In 1986, the New York Times called William Zeckendorf Jr. "Manhattan's most active real-estate developer," a judgment borne out by Zeckendorf's fascinating memoir. The second generation of a legendary family of developers, "Bill" Zeckendorf was a developer with a social conscience, not only putting up buildings but opening neglected parts of the city and transforming whole communities. Among the projects Zeckendorf chronicles in detail-and with rich documentary illustrations-are the Columbia, which set off a building boom on the Upper West Side; the four-acre Worldwide Plaza, a landmark in West Midtown; Queens West, the first residential project on the waterfront in Queens; the enormous Ronald Reagan Office Building and International Trade Center in Washington, D.C.; and numerous projects in Santa Fe, his beloved second home.

Chinese furniture design had been improved through the centuries, maturing during the 14th century. The Qing furniture developed from Ming style furniture; it was attractive with ornate novel decorative elements. In the olden days of China, those who had resources could afford to live in a gracious residence such as the four-closed courtyard house (siheyuan). The four-closed courtyard house is the Chinese art of enclosing space to create an ideal environment for habitation. The multifunctional Chinese classical furniture facilitates the indoor and outdoor activities of its inhabitants. Siheyuan is divided into chambers such as the Hall, female chamber etc. This book provides details on which pieces of furniture should be displayed in each chamber, as well as full-colour illustrations and diagrams of how each piece was made and assembled. This includes three-dimensional drawings by Philip Mak and perspective views of the interior of various rooms. The author guides the readers through them, narrating the placement of furniture with inherent social implications. For easy reference, each piece is numbered and a more detailed description available in the catalogue section of this book. Text in English and Chinese.

Kansas City has a rich heritage of residential architecture that speaks to the importance of this Midwestern metropolis during its boom years between 1880 and 1930. The forty houses covered here were erected by the city's leading plutocrats, such as newspaper publisher William Rockhill Nelson, whose fortune helped establish the Nelson-Atkins Museum; minerals magnate August R. Meyer; lumber baron Robert A. Long; oilman Ernest C. Winters; and Walter E. Bixby of Kansas City Life Insurance. Among the noted architects profiled are Edward W. Tanner; Henry F. Hoit; Louis S. Curtiss; the New York firm of George Brown Post in collaboration with Kansas City based architect Roger Gilman (Dean of RISD, 1919-1929); and Mary Rockwell Hook (one of the first women to study at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris). Most of these houses were designed in the European and American revival styles prevalent during this period, although distinguished by a unique Midwestern sensibility.

Age of Concrete is a history of the making of houses and homes in the suburbios of Maputo (Lourenco Marques), Mozambique, from the late 1940s to the present. Often dismissed as undifferentiated, ahistorical "slums," these neighborhoods are in fact an open-air archive that reveals some of people's highest aspirations. At first people built in reeds. Then they built in wood and zinc panels. And finally, even when it was illegal, they risked building in concrete block, making permanent homes in a place where their presence was often excruciatingly precarious. Unlike many histories of the built environment in African cities, Age of Concrete focuses on ordinary homebuilders and dwellers. David Morton thus models a different way of thinking about urban politics during the era of decolonization, when one of the central dramas was the construction of the urban stage itself. It shaped how people related not only to each other but also to the colonial state and later to the independent state as it stumbled into being. Original, deeply researched, and beautifully composed, this book speaks in innovative ways to scholarship on urban history, colonialism and decolonization, and the postcolonial state. Replete with rare photographs and other materials from private collections, Age of Concrete establishes Morton as one of a handful of scholars breaking new ground on how we understand Africa's cities.

