Reasons for walling a house' is a book about the unusual transformation of a small single family house by the Belgian architecture firm 51N4E. A couple living in a single family house on the Belgian countryside wanted to have 'more space'. But, instead, the architects that they hired enclosed their small house with a three-meter-tall steel wall. This paradoxical transformation challenged the owners to rethink their ideas of a home. Upon the project's completion they decided to open up their residence as a guest house for artists, designers, writers, and thinkers. Each person invited would receive a carte blanche, a fridge full of food, and the opportunity to have the run of the house without its inhabitants. Reasons for Walling a House unravels the secrets of an unlikely transformation, seen through the eyes of the first seven guests-the artists Enrique Marty and Dirk Braeckman, theater director and actor Josse de Pauw graphic designers Something Fantastic, as well as the architects Andrea Branzi, BeL and 51N4E.

This New York Times bestselling book is filled with hundreds of fun, deceptively simple, budget-friendly ideas for sprucing up your home. With two home renovations under their (tool) belts and millions of hits per month on their blog YoungHouseLove.com, Sherry and John Petersik are home-improvement enthusiasts primed to pass on a slew of projects, tricks, and techniques to do-it-yourselfers of all levels. Packed with 243 tips and ideas—both classic and unexpected—and more than 400 photographs and illustrations, this is a book that readers will return to again and again for the creative projects and easy-to-follow instructions in the relatable voice the Petersiks are known for. Learn to trick out a thrift-store mirror, spice up plain old roller shades, "hack" your Ikea table to create three distinct looks, and so much more.

A Financial Times Best Book of the Year A Guardian Best Architecture Book of the Year “Sharp, revealing, funny.” —The Guardian “An original and even occasionally hilarious book about losing ideals and finding them again... [De Graaf] deftly shows that architecture cannot be better or more pure than the flawed humans who make it.” —The Economist Architecture, we like to believe, is an elevated art form that shapes the world as it pleases. Four Walls and a Roof turns this fiction on its head, offering a candid account of what it’s really like to work as an architect. Drawing on his own tragicomic experiences in the field, Reinier de Graaf reveals the world of contemporary architecture in vivid snapshots: from the corridors of wealth in London, Moscow, and Dubai to the demolished hopes of postwar social housing in New York and St. Louis. We meet ambitious oligarchs, developers for whom architecture is nothing more than an investment, and layers of bureaucrats, consultants, and mysterious hangers-on who lie between any architect’s idea and the chance of its execution. “This is a book about power, money and influence, and architecture’s complete lack of any of them... Witty, insightful and funny, it is a (sometimes painful) dissection of a profession that thinks it is still in control.” —Financial Times “This is the most stimulating book on architecture and its practice that I have read for years.” —Architects’ Journal

In 1964, Bernard Rudofsky curated the exhibition Architecture Without Architects at The Museum of Modern Art in New York, thereby drawing the attention of the postwar Western public to traditional architectures, rescuing them from the ignominy to which they had been consigned by the 'national' ideologies of Europe in the 1930s. In the early 1980s, Ivan Illich published a number of radical critiques of modernity in which he drew attention to 'vernacular' values, proposing a trenchant but hospitable definition of this term. It derives from Roman law, in which everything produced within the household for consumption within the household and not for sale or exchange is vernacular. In order to locate this proposition within the field of architectural criticism, this book borrows with ironic intent part of the title of Robert Venturi's celebrated work, Learning from Las Vegas (1977), which launched the fashion for post-modernism in architecture. Taking advantage of a collection of maquettes of vernacular architecture (the only one of its kind in the world), whose special attributes he highlights and whose value he underlines, the author selects contemporary realisations by architects from Africa, Asia, America and Europe that seem to him to constitute a 'new vernacular architecture'. The emphasis here is on materials available on the fringes of the market, on the safeguarding and development of traditional know-how, on the social role of the architect and on the teaching of architecture.

Everyone wants a home that is beautiful and clutter free. But most of us are unsure how to get there without breaking the bank. Popular interior designer Shannon Acheson takes the guesswork out of creating a lovely home. Home Made Lovely is a mind-set: decorating should be about those who live there, rather than making your home into a magazine-worthy spread. Shannon walks you through how to · decorate in a way that suits your family's real life · declutter in seven simple steps · perform a house blessing to dedicate your home to God · be thankful for your current home and what you already have · brush up on hospitality with more than 20 actionable ideas that will make anyone feel welcome and loved in your home In Home Made Lovely, Shannon meets you right where you are on your home-decorating journey, helping you share the peace of Christ with family members and guests.