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.
Throughout, the attention to detail is meticulous: mosaic floors of mythical beasts; intricately painted ceilings of interlocking wooden beams. The walls of the Andron, traditionally the male quarters of an ancient Greek household, are streaked with three types of Tuscan marble: ochre Siena, mauve Fleur de Pêcher, and grey-white Carrara. In Mrs Reinach’s bathroom, an immense bathtub weighing one tonne is balanced on two lion paws. Above its ornamental bronze taps, a low-relief frieze depicts the chariot of Demeter. From every window stretches a panorama of glittering blue.
In 1928 Maruni Wood Industry was born out of a fascination with the masterful carpentry in ancient shrines. Today its furniture is found in the Californian headquarters of Apple as well as airport lounges, galleries and restaurants around the world. We meet the company’s president to talk about the challenges of managing a family-run business.
“Our SUSTAINABLE HOME is made of matter and spirit. The raw material, the unused by-products of the mining activity, is the main component: from it we take advantage of its qualities and properties. Finding an ecologically suitable use for this waste determines the unique character of the housing unit. In its spirit, the housing unit intends, in addition to its technical function, to be a home, a place for each person to feel valued, welcomed in their dreams, hopes and desire to live together. Each house, even in its simplicity, must be able to create a sense of pride and self-esteem ”, adds Gustavo Penna.
Studio 54. You had to be there. And even if you were, you’d scarcely believe it. Studio 54! The club that changed nightlife forever, where the crowds were so big they had to call in the fire brigade, where the brightest stars of the 1970s — Michael Jackson, Mick Jagger, Debbie Harry, Grace Jones and Andy Warhol, to name a handful …
thank you after winning a title or breaking a world record). This collection now makes up the “adidas archive”, one of the largest, if not the largest archive of any sports goods manufacturer in the world—which photographers Christian Habermeier and Sebastian Jäger have been visually documenting in extreme detail for years.
In a leafy Boston suburb, a place to park cars and repair vintage scooters grows into a bucolic sanctuary.
From Daikanyama Tsutaya Books in Tokyo to Kosmos Buchsalon in Zurich, Do You Read Me? travels the globe to discover these gems and some of the people behind them, who turn an ordinary trip to the bookstore into an extraordinary experience.
Boomers Daily 