Nestled in a sub-tropical garden overlooking the River Dart, Greenway has an exceptional and enviable location. It certainly caught the eye of Agatha Christie, who knew the area as a child and, having made her name as a world-famous crime-writer, made it her holiday home. Nestled in a sub-tropical garden overlooking the River Dart, Greenway has an exceptional and enviable location. It certainly caught the eye of Agatha Christie, who knew the area as a child and, having made her name as a world-famous crime-writer, made it her holiday home. Greenway was the familys retreat, far from public life. Her grandson, Mathew Prichard who has provided the guidebooks foreword, remembers visits to Greenway usually took place when she had just finished writing her book, so it was family time; or in Agathas words, We do exactly as we like in this house. This included entertaining, playing the piano and reading, and delighting in the setting, playing croquet and clock golf. Max and Agatha were enthusiastic collectors and the fruits of their labours are proudly displayed throughout the house. Greenway now stands as a near complete echo of those leisurely days and a testament to why Agatha Christie described it as the loveliest place in the world it quite takes my breath away.

Beaufort, South Carolina, is well known for its historical architecture, but perhaps none is quite as remarkable as those edifices formed by tabby, sometimes called coastal concrete, comprising a mixture of lime, sand, water, and oyster shells. Tabby itself has a storied history stretching back to Iberian, Caribbean, Spanish American, and even African roots--brought to the United States by adventurers, merchants, military engineers, planters, and the enslaved. Tabby has been preserved most abundantly in the Beaufort area and its outlying islands, (and along the Sea Islands all the way to Florida as well) with Fort Frederick in 1734 having the earliest example of a diverse group of structures, which included town houses, seawalls, planters' homes, barns, agricultural buildings, and slave quarters. Tabby's insulating properties are excellent protection from long, hot, humid, and sometimes deadly summers; and on the islands, particularly, wealthy plantation owners built grand houses for themselves and improved dwellings for enslaved workers that after two hundred-plus years still stand today. An extraordinarily hardy material, tabby has a history akin to some of the world's oldest building techniques and is referred to as "rammed earth," as well as " tapia" in Spanish, "pise de terre" in French, and "hangtu" in Chinese. The form that tabby construction took along the Sea Islands, however, was born of necessity. Here stone and brick were rare and expensive, but the oyster shells that were used as the source for the tabby's lime base were plentiful. Today these bits of shell, often visible in the walls and forms constructed long ago, give tabby its unique and iconic appearance. Colin Brooker, architect and expert on historic restoration, has not only made an exhaustive foray into local tabby architecture and heritage; he also has made a multinational tour as well in search of tabby origins, evolution, and diffusion from the Bahamas to Morocco to Andalusia, which can be traced back as far as the tenth century. Brooker has spent more than thirty years investigating the origins of tabby, its chemistry, its engineering, and its limitations. The Shell Builders lays out a sweeping, in-depth, and fascinating investigative journey--at once archaeological, sociological, and historical--into the ways prior inhabitants used and shaped their environment in order to house and protect themselves, leaving behind an architectural legacy that is both mysterious and beautiful. Lawrence S. Rowland, a distinguished professor emeritus of history at the University of South Carolina Beaufort and past president of the South Carolina Historical Society, provides a foreword.

This fully revised and up-to-date guide to the architecture of Hertfordshire is an eye-opening introduction to the wealth of fine buildings that can be found right on London's doorstep. Hertfordshire is one of the smallest English counties, largely rural in character. Its buildings range from remains of the Roman city of Verulamium to the medieval abbey at St. Albans and the 17th-century Hatfield House. Numerous timber-framed buildings and Georgian houses are found in the small towns whose preservation was aided by the early 20th-century creation of the Garden Cities at Letchworth and Welwyn, as well as Stevenage New Town, built after the Second World War. Pretty villages set in the county's rolling farmland feature churches that have towers crowned with spires known as Hertfordshire spikes, while commuter suburbs are rich in housing from homely Arts and Crafts to radical Modernism. With expanded entries and new color photography, this is an essential work of reference for visitors and residents alike.

