Architecture + Design

The first and only monograph to give a comprehensive examination of acclaimed American artist Sarah Sze's painting practice

Since the late 1990s, Sarah Sze has developed a signature visual language that challenges the static nature of art with a dynamic body of work spanning sculpture, painting, drawing, printmaking, video and installation.

In recent years, Sze has returned to painting, the medium in which she was first trained. Comprising constellations of painted and collaged elements, her expansive abstract landscapes explore a visual world that is constantly evolving, degrading, and generating new ways of seeing. Her paintings are highly sought-after and are held in the permanent collections of prominent institutions and museums worldwide.

The book includes two essays by Mark Godfrey and Tina Pang that explore Sze's influences and her working process, plus an interview between the artist and Madeleine Grynsztejn, that expands on the theoretical underpinnings of her painting practice.

With each copy numbered and hand signed by the artist, this exquisitely illustrated luxury volume, packaged in a cloth-wrapped slipcase, was created in close collaboration with Sze, and is the first monograph devoted to her painting practice.

Specifications:

• Format: Hardback
• Size: 308 × 292 mm (12 1/8 × 11 1/2 in)
• Pages: 396 pp
• Illustrations: 300 illustrations
• ISBN: 9781838665623

Originating from the highly acclaimed and groundbreaking three-volume Phaidon Design Classics, this new book presents 1,000 of the world's greatest objects in one large-format volume - from everyday items by anonymous creators to lauded pieces by the likes of Charles and Ray Eames, Charlotte Perriand, Dieter Rams, Richard Sapper, Hans J. Wegner, and Florence Knoll.

Carefully revised to bring every detail up to date, and with the addition of 100 new items that highlight designers from a diverse variety of backgrounds (including a greater number of female designers) and products from the last 15 years, this collection of the world's greatest product design is more comprehensive, compelling - and relevant - than ever before.

The book showcases celebrated names alongside the new stars of modern design, including Le Corbusier, Alvar and Aino Aalto, Isamu Noguchi, Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec, Lani Adeoye, Faye Toogood, and Lindsey Adelman. Each entry is accompanied by beautiful imagery and a detailed description that offers a rich insight into the product, its history, and its maker, from the renowned Tulip Chair by Eero Saarinen to the much-loved Bird Zero e-scooter.

This handsome book is the perfect reference guide for design enthusiasts, industry professionals, and all those interested in the creative process.

Specifications:

• Format: Hardback
• Size: 310 × 230 mm (12 1/4 × 9 in)
• Pages: 592 pp
• Illustrations: 1000 illustrations

This encyclopedia explores the hidden meanings of visual symbols across time and geography, from the sun to whales and the human hand. Spanning different eras and cultures, over 800 beautiful images combine with expert illuminations of symbol history, meanings, and psychic associations, offering readers a precious and fascinating resource for thoughtful interpretations of life, art, and spirituality.

Hardcover, 6.6” x 9.4”, 808 pages

Many tattoo connoisseurs consider the Japanese tradition to be the finest in the world for its detail, complexity and compositional skill. Its style and subject matter are drawn from the visual treasure trove of Japanese popular culture, in particular the color woodblock prints of the early 19th century known as ukiyo-e.

This book tells the fascinating story of how ukiyo-e first inspired tattoo artists as the pictorial tradition of tattooing in Japan was just beginning. It explores the Japanese tattoo’s evolving meanings, from symbol of devotion to punishment and even to crime, and reveals the tales behind specific motifs. With lush, colorful images of flowers blooming on the arm of a thief, sea monsters coiling across the back of a hero and legendary warriors battling on the chests of actors, the tattoos in these prints can offer the same vivid inspiration today as they did 200 years ago.

In an era of high-tech and climate extremes, we are drowning in information while starving for wisdom. Enter Lo—TEK, a design movement building on indigenous philosophy and vernacular infrastructure to generate sustainable, resilient, nature-based technology. With a foreword by anthropologist Wade Davis and spanning 18 countries from Peru and the Philippines to Tanzania and Iran, this book explores millennia-old human ingenuity on how to live in symbiosis with nature. Manifesting the disclosure of hidden knowledge, the book’s artful Swiss binding showcases an open spine, revealing the construction of the book.

Incorporating both formal details and welcoming elements, a sophisticated and balanced look tailored to a sense of home, as shown through the portfolio of Foley & Cox

Foley & Cox is a New York-based interior design firm renowned for serene spaces subtly layered with color and texture that create a sense of welcome and comfort. Taking creative cues directly from their clients–their perceptions, preferences, and passions–the firm creates serene interiors infused with personal style.

This elegant book presents 24 homes, ranging from elegant prewar apartments in Manhattan to retreats in the Hamptons and summer places along the coast of New England and in Europe, and even to a private jet and a yacht that cruises the Mediterranean. What unites these spaces is an overall balance and elegance, infused with luxurious fabrics in subtle tonal variations and a judicious use of highlight color, often in the artwork and accessories. Founder Michael Cox is a master at creating settings for art collections and selecting distinctive vintage pieces that add a sophisticated touch to the rooms.

