ARQUITECTURA Y DISEÑO

Drawing together original research, design studies, and cultural essays, Renewing the Dream offers the first comprehensive look at the changes remaking the mobility landscape of Southern California—and the opportunities to reappropriate vast tracts of the city for new uses. Edited by James Sanders and produced with the global architecture studio Woods Bagot, this book explores the forces propelling this shift as well as its controversial impact on Los Angeles, as a city once famed for its car-oriented, low-rise landscape is transformed into a more diverse, more dense, more complex place. This many-sided portrait offers essays by a distinguished group of writers, designs for the city’s future, and studies of how the new mobility might allow areas now dedicated to parking and gas stations to be reimagined. Rounding out its portrait are historic photographs, maps, Hollywood images, and the artwork of David Hockney, Catherine Opie, Ed Ruscha, Wayne Thiebaud, Carlos Almaraz, and stills from La La Land to Chinatown. The book is a thought piece on the future of American cities, with lessons that will carry resonance all around the globe.

Richard Mishaan is renowned for his masterly integration of textiles, palettes rich in complementary shades, natural materials forged by artisans, surfaces bedecked with talismanic curios, a strategic sense of when and where to place a mirror, and a deep knowledge of both the fine and decorative arts. His many influences, including his upbringing in Colombia, coupled with his idiosyncratic perspective, explain why his sophisticated clientele return repeatedly as their lives evolve. In Richard Mishaan Design, his working methods are revealed in projects as varied as the conversion of a 400-year-old barn in the Hamptons into a warm, inviting family home and the transformation of an ultra-modern, glass-walled New York City apartment into a comfortable yet sophisticated aerie. Here too are show houses, which he uses as experimental laboratories, working out such diverse design ideas as updating legendary designer Renzo Mongiardino’s aesthetic and achieving a chic look on a tight budget. He has also designed rooms in bespoke hotels, ranging from the Rat Pack–influenced Shelborne South Beach in Miami to the Tcherassi, a renovated 250-year-old mansion in Cartagena, Colombia.

With new photographs of houses steeped in the period revival tradition, from 1838 to today, not since Rizzoli’s Santa Barbara Style (2001) has a book so eloquently captured the distinctive splendor of this seaside paradise. Known worldwide for the Santa Barbara style, the town epitomizes a type of building at once elegant and suffused with poetry. At its heart is the historic downtown, featuring white-washed Mediterranean-style stucco buildings with tile roofs and the iconic Santa Barbara Mission of 1786, whose austere beauty set the tone for all that followed. From its earliest days, the influence of this place has been felt and has since radiated across the sunbelt; it continues to be a model of emulation and inspiration. But it is the houses and the dream of living in Santa Barbara and its sister communities of Ojai, Carpinteria, Summerland, Goleta, and Montecito that casts the most profound spell.

Scandinavia is world famous for its inimitable, democratic designs which bridge the gap between crafts and industrial production, organic forms and everyday functionality. This all-you-need guide includes a detailed look at Scandinavian furniture, glass, ceramics, textiles, jewelry, metalware, and industrial design from 1900 to the present day, with in-depth entries on 125 designers and design-led companies. Featured designers and designer-led companies include Verner Panton, Arne Jacobsen, Alvar Aalto, Timo Sarpaneva, Hans Wegner, Tapio Wirkkala, Stig Lindberg, Finn Juhl, Märta Måås-Fjetterström, Arnold Madsen, Barbro Nilsson, Fritz Hansen, Artek, Le Klint, Gustavsberg, Iittala, Fiskars, Orrefors, Royal Copenhagen, Holmegaard, Arabia, Marimekko, and Georg Jensen.

How do you make your home come alive with personality, charm, and memory? In the introduction to Sean Scherer’s first book, Kabinett & Kammer: Creating Authentic Interiors, Anderson Cooper writes, “Scherer has a unique ability to place otherwise ordinary objects in a completely unexpected context or grouping and in so doing change the way you see them.” In Sean Scherer’s Vignettes, Scherer focuses in on the art of combining common objects into aesthetically pleasing groupings, or vignettes. Contending that a vignette can set the whole mood and tone of a room, he shows you how to use any surface in your home, from a tabletop to a bookshelf to a wall, to create lively displays of your favorite items. Beautifully illustrated with Scherer’s own photographs, the book demonstrates how to balance color, texture, and shape, and provides lessons on how to create both symmetrical and asymmetrical vignettes.