Books published by Monacelli Press

From acclaimed Southern designer Janie Molster comes this lively collection of vibrant interiors and insightful advice for colorful living. How do you make a home that fits to a T? That's tailored to your lifestyle, perfectly expresses your personality, is as comfortable as a second skin, and lets you live life to the fullest? Over more than two decades, Janie Molster has become known for creating family homes that are as bold and sophisticated as they are inviting and practical.In House Dressing, Janie reveals the secrets behind her unique ability to craft dreamy interiors and shares down-to-earth advice for creating your own beautiful and personal spaces. Showcasing a range of projects, Janie invites readers into country cottages, a riverside retreat, and her own urban farmhouse - Janie's personal design lab - exploring different styles, from glamorous and soulful to contemporary and eclectic. Janie tells the story and describes her thinking behind the design of each one: her recipe for the perfect mix of antique and new, easy but impactful paint treatments you can try, and - based on her own experience - how to create a fabulous home for a family of seven. Through House Dressing, Janie gives a master class in working with color, pattern, and texture to make spaces that are in turn bold, serene, glamorous, and comfortable, but always personal.

S,M,L,XL presents a selection of the remarkable visionary design work produced by the Dutch firm Office for Metropolitan Architecture (O.M.A.) and its acclaimed founder, Rem Koolhaas, in its first twenty years, along with a variety of insightful, often poetic writings. The inventive collaboration between Koolhaas and designer Bruce Mau is a graphic overture that weaves together architectural projects, photos and sketches, diary excerpts, personal travelogues, fairy tales, and fables, as well as critical essays on contemporary architecture and society. The book's title is also its framework: projects and essays are arranged according to scale. While Small and Medium address issues ranging from the domestic to the public, Large focuses on what Koolhaas calls "the architecture of Bigness." Extra-Large features projects at the urban scale, along with the important essay "What Ever Happened to Urbanism?" and other studies of the contemporary city. Running throughout the book is a "dictionary" of an adventurous new Koolhaasian language -- definitions, commentaries, and quotes from hundreds of literary, cultural, artistic, and architectural sources.

A beautiful and illuminating guide to the use and cultural history of edible flowers, featuring gorgeous original photography, simple recipes and preparation methods, and thoughtful essays on eating flowers by leading voicesThis stunning guide to edible flowers--conceived by Monica Nelson, the founding creative and photo director of the influential journal Wilder Quarterly, and Adrianna Glaviano, a noted food and lifestyle photographer--is packed with information and features lush original photography. Organizing more than 100 flowers alphabetically by their common name, the book offers in each entry handy reference notes including the flower’s Latin name, its general flavor profile, its origins, and which parts of the plant are edible, all accompanied by a vibrant photographic portrait. Punctuated by simple recipes and short, essayistic moments written by a diverse roster of celebrated chefs, artists, and writers recalling the use of edible flowers in their creative and gastronomic histories, Edible Flowers is both a practical primer and a delightful read.

The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death offers readers an extraordinary glimpse into the mind of a master criminal investigator. Frances Glessner Lee, a wealthy grandmother, founded the Department of Legal Medicine at Harvard in 1936 and was later appointed captain in the New Hampshire police. In the 1940s and 1950s she built dollhouse crime scenes based on real cases in order to train detectives to assess visual evidence. Still used in forensic training today, the eighteen Nutshell dioramas, on a scale of 1:12, display an astounding level of detail: pencils write, window shades move, whistles blow, and clues to the crimes are revealed to those who study the scenes carefully. Corinne May Botz's lush color photographs lure viewers into every crevice of Frances Lee's models and breathe life into these deadly miniatures, which present the dark side of domestic life, unveiling tales of prostitution, alcoholism, and adultery. The accompanying line drawings, specially prepared for this volume, highlight the noteworthy forensic evidence in each case. Botz's introductory essay, which draws on archival research and interviews with Lee's family and police colleagues, presents a captivating portrait of Lee.

