Winner, IPPY Silver Award in Architecture Finalist, 2016 Foreword Indies Award in Architecture An intimate journey through the remarkable Venetian urban landscape, this book reveals the architectural features that contribute to the incredulity of the beautiful city from the mysterious sotoporteghi to the complexity of Carlo Scarpa's "immaculate detailing." Evocative photographs complement the personal reveries contributed by 36 notable international architects and architectural writers who have been inspired by the city and share in her wonder. Included are personal reflections from Tadao Ando, James Biber, Mario Botta, Michele De Lucchi, Massimiliano Fuksas, Robert McCarter, Richard Murphy, Witold Rybczynski, Annabelle Selldorf, and Thomas Woltz.

The transformations of the Strip—from the fake Wild West to neon signs twenty stories high to “starchitecture”—and how they mirror America itself. The Las Vegas Strip has impersonated the Wild West, with saloon doors and wagon wheels; it has decked itself out in midcentury modern sleekness. It has illuminated itself with twenty-story-high neon signs, then junked them. After that came Disney-like theme parks featuring castles and pirates, followed by replicas of Venetian canals, New York skyscrapers, and the Eiffel Tower. (It might be noted that forty-two million people visited Las Vegas in 2015—ten million more than visited the real Paris.) More recently, the Strip decided to get classy, with casinos designed by famous architects and zillion-dollar collections of art. Las Vegas became the “implosion capital of the world” as developers, driven by competition, got rid of the old to make way for the new—offering a non-metaphorical definition of “creative destruction.” In The Strip, Stefan Al examines the many transformations of the Las Vegas Strip, arguing that they mirror transformations in America itself. The Strip is not, as popularly supposed, a display of architectural freaks but representative of architectural trends and a record of social, cultural, and economic change. Al tells two parallel stories. He describes the feverish competition of Las Vegas developers to build the snazziest, most tourist-grabbing casinos and resorts—with a cast of characters including the mobster Bugsy Siegel, the eccentric billionaire Howard Hughes, and the would-be political kingmaker Sheldon Adelson. And he views the Strip in a larger social context, showing that it has not only reflected trends but also magnified them and sometimes even initiated them. Generously illustrated with stunning color images throughout, The Strip traces the many metamorphoses of a city that offers a vivid projection of the American dream.

This previously unpublished work is essential reading for anyone who has followed Marco Frascari’s scholarship and teachings over the last three decades. It also provides the perfect introduction for anyone new to his writings. As ever, Frascari does not offer prescriptive tools and frameworks to enact his theories of drawing and imagination; instead, he teaches how to build one’s own through individual practice. An illuminating introduction places the text in a wider context, providing the reader with a fascinating and important context and understanding to this posthumous work. Frascari's sketchbooks are reproduced faithfully in full colour to provide the reader with a remarkable insight into the design process of this influential mind.

Venetian art connoisseur, interior designer, and hotelier Francesca Bortolotto Possati knows the intricacies of Venice. To have her as a guide is to experience firsthand her passion for the private side of the mythic city whose daily visitors outnumber its population. Join her to visit artists’ studios, elegant Venetian friends, and palaces’ secrets. Everywhere one wanders, a sense of history saturates the buildings and landscapes, harking back to the artists of the Renaissance and the chic masquerade balls of centuries past.The discerning eye of photographer Robyn Lea makes this book a revelation of the Venice of dreams, which will surely allow readers to see this iconic destination through new eyes.A sentimental foreword by Jeremy Irons perfectly complements this stunning volume.

In English for the first time, a wild and darkly funny book that combines Surrealist painter Leonora Carringon's fantastical writing and illustrations for children The maverick surrealist Leonora Carrington was an extraordinary painter and storyteller who loved to make up stories and draw pictures for her children. She lived much of her life in Mexico, and her sons remember sitting in a big room whose walls were covered with images of wondrous creatures, towering mountains, and ferocious vegetation while she told fabulous and funny tales. That room was later whitewashed, but some of its wonders were preserved in the little notebook that Carrington called The Milk of Dreams. John, who has wings for ears, Humbert the Beautiful, an insufferable kid who befriends a crocodile and grows more insufferable yet, and the awesome Janzamajoria are all to be encountered in The Milk of Dreams, a book that is as unlikely, outrageous, and dreamy as dreams themselves.

The Naturalis historia by Pliny the Elder provided Renaissance scholars, artists and architects with details of ancient architectural practice and long-lost architectural wonders - material that was often unavailable elsewhere in classical literature. Pliny's descriptions frequently included the dimensions of these buildings, as well as details of their unusual construction materials and ornament. This book describes, for the first time, how the passages were interpreted from around 1430 to 1580, that is, from Alberti to Palladio. Chapters are arranged chronologically within three interrelated sections - antiquarianism; architectural writings; drawings and built monuments - thereby making it possible for the reader to follow the changing attitudes to Pliny over the period. The resulting study establishes the Naturalis historia as the single most important literary source after Vitruvius's De architectura.

Who hasn't longed to escape to the enchanting canals and mysterious alleyways of Venice? Globetrotting writer Paula Weideger not only dreamed the dream, she took the leap. In Venetian Dreaming, she charts the course of her love affair with one of the world's most treasured cities. Weideger's search for a place to live eventually takes her to the Palazzo Donà dalle Rose, one of the rare Venetian palaces continuously inhabited by the family that built it. She weaves the past lives of the family Donà with her own adventures as she threads her way through the labyrinthine city. Art and architecture are a constant presence. Yet even more strongly felt is the passage of time, the panorama of the seasons as reflected in special events -- Carnival, the Film Festival, September's historic regatta, midnight mass at San Marco. We follow Weideger as she explores the Ghetto, the expatriate community, and the lives of locals from noblemen to boatmen. Along the way she encounters everyone from the ghost of Peggy Guggenheim to the Merchant Ivory crowd, and experiences some high drama with the Contessa, her landlady. The resulting memoir is a wry and illuminating, intelligent and tender account of the once grand heritage and now imperiled future of Venice.