Tag Archives: Books

Architecture, Books, Design, Home Design, Interviews, Podcasts

Interviews: “Courtyard Living” Author Charmaine Chan – “Domestic Solitude Solution” (Podcast)

Audio April 4, 2020 She Seeks Serene Leave a comment

Charmaine Chan, design editor for ‘South China Morning Post’ believes that courtyards offer an excellent urban solution to domestic solitude. She explains how they can be hubs of community and calm.

Courtyards have long played an important function in residential design, regulating light, shade, and the use of space. With thousands of years of tradition as inspiration, contemporary architects are now realizing courtyard living afresh. This lavish survey of twenty-five residences across the Asia-Pacific region features homes from Australia, Taiwan, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, Singapore, India, Vietnam, and Sri Lanka.

Structured by courtyard function, the book’s five chapters—on privacy; multigenerational living; sightlines; light and ventilation; and living with nature—are richly illustrated with photography and architectural illustrations showing courtyard positions within floor plans.

Showcasing the unique lifestyle opportunities afforded by contemporary courtyard design, this is an inspirational resource for anyone interested in indoor-outdoor living.

Charmaine Chan is Design Editor at the South China Morning Post. She began her journalism career in Sydney, pursued it in Tokyo and moved to Hong Kong in 1997 to join the Post. Her writing focuses on design and architecture in Asia.

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Architecture, Books, History, Leisure, Travel

Travel & History Books: “Great Camps Of The Adirondacks” – Gorgeous Updated 2nd Edition (2020)

April 3, 2020 She Seeks Serene Leave a comment

The foremost guide to the historic camps of the Adirondacks―a unique vernacular style of rustic architecture designed to complement the land. Now available in a second and enlarged edition, here is the foremost guide to the historic camps within America’s spectacular forest preserve, the six million acre Adirondack Park.

When first published in 1982, Great Camps of the Adirondacks launched a campaign for the preservation of these architectural treasures while also sparking a trend in great camp-inspired home design, a cohesive approach to building that author Harvey H. Kaiser named Adirondack Rustic Style.

In this second edition, preservationists will find a success story. Designers and builders will discover page after page of inspiration. All readers will see the history of a region unfold as Americans from the mid-1870s to the late-1930s, including the very wealthiest New Yorkers, sought out the wilderness. The camps they built as private seasonal retreats are distinguished both as architectural responses to the Adirondack environment in the use of logs and stone, and as successful examples of buildings blended into the forest and the natural contours of the mountains and lakes―homes built to serve as beautiful complements to the land itself.

Harvey H. Kaiser served as the Senior Vice President for Facilities Administration and University Architect at Syracuse University between 1972 and 1995. His 1982 book Great Camps of the Adirondacks popularized the term “Great Camps” to refer to the grand summer residences that wealthy families built in the Adirondack Mountains in the nineteenth century, and revitalized interest in these sites. Several studies on western national park architecture culminated in his 2008 book The National Park Architecture Sourcebook.

Steven Engelhart is the executive director of Adirondack Architectural Heritage (AARCH) located in Keeseville, New York. AARCH is a private, nonprofit. historic preservation organization for New York State’s Adirondack Park, whose mission is to promote better public understanding, appreciation, and stewardship of the region’s architecture, communities, and historic sites.

Tribute: Architect-Author Michael Sorkin – “City Air Makes You Free” (1948-2020)

April 3, 2020 She Seeks Serene Leave a comment

From an Apollo Magazine online article (March 31, 2020):

Ultimately he was a humane critic of the contemporary city, a serious, funny and poetic voice defending the powerless against big capital and an articulator of how architecture should be used as a tool of resistance. He is indelibly associated with New York, a city he loved with a fervour despite its faults, and of which he defended every inch as a public good. Number 210 in his list was the medieval German phrase ‘Stadtluft macht frei’ – ‘city air makes you free’. He will survive through his magical writing, which makes us all a little freer.

Michael Sorkin, who died last week of complications due to Covid-19, gained his reputation as the architecture critic of The Village Voice in New York, which, in the 1980s, was a publication with a formidable reach and impact on a city just beginning to boom again. He launched fierce attacks against the banality of the contemporary city, the rapacity and greed of developers (notably the current president, including in a 1985 piece entitled ‘Dump the Trump’) and the loss of great landmarks. But he was no nostalgist; he revelled in the potential of architecture to catalyse change and excoriated his contemporaries for caving in to big business, for building prisons and being complicit in a denuded public realm.

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Arts & Literature, Books, Interviews, Videos

Interviews: 66-Year Old American Author Erik Larson On Writing “The Splendid And The Vile”

Video April 2, 2020 She Seeks Serene Leave a comment

Erik Larson, #1 New York Times bestselling author, shares his writing process.

