This book is a mouthwatering tour of 20 of Italys mostbeautiful and finely appointed country villas and palazzos,captured by the lens of renowned architecture photographer MassimoListri. Italy attracts visitors from all over the world thanks toits sun-drenched landscape, rich history, enticing traditions andwelcoming lifestyles. Listri's stunning photographs vary betweensweeping panoramas of the houses in their glorious settings toclose-ups of specific rooms, furniture and design details. Thesehouses provide glorious fodder for dreaming as well as a concretesource of inspiration for creating one's own personal style.

This book guides you systematically through the whole processof designing and building your own house. It offers practicalassistance from the moment you begin thinking about the kind ofhouse you want. It helps you focus your ideas and translate theminto working plans. It shows you how to estimate costs. Then, stepby step, it shows you how to construct the house -- explaining andillustrating every step systematically so that you can proceedconfidently from beginning to end. Here are complete, clear instructions on everything you need toknow, including: -- How to decide what you want the house to be like -- inside andoutside, and in relation to the environment and neighborhood -- How to translate your ideas and decisions into workingdrawings -- How to deal with all the components of a house: structural(roof, floor, walls, columns, foundations), mechanical (plumbingand heating), electrical, interior and exterior finishingmaterials -- How to establish the exact dimensions of e

From the Ferris wheel to the integrated circuit, feats ofengineering have changed our environment in countless ways, big andsmall. In Remaking the World: Adventures in Engineering, DukeUniversity's Henry Petroski focuses on the big: Malaysia's1,482-foot Petronas Towers as well as the Panama Canal, a cutthrough the continental divide that required the excavation of 311million cubic yards of earth. Remaking the World tells the stories behind the man-made wondersof the world, from squabbles over the naming of the Hoover Dam tothe effects the Titanic disaster had on the engineering communityof 1912. Here, too, are the stories of the personalities behind the wonders, from the jaunty IsambardKingdom Brunel, designer of nineteenth-century transatlanticsteamships, to Charles Steinmetz, oddball genius of the GeneralElectric Company, whose office of preference was a batteredtwelve-foot canoe. Spirited and absorbing, Remaking the World is acelebration of the creative instinct and of the men and women

Today it is no longer a matter of taste as to how and whichcoffee we drink, as it is even more important where we enjoy it. Amultitude of new cafés, coffee shops and coffee houses around theworld honor a centuries old tradition, setting thereby new designtrends. The task is to create communicative and inspiring locationsand spaces, which at the same time measure up to the functionaldemands. The design solutions are as varied as the concepts, thetransitions to lounge, club or restaurant are flowing. After aninformative introduction, Coffee Time presents current projectsthat show the exciting conceptual and stylistic breadth of cafédesigns today.

In the era of e-books and online shops, when the classic book trade has come under increasing pressure, the success of a bookshop is by no means a foregone conclusion. Booksellers confront these new challenges with very different economic strategies and conceptual measures. Spatial concepts, furnishings and design are indispensable ingredients of a successful sales strategy for newer as well as more tradition-steeped bookstores. People like to linger and buy where they feel comfortable. This volume is dedicated to the most beautiful bookstores in the world. The old and the new, classical and innovative, giant stores and paradises in miniature for bibliophiles: What they all have in common is that they create a desire for books and prove that the bookshop as institution will always fulfil a need and without a doubt enjoys a future.

The companion volume to the twelve-hour PBS series from theacclaimed filmmaker behind The Civil War, Baseball, and TheWar America’s national parks spring from an idea as radical as theDeclaration of Independence: that the nation’s most magnificent andsacred places should be preserved, not for royalty or the rich, butfor everyone. In this evocative and lavishly illustrated narrative,Ken Burns and Dayton Duncan delve into the history of the parkidea, from the first sighting by white men in 1851 of the valleythat would become Yosemite and the creation of the world’s firstnational park at Yellowstone in 1872, through the most recentadditions to a system that now encompasses nearly four hundredsites and 84 million acres. The authors recount the adventures, mythmaking, and intensepolitical battles behind the evolution of the park system, and theenduring ideals that fostered its growth. They capture theimportance and splendors of the individual parks: from Haleakala inHawaii to Acadia in Maine, from Denali

To Alvar Aalto life, art, architecture, and creativity were inseparable from everyday work. When developing ideas or researching a design challenge he moved as easily in the world of natural sciences as he did in the world of art. This remarkable book celebrates the 1998 centenary of Alvar Aalto's birth. It is not the most comprehensive book on his work, but it is without question the most sumptuous and poetic. 23 projects from different decades are featured, ranging from private houses to public buildings. The text, written by Marku Lahtti, director of the Alvar Alto Museum, intelligently complements the photographic genius of Maija Holma, whose bold images capture the finest details of Aalto's structures and interiors. Works include Finland Hall, Helsinki; Art Museum, Aalborg, Denmark; Helsinki University of Technology, Helsinki; House of Culture, Helsinki; Villa Mairea, Noormarkku; and Aalto's own house in Helsinki. Alvar Aalto - A Gentler Structure for Life is a visual feast and featur

Virginia Woolf was right. Women–and men, it turns out–yearnfor a room of their own. But instead of a little nook beneath the eaves, that room is nowa shed. Today’s sheds, however, are not dusty shelters for plantsand tools. Lace curtains have replaced cobwebs, charming antiquesstand where shovels and rakes once rusted, and instead ofcorrugated walls, you will find cedar shingles and window boxes.Sheds are stylish and elegant and offer a hassle-free andaffordable way to create more space without undergoing a majorrenovation. They function as artists’ studios, writers’ retreats,yoga dens, entertaining pavilions, children’s playhouses, gardenrooms, or serene hideaways for any personal pursuit. In Stylish Sheds and Elegant Hideaways, Debra Prinzing andWilliam Wright showcase twenty-eight innovative and beautifullyimagined spaces from New York City to East Hampton, from Seattle toSan Diego, and from Atlanta to Austin to Santa Cruz. Some areelaborate and luxurious; others are delightf

The national park system ranks among our most magnificentachievements and the story of its creation reveals how the Americanlandscape shaped our history and character and continues to do soalmost 175 years after painter George Catlin first proposed “anation’s Park.” In these lavishly illustrated pages, award-winning author KimHeacox chronicles our changing visions of wildness from the 17thcentury, when the first settlers built towns around shared commons,to 1916, when the National Park Service initiated a new kind ofcommon–unspoiled parkland held in trust for Americanseverywhere. Here are explorers like Daniel Boone, Kit Carson, and John WesleyPowell, who reported wonders so amazing they were met withdisbelief. Here too are farsighted leaders like Thomas Jefferson,Theodore Roosevelt, and other sponsors of such parks as Yosemiteand Yellowstone. In spectacular counterpoint, 100 illustrations unveil a pristinenew world that awed the artists and photographers from EadweardMuybridge to Ansel Adams. An