ARQUITECTURA Y DISEÑO

Japan's contemporary architecture has long been among the most inventive in the world, recognized for sustainability and infinite creativity. No fewer than eight Japanese architects have won the Pritzker Prize.Since Osaka World Expo ’70 highlighted contemporary forms, Japan has been a key player in global architecture. Tadao Ando's geometry put Japanese building on the map, bridging East and West. After his concrete buildings, figures like Kengo Kuma, Shigeru Ban, and Kazuyo Sejima pioneered a more sustainable approach. Younger generations have taken new directions, in harmony with nature, traditional building, and an endless search for forms.Presenting the latest in Japanese building, this book links this unique creativity to Japan's high population density, modern economy, long history, and continual disasters in the form of earthquakes. Accepting ambiguity, constant change, and catastrophe is a key to understanding how Japanese architecture differs from that of Europe or America.Derived from the XL-sized book, this affordable edition highlights 37 architects and 53 exceptional projects by Japanese masters—from Tadao Ando’s Shanghai Poly Theater, Shigeru Ban’s concert hall La Seine Musical, SANAA’s Grace Farms, Fumihiko Maki’s 4 World Trade Center to Takashi Suo’s much smaller sustainable dental clinic. An elaborate essay traces the building scene from the Metabolists to today, showing how the interaction of past, present, and future has earned contemporary Japanese architecture worldwide recognition.

Following her success with Nora Murphy’s Country House Style, Murphy celebrates a selection of homes and their homeowners, each exemplifying a different style. For Nora Murphy, a country house isn’t so much a place as it is a state of mind. A country house is warm, welcoming—at once down to earth, yet elegant. A country house has genuine character, tells a story, and is truly, wonderfully lived in. Here Murphy explores the tenets of country house style, as illustrated by her own “new” country house, and the many other striking homes she has curated for the book. Each one of these homeowners has embraced country house style—but each implements it in their own unique way. There is a pastoral 1732 center-chimney colonial in Connecticut nestled in spectacular gardens, a cozy cottage on the coast of Maine rich with local details, and an 1840s Greek Revival in the Hudson Valley filled with romantic Victorian ephemera. Common threads weave through the stories: the thrill of the antiques hunt, the role of history, and the priority of comfort.

Designer extraordinaire Stephen Shadley began his working life as a scenic artist at 20th Century Fox. Throughout a celebrated career (landing a coveted spot on the AD100), his work has been marked continually by the glamour of Hollywood as well as by a kind of visual storytelling that is richly informed by the world of the movie screen and by the artifice and allure of film s great cinematographers. Notable for their expression of an exquisite sense of style, his designed homes including the interiors for a classic Beverly Hills abode for Diane Keaton, an apartment for Robert Altman in the legendary Pythian building on New York s Upper West Side, as well as a luxurious contemporary home for Jennifer Aniston are all expressions of a masterful sense of scale and an appreciation for understated beauty and refined materials that are ultimately warm, inviting, and serene. The book features numerous beautifully designed homes of Hollywood royalty, primarily in Southern California, though with notable projects in New York and beyond, as well as three greenrooms, which Shadley designed for the Oscars and the Emmy Awards.

In 1972, Diane von Furstenberg created a chic and universally flattering ready-to-wear jersey wrap dress that launched her career and would forever change the landscape of women’s fashion. Since then DVF, the woman and the brand, have created designs that empower and promote a woman’s sense of self, weaving feminism and activism into the brand’s DNA. This visually vibrant tome, which accompanies an exhibition held in von Furstenberg’s hometown of Brussels, features nostalgic and contemporary photographs of her journey as a designer. Printed with three different luxe paper stocks withvarying inserts in each chapter, this book features beautiful graphicfabrics flooding each page, alongside numerous images of the wrap dressworn by von Furstenberg and models Jerry Hall, NaomiCampbell, and Cindy Crawford. Original essays discuss the intersection of Von Furstenberg and her designs with feminism, gender politics, and entrepreneurship, with personal anecdotes from collaborators like model Cindy Crawford and entrepreneur Stefani Greenfield. Unique and contemporary, this is a story of the inimitable designer, her brand, and the significant role of a single dress that continues to inspire generations of women.

Peter Lindbergh photographed Dior’s most exceptional muses, Marion Cotillard and Charlize Theron among them, and signed campaigns for Lady Dior and J'Adore with his inimitable style. Throughout his career, the photographer was one of the house’s closest collaborators. This final book was an original cocreation that was close to the artist’s heart―and to ours.