In The Splendid and the Vile, Erik Larson shows, in cinematic detail, how Churchill taught the British people “the art of being fearless.” It is a story of political brinkmanship, but it’s also an intimate domestic drama, set against the backdrop of Churchill’s prime-ministerial country home, Chequers; his wartime retreat, Ditchley, where he and his entourage go when the moon is brightest and the bombing threat is highest; and of course 10 Downing Street in London.

Drawing on diaries, original archival documents, and once-secret intelligence reports—some released only recently—Larson provides a new lens on London’s darkest year through the day-to-day experience of Churchill and his family: his wife, Clementine; their youngest daughter, Mary, who chafes against her parents’ wartime protectiveness; their son, Randolph, and his beautiful, unhappy wife, Pamela; Pamela’s illicit lover, a dashing American emissary; and the advisers in Churchill’s “Secret Circle,” to whom he turns in the hardest moments.

Erik Larson is the author of eight books, six of which became New York Times bestsellers. His latest books, The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz and Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania, both hit no. 1 on the list soon after launch. His saga of the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893, The Devil in the White City, was a finalist for the National Book Award, and won an Edgar Award for fact-crime writing; it lingered on various Times bestseller lists for the better part of a decade.

Architecture, Books, History, Photography, Travel

Top New Books: “The Art Of Earth Architecture – Past, Present, Future” (Mar 2020)

April 2, 2020 She Seeks Serene Leave a comment

The Art of Earth Architecture demonstrates the wide-ranging applications and sustainability of this building material, while presenting a manifesto for its ecological significance. Featuring raw-earth masterpieces, monumental structures, and little known works, the book includes the temples and palaces of Mesopotamia, the Great Wall of China, large-scale urban developments in Tenochtitlan in Mexico, the medinas of Morocco, and housing in Marrakech and Bogota.

For almost ten thousand years, unbaked earth has been used to build remarkable structures, from simple dwellings to palaces, temples, and fortresses both grand and durable. Jean Dethier spent fifty years researching this landmark global survey, which spans five continents and 250 sites.

This definitive reference features many UNESCO World Heritage sites and contains essays on the historical, technical, and cultural aspects of raw-earth construction from twenty experts in the field, as well as hundreds of photographs, illustrations, and architectural drawings.

Jean Dethier has dedicated his life to the research, safeguarding, and development of earth structures around the world. Dethier worked at the Centre Pompidou as a curator of influential architectural exhibits for thirty years. Winner of the prestigious Grand Prix national de l’architecture, he sat on the jury of the 2016 Terra Award, the first international prize for contemporary earthen structures.

Art, Arts & Literature, Books, Reviews

New Art Books: “Edward Hopper: A New Perspective on Landscape” (April 2020)

April 1, 2020 She Seeks Serene Leave a comment

Edward Hopper’s world-famous, instantly recognizable paintings articulate an idiosyncratic view of modern life, unfolding in a world of lonely lighthouses, gas stations, movie theaters, bars and hotel rooms. With his impressive subjects, independent pictorial vocabulary and virtuoso play of colors, Hopper’s work continues to this day to color our memory and imaginary of the United States in the first half of the 20th century.

A fresh look at Hopper’s iconic vision of the American landscape—its gas stations, diners and highways.

Hopper began his career as an illustrator and became famous around the globe for his oil paintings. These paintings testify to the artist’s great interest in the effects of color and his mastery in depicting light and shadow, at work whether the artist was painting alienated figures in dreamlike interiors or desolate American landscapes.

Edward Hopper: A New Perspective on Landscape is published to accompany a major exhibition at the Fondation Beyeler of Hopper’s iconic images of the vast American landscape. The catalog gathers together paintings, watercolors and drawings made by the artist between the 1910s and the 1960s, and supplements them with essays by Erika Doss, David Lubin and Katharina Rüppell, focused on the subject of depicting the landscape.

Edward Hopper (1882–1967) was the master of American Realism. His paintings captured the mood and atmosphere of his era. His style of painting and subject matter became the stylistic foundation for a distinct type of American modernism. A source of inspiration for countless painters, photographers and filmmakers, Hopper’s body of work continues to be influential to this day.

Culture & Coronavirus: “Livraria Lello” In Porto Opens World’s First “Drive-Thru Bookstore”

March 31, 2020 She Seeks Serene Leave a comment

Livraria Lello Porto Portugal — LIVRARIA LELLO OPENS THE FIRST “DRIVE-THRU BOOKSELLER” IN THE WORLD

From April 1st, between 10 am and 12 noon, from Monday to Friday, Livraria Mais Bela do Mundo will offer one book from its “The Collection” per day to all readers who subscribe the day before to which they intend to address the “Drive-Thru” of Livraria Lello.