Reimagining: New Perspectives features more than 120 of the latest acquisitions by the UBS Art Collection, one of the largest and most important corporate collections in the world.Inspired by a recent UBS Art Gallery exhibition of the same name, this book features works by acclaimed artists who offer new and diverse perspectives based on their distinct backgrounds and experiences, inviting us to reimagine our world. With an accompanying essay by Global Head of the UBS Art Collection, Mary Rozell, this unique survey of works acquired in the past years provides a rare insight into the acquisition direction of the preeminent global collection.Reimagining: New Perspectives will be exclusively launched to the art world at the Art Basel Miami Beach exhibition in December 2022 and will be featured at forthcoming prestigious art events in 2023.

Elegantly luxurious presentation of the residential work of Thomas Kligerman, an architect renowned for skillful integration of contemporary flair into traditional designs.As a full career monograph, the book will feature iconic Kligerman houses built over the past twenty years and current projects that demonstrate the evolution of his architectural thinking. This will be a 'deep dive' into the design process, illustrated by sketches and renderings as well as finished photography.An introduction by Architectural Digest design editor Mitchell Owens will provide an overview of the trajectory while Kligerman's own essay will focus on his interest in developing a truly American style that reflects both the Puebloan style of the Southwest and the shingle style that has prevailed in along the East Coast since the late nineteenth century.Kligerman designs only single-family houses, and his clients have beautiful sites in the Hamptons and throughout New England with a few on the West Coast and in Texas. He is deeply steeped in the history of European and American domestic architecture and wonders whether there is (or can be) an American house paradigm. He grew up in Connecticut and New Mexico so the two strands that he draws on most art the solid adobe forms of Puebloan style and the lighter, more open shingle style. He also considers West Coast architects like Bernard Maybeck and English arts and crafts designers like Vosey and Lutyens. Rather than looking at single, specific precedents and adapting them for contemporary life, Kligerman tries to incorporate multiple strands to come up with something new 'to move the needle forward' as he says.

Long known as an enclave for the wealthy and glamorous, today the Hamptons and nearby coastal communities have become a haven of seaside modernism. New Hamptons Houses showcases houses that reflect the area's design history and strong affinity for its landscape.There are few places in the United States that have experienced as many waves of American modernism as Long Island's East End. In New Hamptons Houses, author David Sokol explores the latest architectural experiments taking place in New York's legendary summer retreat. With contemporary design increasingly mainstream in the region, the seventeen residences featured here reflect modernism's spread across not just the Hamptons but up-and-coming destinations like Bellport and Montauk, Greenport and Mattituck. Yet perhaps more important, the houses featured here represent a shift away from the image of conspicuously sprawling properties for the elite; these projects return to modernism's founding principles, shun Instagrammable spectacle, and steward the East End's increasingly fragile landscape.These houses interface with the seaside landscape in ways that that reference the Hamptons' rich design history and sensitively highlight Long Island's famed natural beauty. Some are renovations and additions to houses by famed twentieth century modernists like Andrew Geller, Charles Gwathmey, and Norman Jaffe, and leading offices such as Bates + Masi, Young Projects, and Ryall Sheridan Architects represent the contemporary approach to twenty-first century regionalism. New Hamptons Houses presents these and numerous other examples of design-forward residences that are responsive to terrain, building vernacular, and cultural legacy.

Fifth Avenue encapsulates the architectural and social history of New York's most elegant and glamorous street in six walks that guide readers from the Washington Square Arch in Greenwich Village to Marcus Garvey Park in Harlem.Fifth Avenue offers readers an architectural tour of Fifth Avenue, stopping at the city's major monuments - the Empire State Building, Rockefeller Center, Saint Patrick's Cathedral - as well as the luxurious glamour of Tiffany's, Cartier, and the Plaza Hotel and the art treasures of Museum Mile. Through six structured walks, the book not only presents the history of New York's most famous avenue, but also explores its architecture in depth, block by block, building by building. This is a book about what can be seen and experienced on Fifth Avenue today. Buildings are chosen for discussion first and foremost because they are interesting to look at. In a relaxed and engaging style, the author presents the building's story, explores the reasons why it is there, and explains why it looks the way it does. Along the way, the reader not only has the chance to discover fascinating and unusual buildings, but also gains a comprehensive understanding of the historic, social, economic, and political forces which shaped Fifth Avenue's growth and character.

