A monograph on leading South African architecture studio SAOTA.

South African architecture studio SAOTA is led by Stefan Antoni, Philip Olmesdahl, Greg Truen, Phillippe Fouche, Logen Gordon and Mark Bullivant, and has designed luxury residential and commercial projects on six continents. With reference to South African Modernism, and a grounding in the International style, its projects take advantage of wildly beautiful settings, and are rooted in place by the relationship between the building and its site. The studio cites spirit of enquiry and close examination of function and form as hallmarks of its work, as well as the use of the most current technology, including virtual reality, in its design processes.

This monograph features twenty-three recent residential projects from around the world, with a particular focus on Africa, illustrated with colour photography and including a foreword by Reni Folawiyo, and project texts written by the studio.

When the premature death of A.W.N. Pugin (1812-1852) created a huge vacuum in the realm of Gothic-revival art and design, this was more than adequately filled by John Hardman Powell (1827-1895). Tutored personally - and uniquely - by Pugin, Powell now stepped into his master's shoes as chief designer for the Birmingham firm of John Hardman & Co. who manufactured metalwork, stained glass, and other furnishings for Pugin and for architects influenced by him. More than that, Powell was married to Pugin's eldest daughter, Anne (1832-1897) who bore him twelve children. Though rigorously trained by Pugin, Powell had a free-spirited artistic temperament, which, imbued with Pugin's 'True Principles' of medieval art and design, led him to apply them in innovative and imaginative ways. Researched from newly-discovered original sources, this book examines Powell's rich legacy of stained glass and metalwork which is still to be enjoyed in cathedrals, churches and great houses across the United Kingdom and overseas, and the ideas which shaped it. Powell's loyalty to his late Master extended to the younger members of Pugin's family, including the love-lorn Agnes and the hot-tempered Edward, and also to Pugin's widow Jane, whose social pretensions he mercilessly lampooned. Through his encouragement of artistic talent within his own family, his training of Hardman apprentices, his evening lectures in Birmingham, and his written tributes to his late Master, Powell ensured that the Pugin flame would continue to burn brightly well into the twentieth century.

This title discusses the work of two of the most eminent contemporary British architects, Edward Jones and Sir Jeremy Dixon. With distinguished careers spanning four decades, their works separately and, since 1989, in partnership range from the Royal Opera House in London to Mississauga City Hall in Canada and from the Henry Moore Institute in Leeds to the Business School for Oxford University. Although they have built throughout the UK, it is to London above all that Dixon Jones have devoted their energies - and it is on London that they have made the greatest impact. Some of the capital's most important public buildings - the Royal Opera House, the National Portrait Gallery, the courtyard of Somerset House - have been given a new life by their deft interventions, transforming what were previously somewhat austere institutions into vital and valued components of the public realm. In this publication, the buildings and projects of Jeremy Dixon and Edward Jones, from their student days to the present, are fully documented with drawings, photographs and essays by critics and clients, as well as comments by the architects. Alan Colquhoun, Robert Maxwell and Kenneth Powell provide an in-depth critical interpretation while Sir Jeremy Isaacs and Charles Saumarez Smith - clients for the Royal Opera House and National Portrait Gallery respectively - offer a unique insight into the process of working with Dixon Jones.

This work uses drawings, sketches and computer images to capture a moment in the life of one of the world's busiest - and most creative - architectural offices. For three decades a leading figure in UK architecture, Terry Farrell enjoys a worldwide reputation, with major architectural and urban design projects in the UK and Asia. Best known for his exuberant London buildings of the 1980s - notably TV-am, Embankment Place at Charing Cross and the MI6 building - Farrell has now moved into a freely expressive mode of design, with the emphasis on sensuous forms and accessible imagery, influenced by working much more overseas. This snapshot of work comprises evocative drawings, models and collages, ranging from first concepts through exploratory investigations to presentation images. By showing the way in which ideas are elaborated, explored and developed, it offers insight into the creative processes of the architect. In a trenchant personal essay, Terry Farrell sets out his artistic credo, presenting the city as man's greatest work of art and attacking the cult of the minimal. In a foreword Professor Robert Maxwell of Princeton University appraises and applauds Farrell's special contribution to the art of making cities.

The definitive monograph on the ideas and work of the Canadian-born (of Norwegian ancestry), Florence-trained, Ibiza-based architect. The fusion of Ibizan traditions with modern function, form, and taste is the hallmark of Blackstad's projects, which were dedicated to conserving the cultural significance of the island within today's architecture. Rolph Blackstad exhaustively studied Ibizan architecture when it was still a living millennial tradition, with peasant builders working with rules passed down by word of mouth from father to son. The architect's study of these builders formed the basis of his research, design and building for more than 40 years. This book is a tribute to Blackstad's work in the wake of his recent death. In it, the reader will discover an unbroken tradition reaching back to distant origins; a design based on historical Mediterranean architecture, combining style and building techniques to suit contemporary lifestyles.

