The Very Small Home: Japanese Ideas for Living Well in Limited Space
by Azby Brown
from Kodansha International
Building small can be a sign of higher ambitions, and those who take the time to peruse these pages will undoubtedly grow to appreciate that creating a small home can be an amazingly positive and creative act, one which can enhance life in surprising ways. The Very Small Home presents stunning design advances in Japan. Eighteen recent houses, from ultramodern to Japanese rustic, are explored in depth. Particular emphasis is given to what the author call the Big Idea-the overarching concept that does the most to make the house feel more spacious than it actually is. Among the Big Ideas introduced here are ingenious sources of natural light, well-thought-out atriums, snug but functional kitchens, unobtrusive partitions, and free-flowing circulation paths. An introduction by the author puts the house designs in the context of lifestyle trends, and highlights their shared characteristics. For each project, the intentions of the designers and occupants are examined. The result is a very human sensibility that runs through the book. A glimpse of the dreams and aspirations that these unique homes represent and that belies their apparent modesty. The second half of the book is devoted to illustrating the special features in the homes, from clever storage and kitchen designs, to ingenious skylights and nooks. As with his earlier Small Spaces, Azby Brown has given home owners, designers, and architects a fascinating new collection of thought-provoking ideas.
Space: Japanese Design Solutions
by Michael Freeman
from Universe Publishing
In their work, Japanese interior designers and architects constantly draw on cultural traditions, while using a modern, even radical approach. Whether in the use of lightweight partitions to create flexible spaces, deliberate profligacy to give a feeling of generosity, or strange perspectives, the results are not mere workaday solutions, but artistic and unusual ones that can turn a lack of space into a surfeit of style.
Distinctly Asian in its feel and comprehensive in its coverage, featuring every room of each highlighted house, the book is divided into such themed sections as "Every Square Centimeter," "Interconnection," "Wasting Space," and "Shock Value."
The crisp photography, inventive design solutions, unique packaging, and handy format make Space the perfect gift for anyone looking to maximize his or her space as well as architecture enthusiasts and those with an interest in Japanese style.
Angkor: Cambodia's Wondrous Khmer Temples, Fifth Edition (Odyssey Illustrated Guide)
by Dawn Rooney
from Odyssey
The great legacy of the ancient Khmer civilization, the temples of Angkor were built between the ninth and 15th centuries and cover an area stretching across 77 square miles in northwest Cambodia. This beautifully illustrated book contains a comprehensive monument-by-monument guide to the sites, detailed maps and plans, plus information about ten newly accessible temple complexes.
• Ten new temple sites; an additional 180 pages with 86 new color images
• Foreword by His Majesty King Norodom Sihamoni of Cambodia
• Extensive accounts of temples and pre-Angkor sites
• Profiles the Phnom Penh National Museum
• The hip town Siem Reap—the base for exploring Angkor
• Unique flora and fauna around the great lake, Tonle Sap
• 158 color photos, 44 maps & plans.
The Japanese House: Architecture and Interiors
by Alexandra Black
from Tuttle Publishing
Japan Style: Architecture+Interiors+Design
by Geeta Mehta
from Tuttle Publishing
Traditional Japanese homes, with superbly crafted fine wood, great workmanship and seasonal interior arrangements, have an aesthetic of infinite simplicity. Unlike Japanese inns and historical buildings, the houses featured in this book are private property and are not open to public viewing. Japan Style offers a rare glimpse into the intimate world of the everyday Japanese and fascinating insight into the traditional architecture of Japan.
Bali Houses: New Wave Asian Architecture and Design
by Gianni Francione
from Periplus Editions
The phenomenon loosely termed "Bali style" has been the subject matter for countless books on art, architecture, and interior design. In this book, author and architect Gianni Francione showcases the new generation of Bali-style homes, interiors, and artifacts that utilize what he terms a new internationalism.
Even though the timeless, distinctive Balinese balé, open to a panorama of rice fields and the evening breeze, is still there, it may now be made in marble or stone. Similarly, present-day villas, resort bungalows, shops, restaurants, and other buildings are just as likely to use modernist techniques and materials as they are to utilize alang-alang and coconut wood.
Bali Houses presents this new departure in architecture, interior design, glassware, table settings, textiles, furniture, and furnishings in many never-before-photographed locations. It is a fitting sequel to Bali Modern.
Japanese Detail: Architecture
by Sadao Hibi
from Chronicle Books
Renowned for its tranquility and serenity, its simple, elegant lines, and harmonious use of natural forms, Japanese architecture is admired by designers, architects, and homeowners alike for its easy grace. Now with a striking new cover, Japanese Detail: Architecture surveys the essential elements of the Japanese aesthetic. From rough-hewn flagstone paths to the majestic lines of traditional roofs, from luminescent shoji screens and pristine paper walls to intricate latticework and ornate furnishings, this beautiful sourcebook draws together all the exquisite details of a style that is as timeless as it is contemporary.
The Forbidden City (Wonders of the World)
by Geremie R. Barmé
from Harvard University Press
Read supplementary material prepared by Geremie Barmé
Read the Bldg Blog interview with Mary Beard about the Wonders of the World series (Part I and Part II)
The Forbidden City (Zijin Cheng) lying at the heart of Beijing formed the hub of the Celestial Empire for five centuries. Over the past century it has led a reduced life as the refuge for a deposed emperor, as well as a heritage museum for monarchist, republican, and socialist citizens, and it has been celebrated and excoriated as a symbol of all that was magnificent and terrible in dynastic China’s legacy.
The Forbidden City’s vermilion walls have fueled literary fantasies that have become an intrinsic part of its disputed and documented history. Mao Zedong even considered razing the entire structure to make way for the buildings of a new socialist China. The fictions surrounding the Forbidden City have also had an international reach, and writers like Franz Kafka, Elias Canetti, Jorge Luis Borges, and Mervyn Peake have all succumbed to its myths. The politics it enshrined have provided the vocabulary of power that is used in China to the present day, though it is now better known as a film set or the background of displays of opera, rock, and fashion.
Geremie Barmé peels away the veneer of power, secrecy, inscrutability, and passions of imperial China, to provide a new and original history of the culture, politics, and architecture of the Forbidden City. Designed to overawe the visitor with the power of imperial China, the Forbidden City remains one of the true wonders of the world.
(20080203)The Complete Taj Mahal
by Ebba Koch
from Thames & Hudson
The greatest monument to love, and the lost world of the Agra gardens and their characterful owners, re-created through superb scholarship and evocative illustrations.
The Taj Mahal is the epitome of Mughal art and one of the most famous buildings in the world. Yet there have been few serious studies of it and no full analysis of its architecture and meaning.Ebba Koch is the only scholar who has been permitted to take measurements of the complex. She has been working on the palaces and gardens of Shah Jahan for thirty years and on the Taj Mahal itself—the tomb of the emperor's wife, Mumtaz Mahal—for a decade.
The tomb represents the house of the queen in Paradise, and the author shows how its setting was based on the palace gardens of the great nobles that lined both sides of the river at Agra. She leads the reader through the entire complex of the Taj Mahal, with an explanation of each building and an account of the mausoleum's urban setting, its design and construction, its symbolic meaning, and its history up to the present day.
The book features hundreds of new photographs plus drawings by the Indian architect Richard Barraud that include plans and reconstructions of Agra and the Taj complex as they looked in Shah Jahan's time.
New Directions in Tropical Asian Architecture
by Philip Goad
from Periplus Editions
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