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 Whether musing about the creative process, the merits of failure and criticism, or the challenges of keeping the studio lights on, designers make good, and opinionated, copy.
The Designer Says, the follow-up to our best-selling The Architect Says, is a compendium of quotations from more than one hundred of history's leading practitioners. Quotes are paired on page spreads like guests at a dinner party. A designer from the nineteenth century might sit next to one working today or two contemporary designers may strike up a conversation. Listen in as they compliment, provoke, and one-up each other in this lively volume of insights. This portable collection makes the perfect gift for designers, students, and anyone curious about the ideas and personalities that shape the art of visual communication.  Buried within the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History exists an astonishing group of historical relics from the pre-Revolutionary War era to the present day, many of which have never been on display.
Souvenir Nation presents fifty of the museum's most eccentric items including a chunk broken off Plymouth Rock; a lock of Andrew Jackson's hair; a dish towel used as the flag of truce to end the Civil War; and the microphones used by FDR for his Fireside Chats. Smithsonian curator William L. Bird, Jr., regales us with the story of each artifact's origins and the quirks of fate that brought it to the museum. Smithsonian curator William L. Bird, Jr., regales us with the story of each artifact's origins and the quirks of fate that brought it to the museum. An accompanying exhibition opens in Washington, D.C.'s Smithsonian Castle in Fall 2013.  There are many ways to make your writing feel more personal, but none carries the charge of using a custom-drawn font.
Draw Your Own Alphabets is a fun, hands-on workbook that teaches how to create funky hand-lettered fonts sure to jump off the page, poster, or screen. Presenting thirty complete alphabets, custom-drawn in a variety of styles by various young designers and illustrators, this do-it-yourself guide demonstrates how to adapt the letters and make them your own. Whether you dip in and out of your favorite lettering styles, or work through the book practicing various alphabets, you'll be creating your own fonts in no time.  An inspiring sourcebook for architects and prospective homeowners, as well as a useful tool for students, and builders alike.
Passive is the new green. Passive Houses, well–insulated, virtually airtight buildings, can decrease home heating consumption by an astounding ninety percent, making them not only an attractive choice for current and prospective homeowners, but also the right choice for a sustainable future. The Greenest Home showcases eighteen of the world's most attractive Passive Houses by forward-thinking architects such as Bernheimer Architecture, Olson Kundig Architects, and Onion Flats, among many others.  "The defining factor in our firm's work is that we practice architecture in Maine, amidst extraordinary and ordinary beauty."
Although it has become something of a cliche for architects to say they pay close attention to a building's site and surroundings, for Elliott + Elliott Architecture, residing, working, and building along Maine's rugged coast has translated not only into refreshing architectural forms whose roots in tradition are clear, but also into collaborative processes with local builders and artisans, in the spirit of the shipbuilders and craftsmen of the state's history. Houses of Maine offers an in-depth look at six houses, from the celebrated House on Casco Bay (a modern update to a nineteenth-century Cape Cod) to Pond House (a Mount Desert Island summer cottage inspired by local fishing shacks).  Trainor's gardens create sensory memories that foster a deep connection to the land.
Australian-born landscape designer Bernard Trainor has made it his life's work to capture the wild soul of his adopted home of Northern California. Neither a naturalist nor an architect, Trainor uses the tools of both to create stunning large-scale gardens that unfold over many acres. Across airy hilltops, craggy seasides, and other one-of-a-kind tracts, Trainor applies simple, understated frames to rugged natural panoramas, the better to bring them into focus. Landprints showcases ten of his most ambitious and inspiring gardens through gorgeous photography and detailed project descriptions. |
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