Best Architectural Buildings

With their idyllic settings, unique architecture and cozy interiors, the Cabin Porn photographs, are an invitation to slow down, take a deep breath, and feel the beauty and serenity that nature and simple construction can create. Photographer Noah Kalina 's editorial work has been featured in New York Magazine , Esquire , and, Food & Wine .

Kirk Henckels and Anne Walker, real estate and architectural insiders, chronicle the fortunes and features of 15 outstanding apartment houses with a wealth of vintage and new photography and architectural plans, and show off select apartments as they look today, designed by top interior designers. “ Life at the Top may not be a 37-room duplex penthouse in a limestone Art Deco tower on Park Avenue, but it unlocks the doors of nineteen of the extravagant, extraordinary homes in New York and lets you put them on your coffee table.

New York Times Bestseller. “A soaring and gorgeous American story” (Karen Abbott) from the author of the New York Times bestselling The Girls of Atomic City. But none of this prepared her to be mistress of Biltmore House. With a historian’s keen insight and a poet’s gift for language, Denise Kiernan depicts life at Biltmore with such skill, I felt like I was there through it all: weddings, divorces, elaborate (and slightly bizarre) balls, financial glory, financial ruin, murder, suicide, natural disasters, betrayals, love, loss, despair, and triumph. Yet only in the pages of Denise Kiernan's The Last Castle will they come to know George Vanderbilt, the bookish heir who began Biltmore in his 20s, and his determined widow, Edith, who kept it alive as a working estate and a time capsule of the Gilded Age. Kiernan makes Edith and George Vanderbilt, among the wealthiest Americans at the time, feel like living, breathing human beings navigating life's obstacles in this magnificent book. (-Kate Andersen Brower, author FIRST WOMEN: The Grace & Power of America's Modern First Ladies and THE RESIDENCE: Inside the Private World of the White House). In her well-researched and captivating book, Denise Kiernan tells the fascinating story of how a phenomenally wealthy Vanderbilt scion transformed a rural North Carolina town by building the ultimate rich man's folly and reveals the eccentricities, heartaches, and even money problems of these Social Register denizens and their friends and employees." In Kiernan’s hands, this mashup of Downton Abbey-like extravagance set amid the “rugged mountain simplicity” of Appalachia reads like a Southern fairy tale — Brothers Grimm meets Gone with the Wind. A passionately researched family saga of death and divorce, suicide and sickness, fortunes gained and lost, spanning two world wars and set at the crux of the Gilded Age yielding to the modern era, The Last Castle is ultimately a story of fortitude and survival. Biltmore is an ideal vessel for an exploration of our worship of affluence and social cachet, and more importantly, the American myth of classlessness. It's about celebrity culture, wealth disparity, the remarkable charity and foresight of a few wealthy people, the urge to create and maintain a family legacy and, in its darker moments, the ever-present potential for personal tragedy. Reigning royalty of the Gilded Age, Edith and George Vanderbilt, and their lifetime of financial excess, ruins, scandal, and perseverance come alive on these pages.

Now, broken and ruined, these places are documented in Christopher's book, Abandoned America: The Age of Consequences . Exploring sites like the charred remains of the Hotel Do De, the rusted cells of the Essex County Jail Annex, the sublime majesty of the Church of the Transfiguration, or the eerie and dilapidated remnants of the New Castle Elks Lodge, the work spans architectural treasures left to the elements and then all too often lost forever.

He engineered the perfect placement of brick and stone, built ingenious hoists and cranes (among some of the most renowned machines of the Renaissance) to carry an estimated 70 million pounds hundreds of feet into the air, and designed the workers' platforms and routines so carefully that only one man died during the decades of construction--all the while defying those who said the dome would surely collapse and his own personal obstacles that at times threatened to overwhelm him. King also offers a wealth of fascinating detail that opens windows onto fifteenth-century life: the celebrated traditions of the brickmaker's art, the daily routine of the artisans laboring hundreds of feet above the ground as the dome grew ever higher, the problems of transportation, the power of the guilds. Ross King is the highly praised author of Leonardo and The Last Supper, Brunelleschi's Dom e (the Book Sense Nonfiction Book of the Year in 2000), Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling , The Judgment of Paris , Machiavelli: Philosopher of Power , and two novels, Ex Libris and Domino .

