David Stephenson
Heavenly Vaults: From Romanesque to Gothic in European Architecture catalogs dozens of vaulted ceilings. Each one, shot from a prone position below, is a masterpiece. The ability of humans with nothing but crude tools and sweat-labor to make some magnificent structures is mind-boggling. We have wildly advanced tools, …
Masayuki Yoshinaga and Katsuhiko Ishikawa
Ari Seth Cohen
Like Fruits and Fresh Fruits, Gothic and Lolita and Advanced Style are photo collections of street fashion – people wearing their own style as they go about their day. The gothic and lolita styles, photographed in Japan, follow relatively rigid lines. …
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Phaidon
This beautiful overview of historical and influential home styles is perfect for the architectural dilettante. Each pages features a large photo with a short paragraph on the chosen house, architect and influences. Most are highly liveable styles – though are a few houses, like one by Buckminster Fuller – …
Gretchen Rubin
Though not as profound as her wonderful book The Happiness Project, Rubin still manages to mine some excellent life truths. Narrowing her focus from general life happiness to happiness at home and with family, Rubin looks at our attitudes toward our stuff, house-mates and local environs. In …
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Photos by Alan Weintraub | Text by Alan Hess
At least for me, Niemeyer’s houses vacillate between stunningly beautiful and almost repugnantly spare, even Stalinish, in design. Many of his houses, built primarily in Brazil now have the feel of “has-been modernism.” They were the stuff of the future sixty …
Japanese Detail: Architecture by Sadao Hibi & The Art of Japanese Architecture by David and Machiko Young
Both of these architecture books are unique to the standard Japanese architecture books I’ve looked through in the past. Generally, the standards fall into the categories of brief overviews of large buildings, cities …
Laura Vanderkam
…What people do with their money is a choice, and these choices reflect our priorities. If we sport diamond rings but claim we don’t have money for date night, we are essentially saying that jewelry it worth more time to us than spending time with our spouse. If
Adrienne Salinger
Despite one in seven Americans living alone, being single is still viewed with a combination of suspicion and pity. Yet many people love and choose to live along. Salinger’s subjects run the gamut from those forced into singlehood by the death of family or a spouse to those …
John Wehrheim
Taylor Camp’s hand-built tree houses gets some coverage in Tiny Homes, but it is the stories of the residents that are truly fascinating. Started by a group of people tired of the Vietnam War and exhausted from the anti-war movement, the original founders of Taylor Camp are …
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A.J. Jacobs
Like his other other fantastic books, The Year of Living Biblically and The Know-It-All, Jacobs uses himself as a guinea pig to run a series of tests to improve himself. While other writers have undertaken this in a more serious vein (Gretchen Rubin’s The Happiness Project being …
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Lloyd Kahn
“Joyful” is the best word I can use to describe Kahn’s new collection of tiny homes. Each under 500 square feet is a gem. Many are handbuilt and lived in by the builders. Others are from built by companies specializing in downsizing for the 21st century. The book …
Lester Walker
Like Lloyd Kahn, architect Lester Walker loves small homes. His book features an array of small homes, ranging from historic like those of Thoreau at Walden Pond and Thomas Jefferson’s “honeymoon cottage” to modernist mock-ups created by his students. There are less pictures of interiors than Kahn’s …
