Donne di fiori - paesaggi al femminile

Martin Wood
Frances Lincoln Limited

Nancy Lancaster, who was born in 1897 into a wealthy Virginian family, became one of the greatest influences on interior decoration and garden design in Great Britain and America in the second half of the 20th century. She created what is known today as the 'English Country House Style' – a mixture of faded colors, chintzes and painted and antique furniture. In the garden, she worked in a formal yet romantic neo-Georgian style, which is still a strong spirit in British garden design. This book examines Nancy's contribution to the arts of interior decoration and garden design by chronicling her own homes and gardens –and her extraordinary life. Mirador, her family's Virginian country house, was to remain her key inspiration throughout her life. Nancy herself, her houses, her gardens and her friends are shown in an intriguing collection of photographs by distinguished photographers of the era, including Horst and Cecil Beaton.

Mercedes Daguerre
Mondadori Electa S.p.A.

Il volume propone una nutrita selezione di case monofamiliari progettate da giovani architetti sudamericani, attivi principalmente in Brasile, Messico, Cile e Argentina, allievi ed eredi dell'opera di architetti modernisti come Luis Barragán, Ricardo Legorreta, Oscar Niemayer, Juan O'Gorman, Carlos Villanueva. La cura nella selezione di materiali autoctoni, i modi di relazione con il paesaggio circostante, l'attenzione alla modulazione della luce, unite a una ricercata articolazione in pianta fanno di queste abitazioni un'esaustiva e utile rassegna di modelli dell'abitare contemporaneo. Tra le case pubblicate opere di Smiljan Radic, Mathias Klotz, Aleandro Aravena e Paulo Mendes da Rocha, vincitore quest'utimo del Premio Pritzker 2006.

Claudio Strinati
Maretti editore

Riccardo Bergossi, Giampaolo Cisotto
Edizioni Lativa

Vezio De Lucia
Donzelli

Pubblicato per la prima volta nel 1989, questo libro è considerato un classico della letteratura territorialista italiana. Esso narra le vicende urbanistiche dell'Italia a partire dal secondo dopoguerra per individuarne i caratteri originali. Ne scaturisce uno specifico legato al ritardo nell'approvazione dei piani regolatori comunali dopo la guerra, alla devastazione ed alla speculazione compiute nelle grandi città, e al peso della rendita fondiaria. Uno specifico che non è solo urbano, ma che investe nel suo complesso le distorsioni dello spirito pubblico italiano, i modi attraverso i quali viene perseguito l'interesse generale nell'Italia.

Claudio Strinati
Maretti editore

Le Corbusier
Harvard University Press

Amedeo Bellini
Franco Angeli

Gianni Ottolini
Raffaello Cortina editore

AA.VV.
Taschen

Gianni Ottolini
Franco Angeli Editore

Rem Koolhaas
Monacelli Press

Since its original publication in 1978, Delirious New York has attained mythic status. Back in print in a newly designed edition, this influential cultural, architectural, and social history of New York is even more popular, selling out its first printing on publication. Rem Koolhaas's celebration and analysis of New York depicts the city as a metaphor for the incredible variety of human behavior. At the end of the nineteenth century, population, information, and technology explosions made Manhattan a laboratory for the invention and testing of a metropolitan lifestyle -- "the culture of congestion" -- and its architecture.

"Manhattan," he writes, "is the 20th century's Rosetta Stone . . . occupied by architectural mutations (Central Park, the Skyscraper), utopian fragments (Rockefeller Center, the U.N. Building), and irrational phenomena (Radio City Music Hall)." Koolhaas interprets and reinterprets the dynamic relationship between architecture and culture in a number of telling episodes of New York's history, including the imposition of the Manhattan grid, the creation of Coney Island, and the development of the skyscraper. Delirious New York is also packed with intriguing and fun facts and illustrated with witty watercolors and quirky archival drawings, photographs, postcards, and maps. The spirit of this visionary investigation of Manhattan equals the energy of the city itself.