July’s Design Book List is full of books on architecture, designers, landscape, furniture, interior design and more. Look out for these new design book releases and add a few to your summer reading list.
“House Rules: An Architect’s Guide to Modern Life”
Drawing on examples of her own distinctive, humane modern design, architect Deborah Berke demonstrates how to create a serene haven for contemporary living. “House Rules” documents the beauty and relevance of Deborah Berke’s vision by articulating eight guiding principles to achieve an enriching domestic space. Her rules range from how to design a meaningful sequence from indoors to out, to the need for abundant storage to live an uncluttered life.
“House Rules” delves deep into Berke’s working process and her approach to design, showcasing more than fifty residences. The book also addresses such timely factors as environmental sustainability and innovative construction techniques. Drawing on these examples of her user-friendly contemporary designs, “House Rules” demonstrates how to craft a peaceful space for modern living. Photographs of details illustrate her principles, underscoring both the poetry and practicality of Berke’s ideas.
BASIC FACTS: “House Rules: An Architect’s Guide to Modern Life” is written by Deborah Berke (Author) and Tal Schori (Editor). Published by Rizzoli. Release Date: July 12, 2016. Hardcover; 208 pages; $45.00.
“Toward an Urban Ecology: SCAPE / Landscape Architecture”
Architect Kate Orff has an optimistic and transformative message about our world: we can bring together social and ecological systems to sustainably remake our cities and landscapes. Part monograph, part manual, part manifesto, “Toward an Urban Ecology” reconceives urban landscape design as a form of activism, demonstrating how to move beyond familiar and increasingly outmoded ways of thinking about environmental, urban, and social issues as separate domains; and advocating for the synthesis of practice to create a truly urban ecology.
In purely practical terms, SCAPE has already generated numerous tools and techniques that designers, policy makers, and communities can use to address some of the most pressing issues of our time, including the loss of biodiversity, the loss of social cohesion, and ecological degradation. This book features numerous projects and select research from SCAPE, and conveys a range of strategies to engender a more resilient and inclusive built environment.
BASIC FACTS: “Toward an Urban Ecology: SCAPE / Landscape Architecture” is written by Kate Orff. Published by The Monacelli Press. Release Date: July 12, 2016. Paperback; 272 pages; $50.00.
“Rethinking the Modular”
In 1965, leading Swiss furniture company USM patented its signature modular furniture system, USM Haller. This flexible storage solution for both home and office was inspired by Fritz Haller’s modular architecture and designed for infinite reuse and reconfiguration. Considered a design classic, USM Haller is included in the collections of major museums including MoMA and the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum.
Released as part of USM’s fiftieth-anniversary celebration of this iconic furniture design, “Rethink the Modular” examines the role of unit-based systems in the wider context of architecture and design. It combines previously published writings, commissioned essays from innovators John Thackara and Rick Poyner, and interviews with leading figures in the design world that explain how the concept of the modular influences their work. Interspersed with visual material, the texts reveal the many possibilities created by balancing structure with flexibility, and seek to redefine the place of modularity in modern design history.
BASIC FACTS: “Rethinking the Modular” is written by Burkhard Meltzer and Tido von Oppeln. Published by Thames & Hudson. Release Date: July 19, 2016. Paperback; 288 pages; $40.00.
“Interior Landscapes: A Visual Atlas”
"Interior Landscapes" posits the impossibility of the separation of interior and exterior in architecture and presents a guide to the hybridization of these two dialectical poles. The book begins in the 18th century and presents principles and concepts that have emerged through the history of architecture to support this idea.
By borrowing different interpretative elements – drawings, photographs, illustrations and more, “Interior Landscapes” is conceived of as a visual atlas, aimed to demonstrate how, through the contamination of interior and exterior, always-new architectural insights emerge.
BASIC FACTS: “Interior Landscape: A Visual Atlas” is written by Stefano Corbo. Published by Images Publishing Dist Ac. Release Date: July 20, 2016. Hardcover; 224 pages; $60.00.
“First Choice: Leading International Designers Select the Very Best of Their Own Work”
“First Choice” is a continuing opportunity to learn how the world's top designers approach and evaluate their own work. In an attempt to demonstrate the broad parameters of design, Ken Cato has selected a cross-section of designers from more than 40 countries and asked the impossible question of them to choose and justify their favorite all-time work and support this choice with those other works considered. This is a reference book for those interested in graphic design and the selection criteria applied to the world's leading exponents of the profession.
BASIC FACTS: “First Choice: Leading International Designers Select the Very Best of Their Own Work” is written by Ken Cato. Part of the First Choice Series. Published by Images Publishing Dist Ac. Release Date: July 23, 2016. Hardcover; 516 pages; $95.00.
“Aldo Bakker”
Dutch designer Aldo Bakker (b. 1971) is well-known for the creation of experimental shapes that blur the boundaries between art and design. Bakker established his international reputation in 2010 with the Copper Collection, a series of everyday products like watering cans and mixing bowls made from copper. Bakker’s work can be found in the collections of the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, the Victoria & Albert Museum, the Vitra Museum and the Stedelijk Museum.
BASIC FACTS: “Aldo Bakker” is written by Aldo Bakker (Artist), Hans den Hartog Jager (Contributor) and Alice Rawsthorn (Contributor). Published by NAio10 Publishers. Release Date: July 26, 2016. Paperback; 192 pages; $45.00.
“Fluxbooks: Fluxus Artist Books from the Luigi Bonotto Collection”
Dispensing with the official role and elitist nature of the conventionally conceived art object, Fluxus artists' books sought to occupy more subversive positions by shirking conventional modes of conception and distribution, breaking all commercial ties and operating as salvos in the struggle to bridge art and life. These books offered artists fuller autonomy in the production of their own work and opportunities for broader distribution, and became central to the movement. Using inexpensive printing processes such as stenciling, photocopying and offset printing, Fluxus artists became their own publishers, gallerists and curators. As these books came to be expected to do more than merely contain thoughts and images, they exceeded the structure of the traditional book format and mutated into boîtes, containers, binders and boxes.
“Fluxbooks” is the first detailed study of the artist's book within the Fluxus movement and presents Fluxus as the site of some of the most productive and irreverent transformations of the book medium in art history.
BASIC FACTS: “Fluxbooks: Fluxus Artist Books from the Luigi Bonotto Collection” is written by Giorgio Maffei and Patrizio Peterlini. Published by Mousse Publishing. Release Date: July 26, 2016. Paperback; 295 pages; $35.00.
“Design @Work: Inspiring concepts for contemporary workspaces”
This book showcases high-caliber international projects that reveal compelling contemporary and unconventional workspaces, particularly spaces that redefine where we work and how we work together, and which promote new forms of work flexibility, creativity and collaboration. Combining photography with in-depth descriptions and detailed floor plans, this “Design @Work” helps to illustrate architectural innovation and interior design and how these considerations impact work culture, be it in unique studio locations to modern office skyscrapers, warehouse lofts or anything in-between.
BASIC FACTS: “Design @Work: Inspiring concepts for contemporary workspaces” is written by Gina Tsarouhas. Published by Images Publishing Dist. Ac. Release Date: July 29, 2016. Hardcover; $224 pages; $59.95.
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