The rooms we live in are always more than just four walls. As we decorate these spaces and fill them with objects and friends, they shape our lives and become the backdrop to our sense of self. One day, the houses will be gone, but even then, traces of the stories and the memories they contained will remain. In this dazzling work of imaginative re-construction, Edward Hollis takes us to the sites of five great spaces now lost to history and pieces together the fragments he finds there to re-create their vanished chambers.
From Rome's palatine to the old Palace of Westmisnter and the Petit Trianon at Versailles, and from the sets of the MGM studios in Hollywood to the pavilions of the Crystal Palace and his own grandmother's sitting room, "The Memory Palace" is a glittering treasure trove of luminous forgotten places and the people who, for a short time, made them their home.

The plans are drawn up, a site is chosen, foundations are dug: a building comes into being with the expectation that it will stay put and stay for ever. But a building is a capricious thing: it is inhabited and changed, and its existence is a tale of constant and curious transformation. In this radical reimagining of architectural history, Edward Hollis tells the stories of thirteen buildings, beginning with the 'once upon a time' when they first appeared, through the years of appropriation, ruin and renovation, and ending with a temporary 'ever after'. In spell-binding prose, Hollis follows his buildings through time and space to reveal the hidden histories of the Parthenon and the Alhambra, Gloucester Cathedral and Haghia Sofia, Sans Souci and Notre Dame de Paris, Malatesta's Tempio and Loreto, and explores landmarks of our own time, from Hulme's legendary crescents to the Berlin Wall and the fibre-glass theme parks of Las Vegas.

Every built structure has an interior: whether it takes the rough form of a rudimentary shelter, the grey walls of a hospital or the finessed decoration of a one-off residence. We spend most of our time inside buildings. Shut your eyes and you will find yourself in your own interior. You will always be inside. Mastering the language, thinking and history of the interior is critical to understanding and designing spaces. This essential primer transcends the boundaries and genres that often define interiors, providing a comprehensive view of the concepts and vocabulary of interior design. Written as an accessible 'treasury' of principal terms and ideas, Inside Information engages with the past, uncovering the future potential of the interior, and its design. Introduces the reader to 26 key terms, from ante- to zeitgeist. Covers areas of study from the very practical - structures, decoration and sustainability - to the philosophical - gender, space and light. Features sources, ranging from: Le Corbusier to Norman Foster; Jacques Derrida to Noam Chomsky; Virginia Woolf to George Orwell. Highly illustrated with over 100 photographs and drawings.

Few man-made things seem as stable, as immutable, as a building. Yet the life of any structure is neither fixed nor timeless. Buildings are forced to adapt to each succeeding age. The Parthenon, that epitome of a ruined temple, was for centuries a working church and then a mosque; the cathedral of Notre Dame was "restored" to a design that none of its original makers would have recognized; remains of the Berlin Wall, once gleefully smashed, have become precious relics. Here Edward Hollis recounts the most enthralling of these metamorphoses and shows how buildings have come to embody the history of Western culture.

A brilliant, ambitious follow-up to "The Secret Lives of Buildings, " in which Hollis turns his focus from the great architectural constructions of the past to the now-vanished chambers they once contained. The rooms we live in are always more than just four walls. As we decorate these spaces and fill them with objects and friends, they shape our lives and become the backdrop to our sense of self. one day, the structures will be gone, but even then, traces of the stories and the memories they contained will persist. In this dazzling work of imaginative reconstruction, edward Hollis takes us to the sites of great abodes now lost to history and piecing together the fragments that remain, re-creates their vanished chambers. From Rome s palatine to the old palace of Westminster and the petit Trianon at Versailles, from the sets of MGM studios in Hollywood to the pavilions of the Crystal palace and the author s own grandmother s sitting room, "The Memory Palace" is a glittering treasure trove of luminous forgotten places and the alluring people who lived in them."

Collected essays on interior architecture and design.