking Tokyo, a boutique hotel, or a house made of fiberglass, each dwelling herein will awaken the Japanese spirit within you. For a real treat, why not sip a sake while you peruse the pages?

Highlights include:
• Plastic House by Kengo Kuma
• Professor Nakamura's version of a Japanese literati retreat
• Natural Stripes House by Masaki Endoh
• Lost in Translation hotel Park Hyatt by Kenzo Tange

240 colour and 22 b/w illustrations

Today Tokyo is the largest city in the world. The image of the city, notwithstanding the widespread globalisation process, is very different to what we are accustomed to in Europe, America and also in other Asian countries. The visual and cultural shock is strong: it appears extremely vast, uncontrollable, indecipherable, incommunicable, and chaotic.
Tokyo is one of the few global cities, and, like London, New York and perhaps one or two others, is part of a real trans-national system. It is an extraordinary capital of contemporary architecture and, at the same time, constitutes an exceptional urban phenomenon that is impossible not to study with great interest. More importantly is the fact that, behind an apparently abstract debate, the city poses a substantial problem: does it represent the final decay of the Western city or rather is it something completely different, a city with its own deep-rooted historical diversity and specific cultural independence that has not been substantially modified by the powerful and recent hybridisation with the West? And also, does the city interest us for these reasons or rather because it is/appears to be the city which – not being a part of the Eastern tradition – has, more than any other place, embraced the challenge of the new millennium and projected itself into the future, spurring rapid change with the energy, recklessness and aggression that is possible only in a place that has never been part of a tradition, to the point that it has substantiated a new symbolic form in the urban phenomenology of the twenty-first century?

In an age when houses exhibiting unchecked exuberance, high drama, or conspicuous luxury get all the attention, leading interior designer Tom Scheerer has cultivated a more restrained brand of chic, a look he modestly describes as “cheerful” and “no nonsense.” But it is so much more. In Manhattan apartments, Brooklyn brownstones, Bahamian seaside cottages, and Maine country houses, Scheerer creates rooms that are crisp, confident, classic, and unfailingly correct, but also visually enthralling. His sophistication is extreme, but it is accessible, relaxed, and a touch “underbaked,” as Scheerer says, because he thinks the smartest rooms are always a little underdecorated.

The magic is in the way Scheerer combines classic, old-fashioned decorating with modernist touches à la Albert Hadley and Billy Baldwin, but with a keener attention to natural materials, unpretentious vernacular crafts, and the prettiest colour combinations this side of India. He cherishes the simplest, least manipulated fabrics — cottons, linens, dimities — and loves certain inexpensive accents as much as he does truly fine ones. All this adds up to fresh, relaxed interiors that look like no others. Exquisitely photographed, this is the long-awaited first book of Scheerer’s work, and it’s a must for all lovers of interior design.