Most unusually among major painters, Vincent van Gogh (1853-90) was also an accomplished writer. His letters provide both a unique self-portrait and a vivid picture of the contemporary cultural scene. Van Gogh emerges as a complex but captivating personality, struggling with utter integrity to fulfil his artistic destiny. This major new edition, which is based on an entirely new translation, reinstating a large number of passages omitted from earlier editions, is expressly designed to reveal his inner journey as much as the outward facts of his life. It includes complete letters wherever possible, linked with brief passages of connecting narrative and showing all the pen-and-ink sketches that originally went with them. Despite the familiar image of Van Gogh as an antisocial madman who died a martyr to his art, his troubled life was rich in friendships and generous passions. In his letters we discover the humanitarian and religious causes he embraced, his fascination with the French Revolution, his striving for God and for ethical ideals, his desperate courtship of his cousin, Kee Vos, and his largely unsuccessful search for love. All of this, suggests De Leeuw, demolishes some of the myths surrounding Van Gogh and his career but brings hint before us as a flesh-and-blood human being, an individual of immense pathos and spiritual depth. Perhaps even more moving, these letters illuminate his constant conflicts as a painter, torn between realism, symbolism and abstraction; between landscape and portraiture; between his desire to depict peasant life and the exciting diversions of the city; between his uncanny versatility as a sketcher and his ideal of the full-scale finished tableau. SinceVan Gogh received little feedback from the public, he wrote at length to friends, fellow artists and his family, above all to his brother Theo, the Parisian art dealer, who was his confidant and mainstay. Along with his intense powers of visual imagination, Vincent brought to the

A fearless innovator who inspired designers, models, photographers, and artists, Diana Vreeland, the famed editor of Vogue, reinvented the way we think about style. In this first full-length biography, Amanda Mackenzie Stuart tells the story of Vreeland's childhood on New York's Upper East Side, her first job at Harper's Bazaar, her renowned post at Vogue, and her role as special consultant to the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Empress of Fashion is an intimate and surprising look at an icon who made a lasting mark on the world of couture.

The rivalry between the brilliant seventeenth-century Italian architects Gianlorenzo Bernini and Francesco Borromini is the stuff of legend. Enormously talented and ambitious artists, they met as contemporaries in the building yards of St. Peter's in Rome, became the greatest architects of their era by designing some of the most beautiful buildings in the world, and ended their lives as bitter enemies. Engrossing and impeccably researched, full of dramatic tension and breathtaking insight, "The Genius in the Design" is the remarkable tale of how two extraordinary visionaries schemed and maneuvered to get the better of each other and, in the process, created the spectacular Roman cityscape of today.

"A career in music ... is a calling with such a strong pull; you'd think a tide was sucking you under. It becomes an intense obsession of such great intensity that you can almost think of nothing else, it drives you with a fever and fervor."

In the early 70s, an idealistic young man - Brian Torff - arrived in New York to pursue his passion for music. During an excursion to Long Island, Brian found his dream instrument: a 1775 re-built Nicola Galliano bass.

Such was the beginning of a career that led Torff from Cafe Carlyle to Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center, and the White House. He has toured worldwide with the greatest: from Frank Sinatra, Mel Torme, George Shearing, and Erroll Garner to Stephane Grappelli, Benny Goodman, Mary Lou Williams, and Marian McPartland.

As Brian notes, "bass players do a lot of observing from the back of the bandstand." It is this supportive role that qualifies Torff to share his insight into jazz music, and its many personalities. Torff takes us beyond the music by adding depth with his vision of American music, and paints vivid portraits of the musicians with whom he played.

Torff's memoir is one of creativity, and determination mixed with timing, and plain good luck. His sharp narrative not only brings the legends of jazz to life, but reading about them here will certainly motivate you to add some music to your collection.

Author Lynn Barnes admits she's known all along that she'd been a little different in ways she can't explain. In her memoir, The Last Exit before the Toll, she examines her life and tries to make sense of who and what she is and how her being affects her existence.

She reflects on growing up as an only child and her life now as a single, surrealist artist and Poe aficionado. Barnes recalls the events that have greatly impacted her, including the deaths of her mother and father and the suicide of her best friend, Marc. But it was the discovery that she has undiagnosed Asperger's syndrome that helped piece together the puzzle that has been her life and allowed her to come to terms with the troubling personality traits she has experienced all her life.

An insightful and creative look at Barnes's life, The Last Exit before the Toll provides a glimpse into the sometimes frustrating and unknown world of someone who lives with Asperger's syndrome.