A rich presentation of the sensual and scenographic effects created by the legendary Stanford White, whose designs extend beyond architecture to encompass lavish interiors, jewelry, furniture, gilded frames, and ceremonial events.Once proposed as the "Commissioner of Beauty" for New York City, Stanford White was a master of architecture, interior design, and ornament, fearlessly juxtaposing materials and objects from myriad cultures and times. Drawing on precedents from antiquity and the Renaissance, from Asia, the Middle East, and Europe as well as Colonial America, White created complex surfaces inside and out. Stanford White in Detail examines this innovative and intricate web through lush, tightly framed vignettes of carved wood and marble, metalwork, mosaic, and tile as well as generous overall room views to demonstrate how these are woven together for a unique effect.

Fusion: The Performance of Architecture explores the work of award-winning, Boston-based architecture firm Payette, a leader in the design of complex settings for science and healthcare.Payette's work embodies the integration of design and performance that is essential to the creation of humane and sustainable buildings of any type. To achieve this integration amidst the programmatic intricacy, technological complexity, and intense energy use of hospitals and laboratories, the firm draws on its almost ninety-year history of progressive innovation. It draws, as well, on an inclusive, collaborative, research-oriented culture that is a model for the profession. Fusion presents Payette's philosophy and traces the firm's contributions through concise histories of laboratory and hospital design. It explores the core principles that underlie its work-Identity and Transformation, Materiality and Craft, Taming Complexity and Measuring Performance-and digs deeply into seven of the firm's most recent projects. Other chapters describe the process of nurturing the design excellence and practice culture that earned Payette the 2019 AIA Architecture Firm Award.The monograph's 400 diagrams, drawings, and photographs reveal the firm's principles and methods, along with the open-source tools it has developed to enable it to design, not "by the numbers," but with the numbers. A gallery of architectural "fingerprints" presents plan views of more than 100 of Payette's projects, drawn to a common scale.With a preface by Z Smith, Director of Sustainability and Building Performance at EskewDumezRipple, and an introduction from Kevin Sullivan, President of Payette, Fusion includes essays by Sullivan and partners James Collins, George Marsh, Leon Drachman, Andrea Love and Peter Vieira, as well as a critical reflection by Mark Lee, Chair of the Department of Architecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design.

The first survey of the classic twentieth-century houses that defined American Midwestern modernism.Famed as the birthplace of that icon of twentieth-century architecture, the skyscraper, Chicago also cultivated a more humble but no less consequential form of modernism--the private residence. Modern in the Middle: Chicago Houses 1929-75 explores the substantial yet overlooked role that Chicago and its suburbs played in the development of the modern single-family house in the twentieth century. In a city often associated with the outsize reputations of Frank Lloyd Wright and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, the examples discussed in this generously illustrated book expand and enrich the story of the region's built environment. Authors Susan Benjamin and Michelangelo Sabatino survey dozens of influential houses by architects whose contributions are ripe for reappraisal, such as Paul Schweikher, Harry Weese, Keck & Keck, and William Pereira. From the bold, early example of the "Battledeck House" by Henry Dubin (1930) to John Vinci and Lawrence Kenny's gem the Freeark House (1975), the generation-spanning residences discussed here reveal how these architects contended with climate and natural setting while negotiating the dominant influences of Wright and Mies. They also reveal how residential clients--typically middle-class professionals, progressive in their thinking--helped to trailblaze modern architecture in America. Though reflecting different approaches to site, space, structure, and materials, the examples in Modern in the Middle reveal an abundance of astonishing houses that have never been collected into one study--until now.

