The House By The Thames


Book Description

Just across the River Thames from St Paul’s Cathedral stands an old and elegant house. Over the course of almost 450 years the dwelling on this site has witnessed many changes. From its windows, people have watched the ferrymen carry Londoners to and from Shakespeare’s Globe; they have gazed on the Great Fire; they have seen the countrified lanes of London’s marshy south bank give way to a network of wharves, workshops and tenements – and then seen these, too, become dust and empty air. Rich with anecdote and colour, this fascinating book breathes life into the forgotten inhabitants of the house – the prosperous traders; an early film star; even some of London’s numberless poor. In so doing it makes them stand for legions of others and for a whole world that we have lost through hundreds of years of London’s history.




The Contemporary House


Book Description

There is no one way to design a modern urban house. Demand for space in cities the world over is higher than ever and new buildings must meet stringent energy saving requirements and negotiate a myriad planning regulations. But the best new urban architecture suggests invention and innovation are as critical as ever. The Contemporary House brings together seventy solutions, drawn from cities around the globe to explore the many ways in which architecture can enhance the experience of living in the city. Organized geographically, The Contemporary House offers a fascinating insight into the sheer variety of contemporary approaches to urban design, from reinventions of longstanding vernacular forms like terraces and townhouses, through to the fastchanging suburbs and inner cities of modern Japan, where the short lifespan of family houses provides architects with a template for aesthetic and technical experimentation. The book also provides an insight into the conditions that shape the architecture of some of the world's major cities, through recent history, signature styles, and current conditions on the ground. The Contemporary House is an essential guide to design in the modern city.




Artists? Homes


Book Description

This lavishly illustrated book is an intimate look at the interiors, lifestyles, and houses belonging to a wide range of artists and creatives. In this beautifully illustrated book, writer and photographer Tom Harford-Thompson presents individual, eccentric homes and workspaces, from a music producer’s studio to an ecowarrior’s treehouse. His evocative photographs show how our life/work spaces, whether a tumbledown cottage, a country farmhouse, or a reclaimed factory, are beautiful because of the lives we live in them. With work no longer separate from home life, we see how these artists function the spaces that inspire them, pursuing the life creative. Among the artists and craftspeople featured are internationally recognized names like Billy Childish, cofounder of the Stuckist art movement; Penny Rimbaud and Gee Vaucher, creative partners who set up their home and studio as an ‘anarchist-pacifist open house’; and music producer Liam Watson of the famed London studio Toe Rag. Harford-Thompson, whose work has been featured in the Guardian and Art Review, showcasing craft and design with a homespun edge. For people who want to move beyond glossy, styled homes and wish to revamp their personal spaces to make them truly individual, Artists’ Homes is an essential resource.




The Monocle Book of the Home


Book Description

From the team at Monocle, a look at some of the coziest and most creative homes around the world. Good homes are places where lives unfold, families grow up, dogs jump on sofas, and friends share meals. They’re also spaces to find some solitude—a quiet corner to read a book or have a Saturday afternoon nap. Homes need to do it all—they sustain you, inspire you, and tell your story through architecture, design, and collections. Monocle has always celebrated everything that makes a space a home when covering residences—whether featuring a city hideaway, a modernist seaside residence, or a summer outpost in a forest. The Monocle team brings this all together in one volume that explores individual homes, housing projects old and new, communities of self-builders, even whole neighborhoods where a simple philosophy of building well has created quality of life for many. The Monocle Book of the Home is packed with great photography that delivers the bigger picture and the smallest details alongside fascinating essays full of advice by key thinkers, writers, and designers. As we spend more time at home than ever, this is a book that could change how you live.




Pre-Fab Living


Book Description

Space-saving, eco-friendly, and cost-efficient, the most innovative pre-fabricated homes around the world—from cabins to containers. Efficient and inexpensive to produce, pre-fabricated homes are an ideal solution to the financial and environmental costs facing the modern homeowner. Their extremely versatile format also makes them adaptable to all kinds of locations, be it a secluded off-the-grid setting or a dense urban area. This survey of the world’s most innovative pre-fab houses explores the full range of possibilities, suitable for anyone interested in clever and creative home-building solutions—no architectural degree required. From carbon-neutral houses to plug-and-play dwellings and converted shipping containers, each chapter explores the varied and exciting ways that people are using pre-fabricated technology to address contemporary challenges. Richly illustrated with photographs and drawings, featuring projects selected by a longtime expert in pre-fab architecture, Pre-Fab Living presents factory-made houses in a new light. Whether designing on a tight budget, crafting something self-sustaining, or simply looking for new spatial ideas, architects, designers, and home builders alike will find it to be an essential source of inspiration.




