December’s Design Book List is filled with books on architecture, landscape, textiles and designers. All of these new and upcoming books would make great additions to your holiday reading list.
Included in the month’s Design Book List are: “Hippie Modernism: The Struggle for Utopia,” “The Urbanism of Frank Lloyd Wright,” “Rooftop Garden Design,” “The Making of Place: Modern and Contemporary Gardens,” “100 Contemporary Wood Buildings,” “Digital Textile Printing” and “Richard Hollis Designs for the Whitechapel.”
“Hippie Modernism: The Struggle for Utopia”
“Hippie Modernism” examines the art, architecture and design of the counterculture of the 1960s and early 1970s. This catalogue surveys the radical experiments that challenged societal norms while proposing new kinds of technological, ecological and political utopia. It includes the counter-design proposals of Victor Papanek and the anti-design polemics of Global Tools; including radical architectural visions, installations, experimental films, posters and prints, documentation of performances, and publications and books.
While the turbulent social history of the 1960s is well known, its cultural production remains comparatively under-examined. In this volume, scholars explore a range of practices such as radical architectural and anti-design movements emerging in Europe and North America; the print revolution in the graphic design of books, posters and magazines; and new forms of cultural practice that merged street theater and radical politics. Through a profusion of illustrations, interviews with figures, as well as new scholarly writings, this book explores the conjunction of the countercultural ethos and the modernist desire to fuse art and life.
BASIC FACTS: “Hippie Modernism: The Struggle for Utopia” is written by Greg Castillo, Esther Choi and Alison Clarke. Published by Walker Art Center. Release Date: November 24, 2015. Paperback; 448 pages; $55.00.
“The Urbanism of Frank Lloyd Wright”
“The Urbanism of Frank Lloyd Wright” presents a new interpretation of the architect's work and offers new perspectives on the history of modernism. Neil Levine places Wright's projects – produced over more than fifty years – within their historical, cultural, and physical contexts, while relating them to the theory and practice of urbanism as it evolved over the twentieth century. Levine overturns the conventional view of Wright as an architect who deplored the city and whose urban vision was limited to a utopian plan for a network of agrarian communities he called Broadacre City. Rather, Levine reveals Wright's larger, more varied, interesting, and complex urbanism, demonstrated across the span of his lengthy career.
Beginning with Wright's plans from the late 1890s through the 1950s, Levine demonstrates Wright's place among the leading contributors to the creation of the modern city. Wright's designs are shown to be those of an innovative precursor and creative participant in the world of ideas that shaped the modern metropolis. Illustrated with drawings, plans, maps, and photographs, this book features the first extensive new photography of materials from the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation Archives.
BASIC FACTS: “The Urbanism of Frank Lloyd Wright” is written by Neil Levine. Published by Princeton University Press. Release Date: December 1, 2015. Hardcover; 464 pages; $65.00.
“Rooftop Garden Design”
Green roofs – the ultimate in sustainable building practices – continue to generate enormous interest and enthusiasm among architects, landscape designers, and urban planners. This illustrated book provides a comprehensive guide to contemporary trends in rooftop garden design, and provides definitive theory and design industry knowledge.
The designers of the project case studies are leaders in their fields, and are drawn from across Australia, Chile, China, Europe, Japan, Mexico, Philippines, Scandinavia, Thailand, United Kingdom, United States, and Vietnam. The designers provide details on the benefits of their rooftop gardens, offering readers inspiration and informative reviews of the work, design considerations, operation and maintenance. This book is a great resource for anyone working or studying in the rooftop construction, environmental landscape and design fields.
BASIC FACTS: “Rooftop Garden Design” is written by David Fletcher. Published by Images Publishing District Ac. Release Date: December 11, 2015. Hardcover; 224 pages; $49.95.
“The Making of Place: Modern and Contemporary Gardens”
Gardening is rich in tradition, and many gardens are explicitly designed to refer to or honor the past. But garden design is also rich in innovation, and in “The Making of Place” John Dixon Hunt explores the wide varieties of approaches, aesthetics, and achievements in garden design throughout the world today.