With their idyllic settings, unique architecture and cozy interiors, the Cabin Porn photographs, are an invitation to slow down, take a deep breath, and feel the beauty and serenity that nature and simple construction can create. Photographer Noah Kalina 's editorial work has been featured in New York Magazine , Esquire , and, Food & Wine .

Travel through the history of architecture in The LEGO Architect . "Stunning...be the Corbusier of LEGO.

After a ten-year silence, Christopher Alexander and his colleagues at the Center for Environmental Structure are now publishing a major statement in the form of three books which will, in their words, "lay the basis for an entirely new approach to architecture, building and planning, which will we hope replace existing ideas and practices entirely." At the core of the books, too, is the point that in designing their environments people always rely on certain "languages," which, like the languages we speak, allow them to articulate and communicate an infinite variety of designs within a forma system which gives them coherence. The second of three books published by the Center for Environmental Structure to provide a "working alternative to our present ideas about architecture, building, and planning," A Pattern Language offers a practical language for building and planning based on natural considerations.

With a simple, witty story and free-spirited illustrations, Peter H. Reynolds entices even the stubbornly uncreative among us to make a mark — and follow where it takes us. To prove her point, Vashti jabs at a blank sheet of paper to make an unremarkable and angry mark. Once the child takes that very first stab at art, winningly and economically dramatized by Reynolds's fluid pen-and-ink, watercolor, and tea image of Vashti swooping down upon that vacant paper in a burst of red-orange energy, there's no stopping her. Everything about this little gem, from its unusual trim size to the author's hand-lettered text, from the dot-shaped cocoons of carefully chosen color that embrace each vignette of Vashti to her inventive negative-space masterpiece, speaks to them.

Weaving together the insights and guidance of dozens of wallpaper and paint specialists, textile fabricators, accessories artisans, and interior designers, Lemieux has curated an unparalleled education in recognizing the hallmarks of timeless, heirloom-quality pieces. Named to Fortune ’s Most Powerful Women Entrepreneurs, CHRISTIANE LEMIEUX is founder of the lifestyle brand LEMIEUX et CIE.

Third Coast Atlas: Prelude to a Plan describes the conditions for urbanization across the Great Lakes region. The book is primarily divided into two different types of chapters: “Potentials” (which are topical and cover subjects like political borders, hydrology, and trash disposal) and “Prospects” (which focus on specific cities like Chicago, Buffalo, and Montreal).

He has set a high standard for what all historic house museums strive for: magnificently preserved buildings and grounds, engaging interpretation, and--perhaps most challenging of all--economic self-sufficiency. "If George Vanderbilt did nothing more than engage the two most prominent and storied designers of their time, architect Richard Morris Hunt and landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, to carry out his vision of a European estate in the southern Appalachians, he would have created an American icon. Covington defends the Biltmore owner's model of private, for-profit historical preservation against charges of commercialism leveled by nonprofit preservationists, repeats his complaints about inheritance taxes, extols his entrepreneurial daring, salutes his Biltmore restoration projects ("surpassed what many had seen anywhere") and raves about "customer satisfaction reports... comparable to those enjoyed by a five-star resort."

In the tradition of Rizzoli’s Historic Houses of the Hudson Valley and Great Houses of New England , Great Houses of the South features a stunning array of newly photographed homes that range over three centuries and are distinctive examples of the architecture of the region. Laurie Ossman has served as the Deputy Director at Vizcaya Museum and Gardens in Miami.

Small-firm practice, use of technologies such as BIM, and project delivery methods, such as IPD and architect-led design-build Career development and licensure for emerging professionals and state-mandated continuing education for established architects Business management topics, such as organizational development, marketing, finance, and human resources Research as an integrated aspect of architectural practice, featuring such topics as evidence-based design and research in a small-firm context. In his essay, “Architect-led Design Build and Architect as Construction Manager for Small Firms and Small Projects,” James Walbridge, AIA provides practical information on how to get started. Read David Gamble’s article, ”Architects in the Non-Profit Sector,” to gain insight into how architects are engaging in pro-bono work. Learn how this is done from François Lévy, AIA in his article, “Small Firms, Small Projects, and Building Information Modeling.” Straightforward explanations of the technology and its usage in a small firm context are provided, sharing experience gained directly from practice. Susan Jones, FAIA in her essay, “Research and Small Firm Practice,” describes how research can benefit every design practice.