Industrial archeologists study towns and landscapes created over the past several centuries that were planned to integrate home and work. This ground-breaking book features architectural case studies of company towns in 48 locations - workers' villages, mill towns, mining towns, cite ouvrieres, bruk stader, colonias industriales, villaggi operai - many of which are UNESCO World Heritage sites. Extensive illustrations and images document the ways in which architectural experiments responded to the entrepreneurial initiatives that were the basis of these communities. The authors, two esteemed professors whose work focuses on the conservation of industrial heritage, examine the role of architectural and urban culture in creating the identity of these unique towns, and the consequences of their abandonment.

Come with us for a moment out onto the porch. Just like that, we've entered another world without leaving home. In this liminal space, an endless array of absorbing philosophical questions arises: What does it mean to be in a place? How does one place teach us about the world and ourselves? What do we-and the things we've built-mean in this world? In a time when reflections on the nature of society and individual endurance are so paramount, Charlie Hailey's latest book is both a mental tonic and a welcome provocation. Solidly grounded in ideas, ecology, and architecture, The Porch takes us on a journey along the edges of nature where the outside comes in, hosts meet guests, and imagination runs wild. Hailey writes from a modest porch on the Homosassa River in Florida. He sleeps there, studies the tides, listens for osprey and manatee, welcomes shipwrecked visitors, watches shadows on its screens, reckons with climate change, and reflects on his own acclimation to his environment. The profound connections he unearths anchor an armchair exploration of past porches and those of the future, moving from ancient Greece to contemporary Sweden, from the White House roof to the Anthropocene home. In his ruminations, he links up with other porch dwellers including environmentalist Rachel Carson, poet Wendell Berry, writers Eudora Welty and Zora Neale Hurston, philosopher John Dewey, architect Louis Kahn, and photographer Paul Strand. As close as architecture can bring us to nature, the porch is where we can learn to contemplate anew our evolving place in a changing world-a space we need now more than ever. Timeless and timely, Hailey's book is a dreamy yet deeply passionate meditation on the joy and gravity of sitting on the porch.

This book focuses on the housebuilding boom of the interwar years, when Britain became a nation of homeowners. It investigates the ways in which ordinary people expressed new class and gender identities through the design, architecture and decoration of interwar homes then and now. It argues that these 'ideal' homes combine nostalgia for the past and longing for the future resulting in a new specifically suburban modernism. -- .

Fallingwater""is the most famous modern house in America. Indeed, readers of the "Journal of the American Institute of Architects" voted it the best American building of the last 125 years Annually, more than 128,000 visitors seek out Fallingwater in its remote mountain site in southwestern Pennsylvania. Considered Frank Lloyd Wright's domestic masterpiece, the house is recognized worldwide as the paradigm of organic architecture, where a building becomes an integral part of its natural setting.
This charming and provocative book is the work of the man best qualified to undertake it, who was both apprentice to Wright and son of the man who commissioned the house. Edgar Kaufmann, Jr., closely followed the planning and construction of Fallingwater, and lived in the house on weekends and vacations for twenty-seven years-until, following the deaths of his parents, he gave the house in 1963 to the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy to hold for public enjoyment and appreciation.
This is a personal, almost intimate record of one man's fifty-year relationship to a work of genius that only gradually revealed its complexities and originality. With full appreciation of the intentions of both architect and client, Mr. Kaufmann described this remarkable building in detail, telling of its extraordinary virtues but not failing to reveal its faults. One section of the book focuses on the realities of Fallingwater as architecture. A famous building right from its beginnings (only partly because it was Wright's first significant commission in more than a decade), Fallingwater has accumulated considerable publicity and analysis-much of it off the mark. Mr. Kaufmann outlined and dealt with the common misunderstandings that have obscured the building's true values and supplied accurate information and interpretations. In another section Mr. Kaufmann provided an in-depth essay on the subtleties of Fallingwater, the ideology underlying its esthetics. A key element of this is the close interweaving of the house and its rugged, challenging setting, which he explicated in fascinating detail.
The author maintained throughout the direct approach of one who knew and loved Fallingwater. As an apprentice and loyal admirer of the architect, Mr. Kaufmann was well attuned to the architecture. And as a retired professor of architectural history and frequent lecturer and panelist, he had considerable experience in presenting and interpreting Wright's ideas. Thoroughly versed in the books, articles, drawings, and buildings of Frank Lloyd Wright, Mr. Kaufmann was eminently situated to place Fallingwater in that context. This unique record was presented in celebration of Fallingwater's fiftieth anniversary.
Special features of this volume include: numerous never-before published photographs of the house under construction, during its entire history, and of the family in residence; a room-by-room pictorial survey in full color taken especially for this volume; isometric architectural perspectives that explain visually how the house was constructed; and the first accurate, measured plans of the house as built.