A luxury volume on a luxury designer, A Romance of East and West presents the residential work of Baltimore-based interior decorator Mona Hajj.Characterized by delight and discovery, grandeur, and rustic charm, Hajj''s work spans a wide range of historic periods and styles. Her interiors combine a far-reaching global vision with an American emphasis on elegance, comfort, and simplicity.Born in West Africa and educated in Europe, Lebanon, and the United States, Mona Hajj brings a truly eclectic aesthetic to her interiors. Since founding Mona Hajj Interiors in 1990, she has produced a body of work that is grounded in classicism yet influenced by modern-day styles and ways of living. Her international background inspires the work in myriad ways, from the inclusion of a Syrian chest of drawers to a reference to Moroccan ceramic tiles.A Romance of East and West features antique European and Middle Eastern textiles from Hajj''s personal collection that inspire the use of color and pattern in her work.

Imagining the Modern explores Pittsburgh''s ambitious modern architecture and urban renewal program that made it a gem of American postwar cities, and set the stage for its stature today.In the 1950s and ''60s an ambitious program of urban revitalization transformed Pittsburgh and became a model for other American cities. Billed as the Pittsburgh Renaissance, this era of superlatives--the city claimed the tallest aluminum clad building, the world''s largest retractable dome, the tallest steel structure--developed through visionary mayors and business leaders, powerful urban planning authorities, and architects and urban designers of international renown, including Frank Lloyd Wright, I.M. Pei, Mies van der Rohe, SOM, and Harrison & Abramovitz. These leaders, civic groups, and architects worked together to reconceive the city through local and federal initiatives that aimed to address the problems that confronted Pittsburgh''s postwar development.Initiated as an award-winning exhibition at the Carnegie Museum of Art in 2014, Imagining the Modern untangles this complicated relationship with modern architecture and planning through a history of Pittsburgh''s major sites, protagonists, and voices of intervention. Through original documentation, photographs and drawings, as well as essays, analytical drawings, and interviews with participants, this book provides a nuanced view of this crucial moment in Pittsburgh''s evolution. Addressing both positive and negative impacts of the era, Imagining the Modern examines what took place during the city''s urban renewal era, what was gained and lost, and what these histories might suggest for the city''s future.

The first book dedicated to the career of the preeminent American architect, Henry N. Cobb.As a builder, teacher, and mentor, Henry N. Cobb has been one of the most eloquent voices in architecture for well over half a century. A founding partner of Pei Cobb Freed & Partners, where he has worked actively and continuously since its inception in 1955, his practice encompasses a wide variety of building types, with projects across the world that resound in the public imagination. Cobb''s sensitivity to place and use generate surprising and unparalleled forms in educational and civic buildings--such as the Portland Museum of Art in Maine, the Anderson School of Management at UCLA, the John Joseph Moakley U.S. Courthouse in Boston, and Palazzo Lombardia in Milan--or in corporate and commercial projects, such as the John Hancock Tower in Boston, Fountain Place Tower in Dallas, Tour EDF at La Défense in Paris, and Four Seasons Hotel and Residences at One Dalton, now under construction in Boston.Henry N. Cobb: Words & Works 1948-2018 is his first book, uniquely combining poetic analyses of his distinguished works with essays and lectures that cover topics about architecture''s past, present, and future. His voice is complemented by interviews and discussions with Michael Graves, Robert A.M. Stern, Hal Foster, Charles Gwathmey, Paolo Conrad Bercah, Cynthia Davidson, Peter Eisenman, Mark Pasnik, and John Hejduk. Handsomely designed by OverUnder, this book is packaged in a portable size evocative of the Library of America series.A longtime educator--and chair of the Harvard Graduate School of Design from 1980 to 1985--Cobb takes up his extensive subject matter in a thoughtful and engaging manner. To anyone interested in the development of American architecture in its transition from modernism to postmodernism and into the era of high-tech starchitecture, there are a number of treasures here to discover. Henry N. Cobb is a landmark survey--in words and works--of one of the great architects of our time.