Book Reviews
DESIGNS FOR SMALL SPACES
By Jennifer Hudson (Laurence King) £19.95 ISBN: 978-1-85669-661-6
It is all very well trying to find the best layout for a spatially-challenged home, but what if the real problem is having oversize objects within it? The fact is that urban living in becoming increasingly crowded. Smaller space is no longer a lifestyle choice but a necessity in most cities around the world where property is expensive and at a premium.
The large scale shift from houses to apartments is also significant in the way our lives are changing. The three groups most commonly affected by this change – the young, the divorced and separated, and older people outliving their partners – have very different housing, consumption and lifestyle needs.
This book sets out to aid the consumer in sourcing suitable objects for their home. Every product featured is in production or available to order directly from the designer as a custom-made item. Some of the ideas are ingenious and could make a real difference to small space living.
INTERIORS NOW! Vol. 1 By Angelika Taschen (Taschen) £24.99 ISBN: 978-3-8365-1951-9
The first volume of Angelika Taschen’s new series on contemporary interiors features some of the world’s most interesting apartments and houses - from Antwerp to Zurich, via Chiang Mai, Copenhagen, Mumbai, Moscow, Tokyo, and Shanghai. With an inspirational richness and diversity of styles, there are homes, residences, hideaways, and studios to impress, no matter what your taste.
It’s a real source of inspiration. Whether you’re looking for perspectives on flea market romance or space age bachelor pad, minimalism or neo- baroque, there are hundreds of provocative ideas in a book that cuts out the theory in order to show as many photographs as possible.
Highlights include French Vogue creative director and tastemaker Fabien Baron’s minimal Swedish country house by John Pawson; a penthouse miniature of Mies van der Rohe’s Nationalgalerie atop a war bunker in Berlin, owned by art collector Christian Boros; the Chiang Mai retreat of Thai artist Rirkrit Tiravanija; Roberto Cavalli’s Milanese apartment, a perfect reflection of his flamboyant personality; and a fantasy home created by a Dutch stylist and photographer in Shanghai.
COLOR + DESIGN: TRANSFORMING INTERIOR SPACE By Ron Reed (Fairchild) £45 ISBN: 978-1-56367-602-4
Much is written about colour use in interiors and a lot of it based around some pretty sound theory. Where Ron Reed highly with his interior colour guide book however is in the way in which some of these principles are visualized, bringing them to life in a way that makes the ideas behind them very easy to understand. It explains how to use colour in conjunction with key design principles – balance, rhythm, emphasis, proportion, scale, unity, harmony and variety. It also explores the positive and negative effects of experimental colour choices in both residential and commercial interiors, as well as the differences in colour perceptions among individuals and cultures. It is a detailed and highly informative study full of examples of how to confidently utilize the right colour scheme for any project.
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