Designing History


Book Description

The long-awaited insider's look at one of the design milestones of the twenty-first century: Michael S Smith's celebrated decoration of the Obama White House, featuring a foreword by Michelle Obama. 2020 HONORABLE MENTION FOR THE FOREWORD INDIES AWARD IN HOBBIES/HOME Created for design enthusiasts, political aficionados, and students of Americana, Designing History documents Michael Smith's extraordinary collaboration with President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama. Not since Jacqueline Kennedy's iconic work on the White House has a designer of Michael Smith's stature been commissioned to bring a new design spirit to the mansion. Through extensive photography, behind-the-scenes stories, and rich archival material, the book places the Obama White House within the context of the building's storied past and its evolution over the past two centuries. The book beautifully documents the process of updating the country's most symbolic residence, revealing how Smith's collaboration on the decoration, showcasing of artworks, and style of entertaining reflected the youthful spirit of the First Family and their vision of a more progressive, inclusive American society. Ultimately, this book will serve as both a historical document and a voyeur's delight, capturing a specific moment in time for the White House, the Obamas, and the American experience.




Martha's Flowers


Book Description

The essential resource from Martha Stewart, with expert advice and lessons on gardening and making the most of your spectacular blooms Martha Stewart's lifelong love of flowers began at a young age, as she dug in and planted alongside her father in their family garden, growing healthy, beautiful blooms, every year. The indispensable lessons she learned then--and those she has since picked up from master gardeners--form the best practices she applies to her voluminous flower gardens today. For the first time, she compiles the wisdom of a lifetime spent gardening into a practical yet inspired book. Learn how and when to plant, nurture, and at the perfect time, cut from your garden. With lush blooms in hand, discover how to build stunning arrangements. Accompanied by beautiful photographs of displays in Martha's home, bursting with ideas, and covering every step from seed to vase, Martha's Flowers is a must-have handbook for flower gardeners and enthusiasts of all skill levels.




Building Information Modeling


Book Description

The optimal approach to design, build, operate, and maintainbuildings With this strategic guide to building information modeling(BIM), you’ll learn how to implement this new technology aspart of a comprehensive systems approach to the design,construction, management, operation, maintenance, and use ofbuildings. The authors, among the leading experts andpioneers in BIM, show you how BIM supports more streamlined,integrated, and efficient business processes throughout the lifecycle of buildings, from their initial conception through theireventual retirement or reuse. The result is better qualitybuildings, lower construction and operating costs, shorter projectturnaround times, and a higher quality of building information tosupport better business decisions. Moreover, they set forth aplan for incorporating BIM into every organization’s existingworkflows, enabling you to take full advantage of all the benefitsthat BIM offers. Everything you need to implement a BIM approach is setforth in detail, including: The business case for BIM, demonstrating how it can improvecollaboration, facilitate better design and construction, optimizeworkflow, and help reduce risk Guidance for meeting the challenges of BIM such as anentrenched business culture, the proliferation of BIM tools, andthe uneven rates of BIM adoption The “big picture” view showing how yourorganization can work with business partners and fit into thebuilding life cycle in a BIM-enabled industry Throughout the book, sample documents and figures help youbetter understand the principles of BIM and how it works inpractice. In addition, first-hand accounts show you exactlyhow adopters of BIM have gained a competitive edge. Architects, engineers, constructors, building owners, andfacility managers can turn to this book to realize the fullpotential of BIM and radically improve the way buildings aredesigned, built, operated, and maintained.




Rivers


Book Description

For fans of Cormac McCarthy and Annie Proulx, “a wonderfully cinematic story” (The Washington Post) set in the post-Katrina South after violent storms have decimated the region. It had been raining for weeks. Maybe months. He had forgotten the last day that it hadn’t rained, when the storms gave way to the pale blue of the Gulf sky, when the birds flew and the clouds were white and sunshine glistened across the drenched land. The Gulf Coast has been brought to its knees. Years of catastrophic hurricanes have so punished and depleted the region that the government has drawn a new boundary ninety miles north of the coastline. Life below the Line offers no services, no electricity, and no resources, and those who stay behind live by their own rules—including Cohen, whose wife and unborn child were killed during an evacuation attempt. He buried them on family land and never left. But after he is ambushed and his home is ransacked, Cohen is forced to flee. On the road north, he is captured by Aggie, a fanatical, snake-handling preacher who has a colony of captives and dangerous visions of repopulating the barren region. Now Cohen is faced with a decision: continue to the Line alone, or try to shepherd the madman’s prisoners across the unforgiving land with the biggest hurricane yet bearing down—and Cohen harboring a secret that poses the greatest threat of all. Eerily prophetic in its depiction of a Southern landscape ravaged by extreme weather, Rivers is a masterful tale of survival and redemption in a world where the next devastating storm is never far behind.“This is the kind of book that lifts you up with its mesmerizing language then pulls you under like a riptide” (The Atlanta Journal-Constitution).