75 unique designs for attractive, efficient, environmentally friendly homes.
Now available in paperback, this collection of 75 plans for small homes offers more than 500 usable blueprints and other illustrations for a variety of living spaces suitable for every environment and style, from a New England farmhouse to a sophisticated townhouse in the city to a Santa Fe ranch.
The designs include site drawings, floor plans, elevation drawings, section drawings, perspective drawings, and exploded views. A brief introduction to each home describes its setting, the philosophy behind the design and its intended use, materials used, recommended landscaping, and more. Many of the homes come with money-saving and environmentally sound features such as solar panels and water heaters, wood stoves, ceiling fans, airlock entries, wind power alternatives, and natural gas heaters.

The stunning venues in lush settings profiled here range in style from the environmentally sustainable utilizing indigenous materials, such as thatching and bamboo, to breezy courtyard spaces. These homes take into account the dramatic natural landscapes--some are surrounded by tropical plantings, while others open onto dramatic sun-drenched beaches. The interiors incorporate organic textures such as cane and bamboo furnishings, some covered in exotic Indonesian fabrics, including ikat- and batik-style textiles. Pool pavilions with decorative roof details are perfect for outdoor entertaining, and infinity pools are presented as a striking and organic part of the landscape. Beautifully photographed, this will inspire readers with design ideas that can be gleaned from these breathtaking dwellings.

Shelter II is the second in a series of books about people building their own homes in different parts of the world. The principles outlined in Shelter, published almost 40 years ago, seem even more important today: relearning the still-usable skills of the past and doing more hand work in providing life's necessities.

For the past decade, the Los Angeles architect Michael Maltzan has designed multiunit housing in a city known for its proliferation of single-family residences. Working with the Skid Row Housing Trust, these projects advance new forms of supportive housing that address the services and infrastructures needed for their particular populations of inhabitants. For Maltzan, housing manifests an incredibly complex set of spatial problems-social, economic, political, typological, aesthetic, and urban-that recast architecture's role in framing the social relationships and individual challenges of everyday urban life. Social Transparency includes a recent lecture by Maltzan at Columbia University's Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, as well as reflections from fellow practitioners on this sustained engagement with housing and the city.

This book explores the concept of Co-Dividuality, an architecture that expresses a new response to joint living in the age of post-individualism, social media, and sharing economy. The focus lies on current experimentation in Japanese architecture and presents thematic homes with shared spaces designed as a result of warm, simple, fun and contemporary design reflections. In addition to their private room, the co-tenants have large common areas where they can practice urban farming, create a start-up, cook together, or experience new spatial ergonomics. It is an overview not only on domestic space but also on projects where there is a multifarious mix between public and private spheres. What is Co-Dividuality? reflects on how we might want to live tomorrow. The book includes projects of Kengo Kuma, Kazuyo Sejima, Ryue Nishizawa, Shigeru Ban, Sou Fujimoto, Satoko Shinohara, Ayano Uchimura, Taichi Kuma, Junya Ishigami, Suppose Design, Naruse Inokuma and Masuda + Otsubo among others