The gardens Hunt explores offer surprising new ideas about how we can carve out a space for respite in nature. Taking readers to gardens public and private, busy and hidden away, to botanical gardens, small parks, university campuses, and vernacular gardens, Hunt showcases the differences between cultures and countries around the globe, including the United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany, China, and Australia. Richly illustrated, “The Making of Place” is sure to inspire even the most modest of home gardeners.
BASIC FACTS: “The Making of Place: Modern and Contemporary Gardens” is written by John Dixon Hunt. Published by Reaktion Books. Release Date: December 15, 2015. Hardcover; 288 pages; $40.00.
“100 Contemporary Wood Buildings”
Not so long ago, some might have considered wood a material of the past, long since replaced by more modern components such as concrete and steel. The truth is radically different. Bolstered by new manufacturing techniques and ecological benefits, wood has seen a resurgence in contemporary construction. This double-volume survey explores how architects around the world have created and invented with this elementary material. Featuring follies, large buildings, and ambitious urban renewal schemes, it celebrates the diverse deployment of wood from architects in China, Chile, and everywhere in between.
“100 Contemporary Wood Buildings” pays tribute to many emerging international talents, as well as to renowned figures. It explores each of these architect’s vision and innovation, as well as investigates the techniques, trends, and principles that have informed their work with wood. It examines the computer guided milling that has allowed for new forms, the responsible harvesting that allows wood to align with our environmental concerns, and, above all, wood’s enduring appeal to our senses and our psyche, comforting hectic modern lives with a sense of Arcadian beauty and simplicity.
BASIC FACTS: “100 Contemporary Wood Buildings” is written by Phillip Jodidio (Editor). Published by Taschen (Sew edition). Release Date: December 15, 2015. Hardcover; 656 pages; $59.99.
“Digital Textile Printing”
The development of digital textile printing at the end of the twentieth century has had a profound effect on the design, creation, use and understanding of textiles. This new technology – combined with advances in fabric and dye chemistry – has made it possible to produce complex images on fabric comprising millions of colors, quickly, inexpensively and in flexible quantities; a revolution that has led to a rapid increase in demand, which is predicted to rise still further.
“Digital Textile Printing” is the first to describe the historical and cultural context from which digital textile printing emerged, and to engage critically with the many issues that it raises: the changing role of the designer in the creation of printed textiles; the ways in which the design process is being transformed by new technology; the relationships between producers, clients and the textile industry; and the impact of digital printing on the wider creative industries. At the core of this study are two key questions: what constitutes authenticity in an age when printed textiles are created through the combined agency of the artist/designer and the computer? And how can this new technology be put to work in a sustainable way during a period of spiraling demand?
BASIC FACTS: “ Digital Textile Printing” Series: Textiles That Changed the World is written by Susan Carden. Published by Bloomsbury Academic. Release Date: December 17, 2015. Hardcover; 160 pages; $100.00.
“Richard Hollis Designs for the Whitechapel: Graphic Work for the Whitechapel Art Gallery, 1969-73 and 1978-85”
Richard Hollis has been called "the graphic designer's designer." Best known as the author of the classic “Graphic Design: A Concise History” (1994), it is his six decades of design work that is currently undergoing a long overdue critical reevaluation. In “Richard Hollis Designs for the Whitechapel,” author Christopher Wilson focuses on the visual identity Hollis developed during the 1970s and 80s for London's then up-and-coming Whitechapel Art Gallery.
Working closely with curators and artists, Hollis designed a series of conceptually rigorous posters, brochures, and catalogs for pioneering exhibitions by artists such as Georg Baselitz, Anselm Kiefer, Joseph Cornell, Philip Guston, and Frida Kahlo. This timely collection presents all of Hollis's masterpieces of understatement, along with critical essays and interviews.
BASIC FACTS: “Richard Hollis Designs for the Whitechapel: Graphic Work for the Whitechapel Art Gallery, 1969-73 and 1978-85” is written by Christopher Wilson. Published by Hyphen Press. Release Date: December 29, 2015. Paperback; 288 pages; $35.00.
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