Specifications:

• Format: Hardback
• Size: 304 × 241 mm (12 × 9.5 in)
• Pages: 248 pp
• Illustrations: 220 illustrations
• ISBN: 9781580936163

How design can help foster the conditions for global peace: an intersectional visual conversation between activists, designers, architects and theorists

How might we collectively put our creative forces together to envision a future we want to live in and take action to create it now? Designing Peace is an intersectional snapshot of the actions—culturally diverse and wide-ranging in scale—that are currently in play around the world.

Offering perspectives on peace through essays, interviews, critical maps, project profiles, data visualizations and art, this book conveys the momentum that design can gain in effecting a peace-filled future. From activists, scholars and architects to policymakers and graphic, game and landscape designers, Designing Peace flips the conversation: peace is not simply a passive state signifying the absence of war, it is a dynamic concept that requires effort, expertise and multidimensional solutions to address its complexity.

Designers engage with individuals, communities and organizations to create a more sustainable peace—from creative confrontations that challenge existing structures to designs that demand embracing justice and truth in a search for reconciliation. This publication aims to expand the discourse on what is possible if society were to design for peace.

This illustrated biography tells the story of Gropius's life, beginning with his shattering experiences in World War One, his turbulent marriage to the notorious Alma Mahler, the establishment of the Bauhaus, and the tragic death of their daughter Manon.

After Gropius's agonized decision to leave Nazi Germany in 1933, the book explores his life in exile in London and then his move to America in 1937, where he lived and worked until his death in 1969.

Features more than 375 illustrations including letters, telegrams, sketches, drawings, photographs, posters, brochures, and other ephemera. The authors present the life of Walter Gropius as not just a key figure of 20th-century architecture, but as an extraordinarily generous person - a connector, protector, and benefactor who improved the lives and careers of all those with whom he came into contact.

This is the first comprehensive illustrated biography of one of Modern architecture's most important figures.

Specifications:

• Format: Hardback
• Size: 305 × 238 mm (12 × 9 3/8 in)
• Pages: 320 pp
• Illustrations: 377 illustrations

Life Meets Art presents an unparalleled, global, behind-the-scenes tour through 250 beautiful interiors from the homes of the most creative people in art, architecture, design, fashion, literature, music, film and theatre.

These inspiring, unique spaces show us the spaces where the greatest creatives in history lived their lives, honed their crafts and, in many cases, produced some of the world's most celebrated masterpieces - providing an intimate and insightful perspective on the masters that define artistic history. Organized alphabetically by artist, each interior features a color photograph and a short descriptive text, including details on whether the house is open to the public or private.

This book will inspire everyone fascinated by stylish living, creative interior design, and the myriad possibilities for home décor, as well as those fascinated by the personal and professional lives of their cultural heroes.

Life Meets Art includes homes from creative masters of past centuries such as artists da Vinci, Raphael and Rubens, composers Handel, Lizst, and Verdi and writers Dickens, Byron, and Coleridge. The book also showcases the extraordinary interiors of many twentieth century stars and epoch-defining talents such as architects Frank Lloyd Wright, Eileen Gray, Le Corbusier, and Walter Gropius, artists Pablo Picasso, Marc Chagall, and Henry Moore, writers Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, and Agatha Christie and musicians Louis Armstrong, Frank Sinatra, and Elvis Presley.

Homes from some of the most celebrated talents of today are also featured, including artists Francisco Clemente, Cornelia Parker, and Gilbert and George, fashion designers Alexander McQueen, Marc Jacobs, and Diane von Furstenberg, designers Marc Newson and Es Devlin and musicians Moby, Jimmy Page, and David Bowie.

Specifications:

• Format: Hardback
• Size: 290 × 250 mm (11 3/8 × 9 7/8 in)
• Pages: 304 pp
• Illustrations: 275 illustrations

The traditional colors of Japan have been in use since the seventh century, originally to indicate rank and social hierarchy but, over time, their significance has broadened to include all manner of designed objects. This landmark volume celebrates a curated selection of 200 colours (iro in Japanese), with each traditional shade illustrated by one or more items – ranging from 16th-century kimonos to contemporary chairs, humble kitchen utensils to precious ceramics – providing a unique route to a deeper appreciation of Japanese design. Expertly bound in a traditional Japanese style, this stunning book is a beautiful design object in its own right and is a must-have for all lovers of design.

Specifications:

• Format: Flexibound
• Size: 270 × 205 mm (10 5/8 × 8 1/8 in)
• Pages: 288 pp
• Illustrations: 250 illustrations

For more than twenty years, globe-trotting English-born, Los Angeles–based photographer Roger Davies has shot stunning, luxurious, and unique residences by the world’s most acclaimed designers and architects for the most prestigious magazines.