On Beauty


Book Description

One of the New York Times’s 100 Best Books of the 21st Century Winner of the 2006 Orange Prize for Fiction, another bestselling masterwork from the celebrated author of Swing Time and White Teeth "In this sharp, engaging satire, beauty's only skin-deep, but funny cuts to the bone." —Kirkus Reviews Having hit bestseller lists from the New York Times to the San Francisco Chronicle, this wise, hilarious novel reminds us why Zadie Smith has rocketed to literary stardom. On Beauty is the story of an interracial family living in the university town of Wellington, Massachusetts, whose misadventures in the culture wars—on both sides of the Atlantic—serve to skewer everything from family life to political correctness to the combustive collision between the personal and the political. Full of dead-on wit and relentlessly funny, this tour de force confirms Zadie Smith's reputation as a major literary talent.




Windsor Smith Homefront


Book Description

Mixing glamour with modern practicality, interior designer Windsor Smith’s first book celebrates her elegant, comfortable style. Windsor Smith’s aesthetic was once described as "unbuttoned elegance, like a taffeta dress worn with bare feet." In her first book, Smith—a traditionalist who likes to realize classic themes in a new way—shares her fresh vision for modern life. Each chapter reflects one of her unique philosophies for creating beautiful, livable spaces, expressed through the homes she designs. Themes include how to bring balance—an essential ingredient to a beautiful, functional home—into rooms and spaces, as well as how to successfully combine new belongings with treasures from the past to create homes that reflect where we have come from, as well as where we wish to go. Whether it is repurposing a neglected dining room or expanding the role of the kitchen, Windsor Smith Homefront will guide readers to reclaiming their home’s best spaces and remaking them to suit a modern life.




Michael S. Smith: Kitchens & Baths


Book Description

The newest book from acclaimed designer Michael S. Smith showcases his exceptional take on kitchens and baths, the busiest yet most personal rooms in a home. Legendary designer Michael S. Smith has stories to tell about kitchens and bathrooms-those he has designed himself, and those that inspire him. In this fascinating and inspirational book, Smith, who has his own line of kitchen and bath fixtures for Kohler, explains how these rooms define a house. Kitchens and bathrooms are among the most expensive and labor-intensive rooms to design. But they are also opposites, the most public and private zones of a house. In three in-depth case studies and dozens of supporting examples, Smith discusses his design process for these rooms, from big-picture issues such as the social engineering of the kitchen’s layout to details large and small, including the importance of choosing the right cabinet, which can be a crystallization of the architecture of the house, as well as countertops, fixtures, floors, hardware, and more. Also including a sampling of dressing rooms and breakfast rooms, along with a comprehensive resource section, this is a uniquely sophisticated take on a subject of perennial interest.




Building Scientific Apparatus


Book Description

Unrivalled in its coverage and unique in its hands-on approach, this guide to the design and construction of scientific apparatus is essential reading for every scientist and student of engineering, and physical, chemical, and biological sciences. Covering the physical principles governing the operation of the mechanical, optical and electronic parts of an instrument, new sections on detectors, low-temperature measurements, high-pressure apparatus, and updated engineering specifications, as well as 400 figures and tables, have been added to this edition. Data on the properties of materials and components used by manufacturers are included. Mechanical, optical, and electronic construction techniques carried out in the lab, as well as those let out to specialized shops, are also described. Step-by-step instruction supported by many detailed figures, is given for laboratory skills such as soldering electrical components, glassblowing, brazing, and polishing.




Effortless Style


Book Description

Pierre Sauvage, designer of luxury homewares and interiors, brings the reader inside his French homes--both urban and country--providing inspiration and advice for creating effortlessly elegant interiors and garden spaces. Against the backdrop of his exceptional homes in France, Pierre Sauvage--owner and art director of Casa Lopez, the legendary Parisian housewares firm whose stylish furnishings feature exceptional handicraft produced in France, Spain, Italy, and Portugal--showcases his very personal and contemporary style of decorating and entertaining. His striking use of color and textures sets the tone for each room and serves as a counterpoint to his playful matchings of materials and patterns, which work equally well in his Parisian apartment, rustic farmhouse in Normandy, and stone summer home in Provence. With discriminating taste, Sauvage pairs modern furniture with singular antiques. From bold interiors to elegant outdoor spaces, each home is infused with his connoisseur's eye for refined details.




Michael S. Smith


Book Description

Demonstrate how the rooms work alone and together, the book also includes practical information on learning how to buy antiques and attend auctions, how to ready your home for sale, and how to create a house that can evolve over time."--BOOK JACKET.