Lake Tahoe is the gem of the Sierra Nevada. Those who visit this beautiful "Lake of the Sky" may share Mark Twain's impression of the place as he camped on its shore in 1861: "As it lay there with the shadows of the mountains brilliantly photographed upon its still surface I thought it must surely be the fairest picture the whole earth affords." Twain's quote, from Roughing It, includes the trinity of Tahoe's landscape--sky, mountains, and lake--that people still find inspiring. This expla...

Louisiana, the Bayou State, is famous for many things, including savory cuisine, great music, and a resident population whose mantra is laissez les bons temps roulerlet the good times roll! The place is also noted for its historic architecture, which ranges from simple forms such as the shotgun house or the Creole cottage to the celebrated plantation homes along the River Road.Bayou Built: The Legacy of Louisianas Historic Architecture examines th...

With more than 500 ravishing full-color photographs, Asian Style Hotels brings you to the best hotels in Southeast Asia.Hotels from Bali, Java, Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand are showcased in great detail. The super-deluxe establishments included here are all at the cutting-edge of hotel design and management. Each property has been hand-picked according to a set of criteria that includes a strong design aesthetic, architectural integrity, and a sense of...

In this lively narrative, award-winning author Michael Kammen presents a fascinating analysis of cutting-edge art and artists and their unique ability to both delight and provoke us. He illuminates America’s obsession with public memorials and the changing role of art and museums in our society. From Thomas Eakins’s 1875 masterpiece The Gross Clinic, (considered “too big, bold, and gory” when first exhibited) to the bitter disputes about Maya Lin’s Vietnam War Memorial, this is an...

San Luis Obispo was founded in 1772 as a mission in the foothills of the Santa Lucia Mountains on California's Central Coast. The city that grew from a rustic pueblo, with its scattering of adobe buildings, today has a wealth of architectural styles. From the simple barns of the outlying farm community, to the grand hotels and lively saloons kept busy by the Southern Pacific Railroad depot, and back full circle to the Mission Revival style edifices of California Polytechnic State Universit...

The fully expanded, updated, and freshly designed second edition of the most comprehensive and widely acclaimed guide to domestic architecture: in print since its original publication in 1984, and acknowledged everywhere as the unmatched, essential guide to American houses.This revised edition includes a section on neighborhoods; expanded and completely new categories of house styles with photos and descriptions of each; an appendix on "Approaches to Construction i...

Touring south to north, from San Diego through Santa Barbara County, this unique compendium takes the reader through the Southern California Mission System as portrayed on vintage postcards. The book elaborates on the missions' myriad functions along the coastal El Camino Real through several centuries as not only isolated centers of civilization in thewilderness and altars of Catholic faith, but also as incursions of empire and politics and the means to convert Native American tribespeopl...

A fascinating journey into the past—and under the ground—that offers "an insightful look at the what-might-have-beens of urban mass transit" ( The New York Times).From the day it broke ground by City Hall in 1900, it took about four and half years to build New York's first subway line to West 145th Street in Harlem. Things rarely went that quickly ever again.The Routes Not Taken explores the often-dramatic stories behind unbuilt or unfinis...

Super Potato Design is the first full-length book to present the work and conceptual ideas of the internationally renowned Japanese design firm Super Potato, founded by Takashi Sugimoto.Super Potato's powerful designs for the interiors of restaurants, shops and hotels, as well as Takashi Sugimoto's designs for tea ceremony spaces and utensils, are richly complex compositions of materials which create simple, strong spaces.Using traditional Japanese...

The eighteenth and early nineteenth century saw the dramatic expansion of London – wide and elegant boulevards, formal landscaped squares, crescents, blocks of tall redbrick terraced houses, and stone-built Classical public buildings all appeared in Britain for the first time. Throughout London’s sophisticated West End, in Bloomsbury, at Covent Garden, the British Museum and the National Gallery, the legacy of Georgian London is still strikingly apparent. This beautifully illustrated book ...

Winner of the 2016 Antoinette Forrester Downing Award presented by the Society of Architectural Historians.In many cities across the world, particularly in Europe, old buildings form a prominent part of the built environment, and we often take it for granted that their contribution is intrinsically positive. How has that widely-shared belief come about, and is its continued general acceptance inevitable?Certainly, ancient structures have long been treated w...

This Balinese design book, containing over 300 beautiful photos and extensive commentary will add a distinctive tropical flair to your interior decorating and architecture.The phenomenon loosely termed "Bali style" has been the subject matter for countless books on art, architecture, and interior design. In this book, author and architect Gianni Francione showcases the new generation of Bali-style homes, interiors, and artifacts that utilize what he terms a new int...