The Iconic House


Book Description

Now available in an updated edition and attractive new format, this essential book on modern architecture presents over one hundred of the most significant houses of the past hundred years. The Iconic House features over one hundred of the most important and influential houses designed and built since 1900. With seminal works by Le Corbusier, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Mies van der Rohe, as well as modern-day greats like Tadao Ando, Rem Koolhaas, and Herzog & de Meuron, this book brings to life a stunning array of architectural masterpieces. Wide-ranging in both geographical scope and artistic style, the houses share an appreciation of local materials and building traditions and a careful understanding of clients’ needs. Each house, however, is the result of a unique approach that makes it groundbreaking for its time. Now, fully updated, the book features iconic houses recently constructed, as well as concise, informative texts, specially commissioned photographs, floor plans, and drawings. The Iconic House remains an ideal overview of contemporary architects and architecture, for design-lovers and professionals alike.




Off the Grid


Book Description

A showcase of over forty of the most exciting and unique off-grid houses in North America, across a wide variety of wild and remote landscapes.Living off the grid has become increasingly desirable in recent years. Escaping the city to be immersed in nature is ever more appealing as the pressures of everyday life increase. The need to reduce our carbon footprints as the effects of climate change become a reality has brought sustainable living, particularly in off-grid and net-zero houses, to the forefront.In Off the Grid: Houses for Escape Across North America, DominicBradbury turns to North America to showcase how architects are makingliving in the wilderness a more affordable and attainable dream. Fromcabins deep in the forest to desert homes and stunning coastal retreats,this collection of the most innovative off-grid homes reveals how cleverdesign is redefining the possibilities for living in some of the mostextraordinary natural environments on Earth.




Thames: Sacred River


Book Description

Just as Peter Ackroyd's bestselling London is the biography of the city, Thames: Sacred River is the biography of the river, from sea to source. Exploring its history from prehistoric times to the present day, the reader is drawn into an extraordinary world, learning about the fishes that swim in the river and the boats that ply its surface; about floods and tides; hauntings and suicides; miasmas and malaria; locks, weirs and embankments; bridges, docks and palaces. Peter Ackroyd has a genius for digging out the most surprising and entertaining details, and for writing about them in the most magisterial prose; the result is a wonderfully readable and captivating guide to this extraordinary river and the towns and villages which line it.




The House of Worth


Book Description

The first illustrated monograph dedicated to the history of the House of Worth, the world’s pioneering haute couture label Arriving in Paris in 1845, at the age of twenty and with only a few francs in his pocket, Charles Frederick Worth would go on to build the most prominent, innovative, and successful fashion house of the century. He was inspired by a love of fine art, luxurious fabrics, and his vision of the female ideal, and was the first to set out to dictate new styles and silhouettes to his elite clientele— not the other way around. He hosted them in his rue de la Paix salons, which included groundbreaking sportswear and maternity departments as well as silk, velvet, and brocade rooms, and a special salon with closed shutters and gas lighting designed to allow clients to try on ball gowns in lighting conditions precisely matched to those of the event at which they would be worn. Organized chronologically and illustrated with striking ensembles, paintings, and documents sourced from both private family archives and the best fashion collections from museums around the world, The House of Worth is an inspiring tribute to the house that started it all.




Resident Dog


Book Description

Stylish, aspirational homes and the dogs that live in them in a beautifully photographed celebration of style and canines. Just as every home is different, so is every dog. In this stunningly photographed book of architecturally superb houses—many of them architects’ own homes—we see how the presence of a dog brings warmth and life to the most dramatic spaces. From mid-century raw brick to a penthouse apartment, gracious Edwardian to Scandinavian modern, from beach house to country retreat, there is always room for a dog or two. They trot, nap, and sniff through every page, at times more rambunctious than their surroundings, and at others perfectly in tune with the setting. Peek inside the most breathtaking homes that feature French bulldogs, golden retrievers, Labradoodles, and more as your guides. Oblivious to designer furniture, heritage considerations, or serious design aesthetics, dogs can make themselves at home anywhere. In fact, the homes in this book are all the more appealing because of their resident dogs.