A history of landscape design ranges from antiquity to the present day, exploring the diverse ways in which humankind has shaped the landscape around them, from ancient Egyptian royal cemeteries to magnificent Renaissance gardens to modern-day earthworks, reflecting on how the landscape reflects social development and cultural values. Perhaps best known as the founding director of New York's Central Park Conservancy, which oversaw and funded the park's revitalization, Rogers (The Forests and Wetlands of New York City) here presents a comprehensive survey of landscape design. Embracing all cultures and ranging from prehistoric times to the present, this book covers the broadest range of subjects implied by the title, including city planning, landscape architecture, conservation, earthworks, and other uses of land in contemporary art.

For the first time ever, The Louvre: All the Paintings collects all 3,022 paintings currently on display in the permanent collection in one beautifully curated volume.Organized and divided into the four main painting collections of the museum— the Italian School, the Northern School, the Spanish School, and the French School— the paintings are then presented chronologically by the artist's date of birth.Four hundred of the most iconic and significant paintings are illuminated with 300-word discussions by art historians Anja Grebe and Vincent Pomarède on the key attributes of the work, what to look for when viewing the painting, the artist's inspirations and techniques, biographical information on the artist, the artist's impact on the history of art, and more. All 3,022 paintings are fully annotated with the name of the painting and artist, the date of the work, the birth and death dates of the artist, the medium that was used, the size of the painting, the Louvre catalog number, and the room in the Louvre in which the painting is found. He created the Erich Lessing Culture and Fine Arts Archive which is an extensive image library featuring over 40,000 high resolution images from over 500 museums and private collections throughout the world, including a thorough coverage of such institutions as: The Louvre and the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, the Uffizi in Florence, the Pinacoteca di Brera in Milan, the Prado in Madrid, and many more. He lives in Vienna and travels regularly to Paris and other art capitals of the world.

Keys to the Kingdom addresses the topics of impressioning, master key escalation, skeleton keys, and bumping attacks that go well beyond any treatment of these topics in the author’s previous book, Practical Lock Picking . Every year at DEFCON and ShmooCon, Deviant runs the Lockpick Village, and he has conducted physical security training sessions at Black Hat, DeepSec, ToorCon, HackCon, ShakaCon, HackInTheBox, CanSecWest, ekoparty, and the United States Military Academy at West Point.

With their idyllic settings, unique architecture and cozy interiors, the Cabin Porn photographs, are an invitation to slow down, take a deep breath, and feel the beauty and serenity that nature and simple construction can create. Photographer Noah Kalina 's editorial work has been featured in New York Magazine , Esquire , and, Food & Wine .

After a ten-year silence, Christopher Alexander and his colleagues at the Center for Environmental Structure are now publishing a major statement in the form of three books which will, in their words, "lay the basis for an entirely new approach to architecture, building and planning, which will we hope replace existing ideas and practices entirely." At the core of the books, too, is the point that in designing their environments people always rely on certain "languages," which, like the languages we speak, allow them to articulate and communicate an infinite variety of designs within a forma system which gives them coherence. The second of three books published by the Center for Environmental Structure to provide a "working alternative to our present ideas about architecture, building, and planning," A Pattern Language offers a practical language for building and planning based on natural considerations.

In A Guide to the Good Life , William B. Irvine plumbs the wisdom of Stoic philosophy, one of the most popular and successful schools of thought in ancient Rome, and shows how its insight and advice are still remarkably applicable to modern lives. Readers learn how to minimize worry, how to let go of the past and focus our efforts on the things we can control, and how to deal with insults, grief, old age, and the distracting temptations of fame and fortune. William B. Irvine is Professor of Philosophy at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio.