Home Design & Org

Thousands of books on interior design have come and gone since the 1897 publication of this pioneering manual, but The Decoration of Houses remains, thanks to the insightful and inspiring advice of its co-authors. Before she became the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Age of Innocence, Edith Wharton was a society matron, remodeling a summer home in Newport, Rhode Island. With the able assistance of architect Ogden Codman, Jr., Wharton assembled this corrective to the rampant vulgarity of her nouveau riche neighbors. Wharton and Codman defied the excesses of the Gilded Age, counseling readers to reject the popular penchant for clutter in favor of simplicity and balance.
More than an engaging item of period charm, this historic guide offers examples of design rooted in architectural principles. Black-and-white photographs illustrate the authors' ideals of classic beauty, depicting grand ballrooms and spacious boudoirs as well as the elements common to homes of every size and era: doors and windows, walls and ceilings, floors, halls, and stairs. One of the genre's most important and influential titles, this volume sparked a Renaissance in American interior design, and its sound advice and practical approach remain forever in style.

The classic bestselling resource for every American home. Choosing fabrics, cleaning china, keeping the piano in tune, making a good fire, folding a fitted sheet, setting the dining room table, keeping surfaces free of food pathogens, watering plants, removing stains -- Home Comforts addresses the meanings as well as the methods of hands -- on housekeeping to help you manage everyday chores, find creative solutions to modern domestic dilemmas, and enhance the experience of life at home.
Further topics include: Making up a bed with hospital corners, Expert recommendations for safe food storage, Reading care labels (and sometimes carefully disregarding them), Keeping your home free of dust mites and other allergens, Home safety and security, A summary of laws applicable to the home, including privacy, accident liability, contracts, and domestic employees and more in this practical, good-humored, historic, philosophical, even romantic, guidebook to the art of household management.

Featuring one hundred of the most spectacular interiors across the world, this richly illustrated overview spans the entire twentieth century to the present day and includes interiors assembled by leading artists, fashion designers, architects, and interior and set designers. Bringing together diverse design talents, from Piero Fornasetti and Coco Chanel to Alvar Aalto, Marc Newson, and Matthew Williamson, this expanded edition of The Iconic Interior also features three new interiors from Los Angeles-based Commune Design, Morocco-based tile designers Samuel and Caitlin Dowe-Sandes, and Dimore Studio's London house interior for the owners of fashion design studio Dsquared2. The book also features a list of designer biographies and key works, making this a complete resource for designers and students.

Representing every style, from minimalism and art nouveau to neotraditional and Gesamtkunstwerk creations that defy definition, these iconic interiors are sure to inspire all audiences, from designers and students to homeowners and DIY enthusiasts.

"More than just a story of an abiding cultural preoccupation, The Longing For Less peels back the commodified husk of minimalism to reveal something surprising and thoroughly alive." -Jenny Odell, author of How to Do Nothing

"Thoughtful and absorbing . . . A superb outing from a gifted young critic that will spark joy in many readers." -Kirkus Reviews, starred review

"Less is more" Everywhere we hear the mantra. Marie Kondo and other decluttering gurus promise that shedding our stuff will solve our problems. We commit to cleanse diets and strive for inbox zero. Amid the frantic pace and distraction of everyday life, we covet silence-and airy, Instagrammable spaces in which to enjoy it. The popular term for this brand of upscale austerity, "minimalism," has mostly come to stand for things to buy and consume. But minimalism has richer, deeper, and altogether more valuable gifts to offer.

Kyle Chayka is one of our sharpest cultural observers. After spending years covering minimalist trends for leading publications, he now delves beneath this lifestyle's glossy surface, seeking better ways to claim the time and space we crave. He shows that our longing for less goes back further than we realize. His search leads him to the philosophical and spiritual origins of minimalism, and to the stories of artists such as Agnes Martin and Donald Judd; composers such as John Cage and Julius Eastman; architects and designers; visionaries and misfits. As Chayka looks anew at their extraordinary lives and explores the places where they worked-from Manhattan lofts to the Texas high desert and the back alleys of Kyoto-he reminds us that what we most require is presence, not absence. The result is an elegant new synthesis of our minimalist desires and our profound emotional needs.

The New York Times bestselling guide to putting things in order. Put America's #1 organizer to work for you.

Getting organized is a skill that anyone can learn, and there's no better teacher than America's organizing queen, Julie Morgenstern, as hundreds of thousands of readers have learned. Drawing on her years of experience as a professional organizer, Morgenstern outlines a simple organizing plan that starts with understanding your individual goals, natural habits, and psychological needs, so that you can work with your priorities and personality rather than against them. The basic steps-Analyze, Strategize, Attack-can be applied to any space or situation.

In this thoroughly revised edition, Morgenstern has incorporated new information in response to feedback from her clients and audiences. These changes include

- new chapters on organizing photographs, handbags, briefcases, and travel bags
- an expanded program for organizing your kitchen
- a new guide to getting started
- a guide to taming time and technology
- a fully updated resource guide

So whether it's a refrigerator cluttered with leftover mystery meals, a generation's worth of family photographs, or the challenge of living or working with a disorganized person, Julie Morgenstern will show you how to handle it all.

Celebrating the ultimate masterpieces of modernist design, from the Arts and Crafts movement up to the twenty-first century, Total Design offers an intimate tour of houses conceived as complete works of art. Each of the spectacular houses making up Total Design demonstrates how an architect realized a unifying vision through all aspects of design--architecture, furniture, fittings, decorative objects, color, and gardens. Presenting masterpieces of modern architecture conceived as complete works of art inside and out, author George H. Marcus, a veteran chronicler of modernist design, delivers a highly accessible tour of the creations of some of the twentieth century's greatest architects and designers, including Frank Lloyd Wright, Mies van der Rohe, Alvar Aalto, Eero Saarinen, Charles Rennie Mackintosh, and Gio Ponti. Together these masterworks of design offer a stunning survey of the many modes of modernist design, from the inventive refinement of Pierre Chareau to the colorful Nordic forms of Finn Juhl to the twenty-first-century expressionism of Daniel Libeskind.