BELLAS ARTES

Wright has captured the attention of design aficionados with his breathtaking architectural spaces informed by the spirit and lessons of historical, vernacular, and modern styles for today. Each of the presented residences—from a Queen Anne–style house and a seaside Shingle-style cottage to a modern beach house, a Frank Lloyd Wright–inspired retreat, and a McKim, Mead & White city apartment—is paired with Wright’s painted and penciled sketches, along with floor plans, all of which demonstrate his facility with the history of ornament and contemporary currents. Wright frequently collaborates with the country’s most esteemed interior designers, including Bunny Williams, Cullman & Kravis, Brian J. McCarthy, and the late Amy Lau. Sophisticated yet approachable, Wright’s architecture will tour the reader through the legacy of great buildings and outstanding craftmanship reinterpreted for the contemporary sensibility.

Beauty and elegance mingle with extravagance in the Palm Beach style of architect Marion Sims Wyeth, a kind of home design that takes the standard fixtures of paradise palm trees, ebullient fountains, glistening pools and gardens, views of the sea and mixes them with a dash of the exotic a Moorish-style balcony or doorway, Venetian archways, fanciful courtyards in the Spanish style, and spiralling staircases in stone and iron. Featured here are the legendary abodes of Marjorie Merriweather Post and Doris Duke Mar-a-Lago and Shangri La, respectively as well as the less well known but equally spectacular Hogarcito and La Claridad, to name but a few. For those unfamiliar with these dream palaces, intimate homes of repose and reflection, for the enjoyment of life and the living of it, the book serves at once as a revelation and an inspiration.

In pursuit of both knowledge and delight, the craft of botanical illustration has always required not only meticulous draftsmanship but also a rigorous scientific understanding. This new edition of a TASCHEN classic celebrates the botanical tradition and talents with a selection of outstanding works from the National Library of Vienna, including many new images.

Every garden possesses its own unique beauty, just as every place holds a mysterious equilibrium within it. This is the premise advanced by Anna Scaravella, a renowned expert in landscape architecture who views every project as a new opportunity to explore the alchemy of plant culture and design. Scaravella’s unerring instincts and aesthetic rigor bring her to the nexus of garden and landscape, resulting in the creation of places that are not only marvelous but also energy-conscious and environmentally sustainable. This splendid volume of photography takes us on a journey through ten gardens from northern to southern Italy: from the garden of Villa Albera in Lombardy to the hills of Piacenza with Villa Bellaria, on to Bagno Vignoni in Tuscany, and then even further south, to marvelous Ostuni. Scaravella has crafted magnificent oases of peace and beauty and invited us to visit and admire them by her side.

Gardens Illustrated is today’s most popular gardening periodical, thanks to its lavishly photographed features on contemporary, forward-thinking gardens that focus on irresistible plants and clever designs. Through these gardens, each selected by the magazine’s editors for a truly exceptional trait, readers will visit the best new gardens from the United States, United Kingdom, and around the world. The scales range from small city spaces aiming to bring biodiversity deep into the built environment to country estates photographed with a new lens on ecology and sustainability, and were created by today’s top garden designers, including Andrea Cochran, Arabella Lennox-Boyd, Peter Korn, Dan Pearson, Andy Salter, Tom Stuart-Smith, Andy Sturgeon, Urquhart & Hunt, and Keith Wiley.

Este libro apareció originalmente en 1979 en su versión italiana, y un año después en inglés. Pese al prestigio de su autor, nunca se había traducido al español, por lo que la presente edición es casi una novedad. Como se indica nada más empezar el prefacio, este estudio sobre el concepto del 'espíritu del lugar', el genius loci de los antiguos romanos, es una continuación de tres libros anteriores del autor, todos existentes en versión española: Intenciones en arquitectura (1963), Existencia, espacio y arquitectura (1971) y Arquitectura occidental (1974). La idea fundamental del libro es que el ser humano necesita un 'punto de apoyo existencial' y que es la arquitectura, en sus diversas escalas, la que se lo puede proporcionar. Para ello, el principal objetivo que se plantea el texto es exponer las implicaciones psíquicas de la arquitectura y no tanto su lado práctico, aun sabiendo que existe una relación entre ambos aspectos. Las reflexiones filosóficas de Martin Heidegger sobre el concepto de 'habitar' sirven al autor como punto de partida de sus investigaciones sobre la noción de lugar, entendido éste como un espacio con un carácter distintivo en el que el ser humano puede desarrollar plenamente su vida. Así pues, el genius loci, el 'espíritu del lugar' se ha reconocido desde tiempos antiguos como la realidad concreta que el ser humano tiene que afrontar y asumir en su vida cotidiana. La arquitectura significa hacer visible ese genius loci, y la labor del arquitecto es crear lugares significativos con los que ayudar al ser humano a habitar.