You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
Today’s home is filled with pieces from Pottery Barn, IKEA, and Crate & Barrel, and we pore over glossy catalogs in hopes of achieving the “modern interior.” This idealized aesthetic is the subject of Penny Sparke’s study, as she explores the style in both its absolute form and the diverse decorating approaches seen in the contemporary home. The shift from Victorian to modern style, The Modern Interior reveals, was not as simple and smooth as it is often perceived and the book probes the complicated history behind that transition. Sparke examines the work of such designers as Marcel Breuer, Frank Lloyd Wright, Charles and Ray Eames, and Mies van der Rohe, and draws upon design examples from the United States and Europe to reveal that, unlike the designed exteriors of buildings and institutions, the idea of the “interior” has been a largely abstract conception promoted through exhibitions, retail stores, and mass media. A comprehensive and in-depth investigation of the design environments we live and play in, The Modern Interior will be essential reading for all scholars and interested observers of architecture and modern design culture.
Interior Provocations: History, Theory, and Practice of Autonomous Interiors addresses the broad cultural, historical, and theoretical implications of interiors beyond their conventionally defined architectural boundaries. With provocative contributions from leading and emerging historians, theorists, and design practitioners, the book is rooted in new scholarship that expands traditional relationships between architecture and interiors and that reflects the latest theoretical developments in the fields of interior design history and practice. This collection contains diverse case studies from the late eighteenth century to the twenty-first century including Alexander Pope’s Memorial Garden, Design Indaba, and Robin Evans. It is an essential read for researchers, practitioners, and students of interior design at all levels.
In 1963, British inventor Alex Moulton (1920-2012) introduced an innovative compact bicycle. Architectural Review editor Reyner Banham (1922-1988) predicted it would give rise to "a new class of cyclists," young urbanites riding by choice, not necessity. Forced to sell his firm in 1967, Moulton returned in the 1980s with an even more radical model, the AM--his acclaim among technology and design historians owed much to Banham's writings. The AM's price tag (some models cost many thousands of dollars) has inspired tech-savvy cyclists to create "hot rod" compact bikes from Moulton-inspired "shopper" cycles of the 1970s--a trend also foreseen by Banham, who considered hot rod culture the "folk art of the mechanical era." The author traces the intertwined lives of two unusually creative men who had an extraordinary impact on each others' careers, despite having met only a few times.
This third edition of An Introduction to Design and Culture has been revised and updated throughout to include issues of globalization, sustainability and digital/interactive design. New for this edition is a chapter which covers key changes in design culture. Design culture has changed dramatically in the 21st century, the designer-hero is now much less in evidence and design has become much more interdisciplinary. Drawing on a wealth of mass-produced artefacts, images and environments including sewing machines, cars, televisions, clothes, electronic and branded goods and exhibitions, author Penny Sparke shows how design has helped to shape and reflect our social and cultural development. This introduction to the development of modern (and postmodern) design is ideal for undergraduate students.
Why do car manufacturers use paisley interiors to sell their products to women, and does it work? Is women's taste really different to men's? Who says so? And does it matter? In this highly original book Penny Sparke uses familiar objects of our everyday environments - furniture, cars and domestic appliances and interiors - to look at how taste has become a gendered issue in our culture. Ever since the industrial revolution, the cluttered interior has been associated with femininity while the minimal forms of modernist architecture have acted as markers of a masculine aesthetic. As Long as It's Pink argues that 'taste' has been a quality assigned to women while 'design' is a man-made construction which has taken aesthetic authority away from women. This in turn has succeeded in trivializing and marginalizing women's material culture. Ranging across histories of domesticity, feminine consumption and home-making, as well as modern design and broader cultural theories, Penny Sparke offers a completely new version of the history of our modern material culture.
How wealthy American women--as consumers and as influencers--helped shape French couture of the late nineteenth century; lavishly illustrated. French fashion of the late nineteenth century is known for its allure, its ineffable chic--think of John Singer Sargent's Madame X and her scandalously slipping strap. For Parisian couturiers and their American customers, it was also serious business. In Dressing Up, Elizabeth Block examines the couturiers' influential clientele--wealthy American women who bolstered the French fashion industry with a steady stream of orders from the United States. Countering the usual narrative of the designer as solo creative genius, Block shows that these women--as ...
This chronologically arranged set of case studies looks at how interior design has constantly redefined itself as a manifestation of culture, from the eighteenth-century to the present day. The book looks at the amateur activities of female "home makers" in search of creative outlets and married couples seeking to modernize their homes as well as the contributions of early professional (female) "interior decorators," and later, (male) "interior designers." It also considers the more anonymous role of commercial enterprises, such as hairdressing salons, cruise ships or modern offices. Issues relating to interiority, gender, and the relationship of the public sphere are also considered opening up a new level of design historical enquiry.
"Illustrated with over 500 photographs, A Century of Design is unique in providing a designer-by designer review within a historical context, revealing the connections between designers and major design movements from around the world from Art Nouveau to Postmodernism and beyond. Each chapter explains the background and orgins of the century's most important style movements, period by period. The most influential internationally known designers of the 20th century are discussed, their major works are featured and their sources of inspiration outlined. A Century of Design covers everything from telephones to textiles, cutlery to computers."--BOOK JACKET.
The development of the domestic interior is a history of consumption and taste. In Interiors: The Home since 1700, for the first time, this story is set against the cultural and industrial changes taking place in the western world since the seventeenth century. Unlike almost all previous histories, this book does not deal exclusively with the grand houses of the aristocracy: Steven Parissiens masterly text concentrates rather on the homes of the merchants and middle classes, who have been the first to take advantage of new technologies to furnish and decorate their homes. Fully illustrated with contemporary plates from catalogues and books, as well as paintings and photography, this beautiful book traces a constantly absorbing and often surprising story as it took place all over Western Europe and North America. Ideal for all students of and enthusiasts for the domestic interior and period settings. Steven Parissiens strong narrative explains not simply what happened, but why.