In architecture, nothing is ever truly new; everything has been tried before. And nowhere is this more evident than in the architecture of housing. Each proffered solution to a specific architectural problem is actually an amalgam of predecessors' ideas and new approaches, which itself contributes in turn to a great global 'pool' for succeeding concepts. For twenty years, this philosophy has driven the activities of Zurich-based cooperative Pool Architekten, with a special focus on the research and design of residential buildings. Poolology of Housing is an up-close look at the collective's body of work and a potential font of inspiration for others interested in letting this philosophy guide the creation of innovative architecture. At the core of the book are two hundred floor plans, designed by members of the collective and students during Pool Architects' tenure from 2013 to 2016 at Technische Universitat Berlin. Direct comparison of these floor plans demonstrates the incredible scope an architect has for residential buildings despite the many constraints imposed by external factors. Richly illustrated with both built and unrealised projects by Pool Architekten, as well as of model replicas of iconic historic interiors, Poolology of Housing reflects a novel social culture of housing design.

The leading industry association's handbook for going green in the kitchen and bath Kitchen & Bath Sustainable Design is the National Kitchen and Bath Association's complete guide to "greening" these important rooms. The first book to focus exclusively on kitchen and bath sustainability, this full color guide covers every consideration for both remodels and new construction, making it a handy reference for any kitchen and bath professional. Case studies of award-winning projects demonstrate how space, budget, and sustainability can come together to create beautiful, functional, efficient rooms, and illustrations throughout provide visual examples of the techniques discussed. The book includes information on greening one's practice for the client's benefit, plus an appendix of additional resources and instructional materials for classroom use. Outside of general heating and cooling, kitchen appliances use the bulk of a household's energy. Kitchens and baths together use an average of 300 gallons of water per day for a family of four, and both rooms are high-use areas that require good air quality. Kitchen & Bath Sustainable Design provides a handbook to designing these rooms for sustainability, without sacrificing comfort or livability. With comprehensive guidance on approaching these rooms sustainably, readers will: * Communicate better with builders, clients, and potential clients * Understand technical considerations, and the criteria that make a design "green" * Conduct a full design analysis, including life cycle costing and efficiency * Learn the ratings systems and standards in play in the green kitchen and bath The biggest elements of sustainable interior design energy efficiency, water use, and materials selection are all major players in the kitchen and bath. Clients are increasingly demanding attention to sustainability issues, and designers must be up to date on the latest guidelines, best practices, and technology. Kitchen & Bath Sustainable Design is the complete technical and practical guide to green design for the kitchen and bath professional.

A carefully curated and beautifully photographed selection of 50 architect-designed houses that reflects contemporary concerns about the unique challenges presented by life in the desert’s sensitive environment

The desert provides a sense of mystery and rugged beauty that attracts architects, home owners, vacationers, and anyone looking for an escape within its arid climate. This book showcases 50 works of residential architecture from across the last few decades, each with a unique connection to the desert in which it's situated from the US, Europe, Asia, Australia and beyond.

Each building, designed by established and well-known contemporary stars as well as emerging architects, includes a short text and several exterior and interior images of its structure and surroundings.

From the publisher of Living on Water, Elemental Living and California Captured.

There is a growing trend around the world, particularly in Europe and the United States, to build greener and more sustainable housing in the form of floating homes. Cities like Amsterdam and Seattle boast spectacular neighborhoods of floating homes with all the comforts and amenities of traditional houses. Available in different sizes and finishes, they are tailored to the needs of each homeowner.

From weekend homes to get-away cabins in the mountains, by the sea, or in the woods, this architecture embodies our longing for lounging in nature. For the first time in the history of humankind, more people live in cities than in the country. Yet, at the same time, more and more city dwellers are yearning for rural farms, mountain cabins, or seaside homes. These kinds of refuges offer modern men and women a promise of what urban centers usually cannot provide: quiet, relaxation, being out of reach, getting back to basics, feeling human again. Rock the Shack is a survey of such contemporary refuges from around the world--from basic to luxury. The book features a compelling range of sparingly to intricately furnished cabins, cottages, second homes, tree houses, transformations, shelters, and cocoons. The look of the included structures from the outside is just as important as the view from inside. What these diverse projects have in common is an exceptional spirit that melds the uniqueness of a geographic location with the individual character of the building's owner and architect.