Doppio ritratto - Zoran Music, Ida Barbarigo

Martin Wood
Frances Lincoln Limited

John Fowler was an interior decorator who set fashions and changed tastes. The English country house style, which he developed with Sibyl Colefax and Nancy Lancaster, his partners in the firm of Colefax & Fowler, has proved a source of continuing inspiration to decorators and home-owners on both sides of the Atlantic and indeed across the world. Today, a hundred years after his birth, his influence is almost as powerful as it was in the mid 20th century, when he was working on many of Britain's finest and most famous houses, including Uppark, Chequers and Buckingham Palace, as well as dozens of more modest projects. Fowler's style has been so widely imitated that it is easy to forget what an innovator he was. In the 1930s and 1940s his style was a breath of fresh country air, sweeping away heavy velvets and damasks in favour of crisp cotton chintzes, replacing glossy mahogany with painted Regency furnishings, elaborate porcelain and glitzy ormolu with modest pottery and painted tin. Even after the war, when he came to specialize in the decoration of architecturally important interiors, he continued to prefer 'humble elegance' and 'romantic disrepair' to pomposity.

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.

Bruno Munari
La giostra

AA.VV.
Galerie Patrick Seguin

Cesare Chiod
Edizioni Unicopli

AA.VV.
Nuove edizioni Gabriele Mazzotta

Gerhard Mack
Verlag Birkhäuser

How to deal with historic buildings has long been a core issue of the international architectural discourse. Herzog & de Meuron began addressing the potential of existing structures very early on: the maintenance and alteration of buildings are among the key strategies of the architects. For the Park Avenue Armory in New York, Herzog & de Meuron have designed a new model for dealing with monuments. The historical building was opened in 1881 on the Upper East Side of Manhattan as a meeting place and training ground for the National Guard, and boasts a rich mixture of different styles. Herzog & de Meuron developed a multifaceted strategy for the transformation of the building, now used as a cultural center, that allows for a combination of restoration, transformation, and innovation. From the exposing of historic structures to the addition of new elements, the architecture gained new vibrancy from the considered entanglement of different aspects. In the current debate, this departure from the practice of historic preservation in the United States is, beyond its value as an actual example, a unique contribution that unfolds in close reference to material. It is exemplary and groundbreaking.

Shelley-Maree Cassidy
Taschen

Giampiero Bosoni
Skira

Nella storia che ha visto intrecciarsi nel nostro paese il design con l'architettura secondo un tipico e speciale modo italiano, forse nessuno, anche a livello internazionale, ha attraversato l'intero XX "secolo breve" con la stessa ampiezza evolutiva, sia di progetto sia di tecniche produttive, come l'architetto, designer e imprenditore Osvaldo Borsani (1911 -1985). Una storia densissima che ci porta dal la fine degli anni venti con il disegno del mobile a cavallo tra le esperienze dell'art déco e le prime manifestazioni del razionalismo in Italia (quando Osvaldo Borsani inizia a prendere le redini dell'azienda di famiglia, ABV Arredamenti Borsani di Varedo), al periodo, dalla metà degli anni cinquanta sino ai primi anni ottanta, dove il design di prodotti e di sistemi altamente industriali firmati da Borsani per la "sua" fabbrica di mobiliTecno conquista la riconosciuta fama internazionale. Lungo quei sessant'anni Osvaldo Borsani ha interpretato in maniera autonoma e originale uno dei percorsi più significativi della la storia del design italiano celebrato nel mondo.

Comment Reconnaitre
Troisième édition

Shigeru Uchida, Ikuyo Mitsuhashi
Rikuyo-sha Publishing