The same should be done until 6 pm, to the email info@livrarialello.pt , sending your personal data (name, address, email and telephone contact).

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On the day of the survey, the reader will only have to stop the car in front of Livraria Lello and the delivery will be made by a collaborator directly through the window.

This is a true act of “Love in the Times of Cholera” by Livraria Lello and her team towards their readers, their city, which is their world. A way to give the community some comfort and some encouragement in these difficult times.

Arts & Literature, Audio Books, Books, Classics, Videos

Literature: A Reading Of “For Whom The Bell Tolls” – Ernest Hemingway (1940)

Audio March 30, 2020 She Seeks Serene Leave a comment

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The first three chapters of Ernest Hemingway’s classic novel.

For Whom the Bell Tolls is a novel by Ernest Hemingway published in 1940. It tells the story of Robert Jordan, a young American volunteer attached to a Republican guerrilla unit during the Spanish Civil War. As a dynamiter, he is assigned to blow up a bridge during an attack on the city of Segovia.

It was published just after the end of the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), whose general lines were well known at the time. It assumes the reader knows that the war was between a democratically elected, pro-working-class and anti-Catholic government, supported by the Soviet Union, which many foreigners like Robert went to Spain to help, and a successful, dictatorial, Catholic, pro-landowner revolt, supported by Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. It was commonly viewed as the dress rehearsal for the Second World War. In 1940, the year the book was published, the United States had not yet entered the war, which had begun on Sept. 1, 1939, with Nazi Germany’s invasion of Poland.

The novel is regarded as one of Hemingway’s best works, along with The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms, and The Old Man and the Sea.

Ernest Miller Hemingway (July 21, 1899 – July 2, 1961) was an American journalist, novelist, short-story writer, and sportsman. His economical and understated style—which he termed the iceberg theory—had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his adventurous lifestyle and his public image brought him admiration from later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the mid-1950s, and he won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954. He published seven novels, six short-story collections, and two nonfiction works. Three of his novels, four short-story collections, and three nonfiction works were published posthumously. Many of his works are considered classics of American literature.

From Wikipedia

Arts & Literature, Books, Interviews, Podcasts, Reviews

Podcast Interviews: Irish-British Author Maggie O’Farrell On Her New Novel “Hamnet” (BBC)

Audio March 29, 2020 She Seeks Serene Leave a comment

BBC Radio 4 “Books And Authors” Talks To Maggie O’Farrell on her new novel, “Hamnet”

On a summer’s day in 1596, a young girl in Stratford-upon-Avon takes to her bed with a fever. Her twin brother, Hamnet, searches everywhere for help. Why is nobody at home?

Their mother, Agnes, is over a mile away, in the garden where she grows medicinal herbs. Their father is working in London. Neither parent knows that one of the children will not survive the week.

Hamnet is a novel inspired by the son of a famous playwright. It is a story of the bond between twins, and of a marriage pushed to the brink by grief. It is also the story of a kestrel and its mistress; flea that boards a ship in Alexandria; and a glovemaker’s son who flouts convention in pursuit of the woman he loves. Above all, it is a tender and unforgettable reimagining of a boy whose life has been all but forgotten, but whose name was given to one of the most celebrated plays ever written.

New Book Podcast: “The Poster – A Visual History” Authors Gill Saunders & Margaret Timmers (V&A)

Audio March 29, 2020 She Seeks Serene Leave a comment

Monocle 24 speaks with Gill Saunders and Margaret Timmers about their upcoming book ‘The Poster’ from Thames & Hudson in partnership with the V&A.

Featuring posters from the world-class collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum, this book is the perfect resource for all those who appreciate one of the most popular art forms.

Even in the digital age, the printed poster has continued to be one of the most influential and well-loved ways of informing and entertaining audiences. A powerful means of mass communication, posters are an invaluable resource for understanding the time periods in which they were produced and distributed and have often played key roles in shaping society.

Organized into seven thematic chapters, The Poster brings together more than 300 examples that offer a comprehensive history of the poster as a medium that has been used to share, sell, or incite political and social change. The text traces the poster through innovations in design, illustration, typography, and printing, as well as movements in art, including Art Nouveau, modernism, Art Deco, psychedelia, and punk.

Featuring works by A. M. Cassandre, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Alphonse Mucha, Milton Glaser, Paula Scher, and Peter Gee, and many more, this book is an essential resource for graphic designers, illustrators, and anyone interested in social and political history.