In Beyond the Canyon, he trains his camera on residences in the Golden State, his adopted home, driving the coast to shoot interiors from Malibu to Marin County, Laurel Canyon to Rancho Mirage. Davies takes readers into the often glamorous, always compelling homes of the artists, film directors, actors, interior designers, art collectors, and others who lend the West Coast its cachet.

Across the variety of spaces represented—among them legacy works by midcentury masters John Lautner, A. Quincy Jones, and Craig Ellwood, and contemporary designs by Tadao Ando and Frank Gehry—he captures the essence of California living in his portraits of spectacular spaces and breathtaking views, all bathed in a warm glow.

As one of the world's top photographers of interiors, Davies's work has appeared in many interior design and architecture monographs. In Beyond the Canyon, his own first book, he provides in his own words a rare behind-the-scenes, industry insider's experience of photographing the stunning residences.

Specifications:

• Format: Hardback
• Size: 305 × 267 mm (12 × 10 1/2 in)
• Pages: 304 pp
• Illustrations: illustrations

The Danish design scholar Birgit Lyngbye Pedersen discovered the work of Finn Juhl (1912-1989) when she was looking for a suitable sofa for her 1950s home. Juhl's furniture is undergoing a renaissance at present, and when his house in Charlottenlund--which he designed and decorated in 1941-42--came up for sale, Pedersen purchased the building and all of its furnishings, presenting it immediately afterward to the adjacent Ordrupgaard Museum. This monograph takes a look at Finn Juhl--who, alongside Hans J. Wegner and Arne Jacobsen, is one of the most important Danish modernists--in an agreeable, unpretentious fashion. Per H. Hansen, a renowned expert in Scandinavian furniture design, provides a humorous, extremely informative description of Juhl's unconventional character and his classic furniture--the Chieftain Chair, the Pelican Chair, the Poet Sofa. Drawings, photographs, images of the newly curated house (2008) and an amusing final chapter about his patrons round off this unusual and atmospherically illustrated tribute to the brilliant Danish designer and his own home, an icon of good taste.

On the rocky coast of the Côte d'Azur perches a crisp, white modern home, elongated and compact, cryptically called E.1027. The Anglo-Irish designer Eileen Gray (1878–1976) bought the site, paid for the construction and designed the building (with the assistance of her close friend, Jean Badovici, to whom Gray gave the site, building and contents).

It was Gray's first foray into architecture, and as such it was a manifesto. For Gray, the whole building—the structure, its materials, the color scheme, the windows, the hardware, the fittings, the furniture—was an experiment with new concepts of spatial relations, an attempt to create an architecture of lightness and freedom. This new publication finally places this key example of modern architecture in its rightful position in history, contextualizing the structure with essays, reproductions of archival material, photographs and numerous scale drawings.

Dedicated to the history of design from the mid-19th century to the present, Design History Handbookprovides guidelines for the development of design, offering an overarching vision of the subject and at the same time highlighting areas for future investigation.

It is in the mid-19th century that we can discover the professional figure of the designer, thus marking the birth of modern and contemporary design. From there the figure of the designer unfolds and branches off, embracing many disciplines: in addition to the field of furniture—which often exemplifies the broadest lines of design—other sectors are considered here, from technical objects to graphics, from fashion to car design. In particular, attention is focused on the influence of the art world, with its array of avant-garde ideas that has gone hand-in-hand with original design.

Along with the chronological story, Design History Handbookpresents a diachronic approach in which, through in-depth graphics, the story of a single type, material or concept detaches from its historical place to create relationships with similar phenomena of other periods. The volume reproduces 300 color images, many with lavish captions elaborating on each story and leaving room for the reader’s interpretation.

One of the most iconic examples of 20th-century Danish design is the PH lamp, designed by Poul Henningsen in 1925. Combining functionalism with aesthetic innovation, the lamp’s sleek and economical design won a gold medal at that year’s International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts in Paris. Taking this lamp as its point of departure, Danish Lights examines the histories of 100 lamp designs dating back to the 19th century.

By way of its individual case studies, the book provides a detailed survey of the development of lamp design in Denmark, beginning with the advent of oil and gas lamps through to the adoption of incandescent bulbs—the latter of which are associated with some of the most distinctively Danish designs.

With over 300 illustrations, the book traces the history of Danish design’s emphasis on ambience in lighting, due to lighting’s important role in promoting hygge—the concept of a “warm and cozy” atmosphere prominent in Denmark. The centrality of the aesthetic of light in hygge, typified by candlelight, led many of the designers in this book to rethink their adherence to the Nordic functionalist design principle—known as funkis design in Denmark—by emphasizing the crucial quality of hygge in the design of their lamps. This book, the first to focus on Danish lamps, features many of the country’s most prominent designers. In addition to Henningsen, other figures surveyed include Arne Jacobsen (himself the designer of a well-known lamp bearing his initials) and Verner Panton.