ARQUITECTURA Y DISEÑO

While touring readers through four of his own homes, Paredes shares the key elements in his creative process, giving us access to the same tools he uses in every home to decorate rooms that feel modern even as they glamorize the past, to show us how an environment has real power to transform our very state of mind. Paredes is renowned for being a master of extrapolating an entire theme from one unique item, say transforming the stripe of a crisp Oxford shirt into a unique upholstery perfect for the seaside, or finding inspiration for a couch’s decorative fringe in a well-worn piece of leather ranch gear. He is said to have “perfect visual pitch,” creating vignettes and rooms with an energy that feels undeniably masculine and sophisticated thanks to dark wood, iron railings, rustic fabrics, an overall patina, and soft furnishings in soothing earth tones.

Readers will respond to the warm and sophisticated work of Hugh and Simon Jacobsen, whose style of architecture and interiors might best be described as American modern vernacular—the place where traditional comfort and modern design meet. Hugh Newell Jacobsen, the legendary architect and late co-founder with his son, Simon, of Jacobsen Architecture, once said “the best house is polite to her neighbors and never shouts.” This statement is a key to the philosophy of the firm, whose houses are suffused with a kind of quiet sophistication that mingle elegant, subtle modernism, with respect for local vernacular traditions. Low-key on the outside, on the inside these houses offer dancing symphonies in white. Unmarked by moldings, walls and ceilings express simple volumetric forms composed of solid planes and voids, while, upon floors of burnished wood or travertine, furniture, much of it designed by the firm, allows for serene repose and practical, unfussy use. Featured here are exemplars of the firm, from Harbor Hill—a cluster of 12 small structures, appearing at first as a group of smallish shingled Nantucket cottages, that reveals itself as a single serene residence overlooking Nantucket Harbor—to Windsor, a Florida Colonial abstraction in Vero Beach. Featuring inviting interiors, exteriors, and gardens, the book is an expression of eloquent design.

An in-depth look at Charles and Ray Eames's prolific legacy—one that has placed them among the most important American designers of the twentieth century and at the forefront of modernism. Charles and Ray Eames's expansive and monumental career in furniture design ran from 1941 to 1978. This comprehensive and illustrated text serves as a guidebook to their most important pieces and themes. As beloved figures in design, art, and architecture who emerged from the optimism of the 1950s, the couple’s egalitarian and humanistic furniture designs made them household names. Most famous for their chairs, they also created seminal works of architecture and film. Written by their grandson, Eames Demetrios, An Eames Primer is an easy-to-read and informational book to the world's most famous and influential furniture designers.

This is the first of Pentreath’s books to present his own output in its entirety—from his personal residences in Dorset, London, and Scotland that brought him international fame to many old and new houses that he has designed and some of the larger, town-scaled projects that make his practice unique in the world of traditional design. Although the results range from his colorful and romantic versions of the English country cottage to traditional splendor, there are underlying ideas that inform the breadth of his output—a sense of scale, proportion, craft, detail, sustainability, and appropriateness—that have a universal relevance today.

In this essential TASCHEN introduction to Tadao Ando we explore the hybrid of tradition, modernism, and function that allows his buildings to enchant architects, designers, fashion designers, and beyond. Through key projects including private homes, churches, museums, apartment complexes, and cultural spaces, we explore a uniquely monumental yet comforting aesthetic that draws as much on the calm restraint of Japanese tradition as the compelling modernist vocabularies of Bauhaus and Le Corbusier. With featured projects in Japan, France, Italy, Spain, and the United States, we see not only Ando’s global reach but also his refined sensitivity for the environs: the play of light through windows, and, in particular, the interaction of buildings with water. From the mesmerizing Church of the Light in Osaka to the luminous Punta della Dogana Contemporary Art Center in Venice, this is a radiant tour through a distinctly contemporary form as much as a timeless appeal of light, elements, and equilibrium.

El libro propone un recorrido del exterior al interior: comienza por el emplazamiento y su entorno, sigue por las diversas envolventes del edificio y termina con el análisis de los aspectos ambientales de la iluminación, la calefacción y los sistemas de climatización. Un recorrido donde se exploran distintos temas transversales, como el ahorro de agua o materiales, la calidad ambiental interior o el uso de energías renovables. El conjunto ofrece una exploración completa y metódica de la arquitectura ecológica exponiendo los temas clave, un marco teórico básico y estrategias concretas para proyectar bajo el paradigma de la sostenibilidad. Las ilustraciones que detallan estos principios y discusiones, realizadas por el maestro Francis D. K. Ching, conforman una magnífica guía visual para el proyecto y la construcción de edificios ecológicos, y hacen de este libro un manual único e ineludible en el ámbito de la arquitectura y la construcción sostenibles.