ARQUITECTURA Y DISEÑO

Guía de bolsillo sobre los movimientos, las obras, los temas y las técnicas fundamentales. * Una nueva e innovadora introducción al arte creado desde finales de la década de 1960 hasta nuestros días. * 49 obras esenciales del arte contemporáneo, piezas que van desde el land art y el performance art hasta óleos y NFT, que se relacionan con los movimientos, conceptos y metodologías más significativos. Accesible, conciso y profusamente ilustrado con imágenes de obras emblemáticas de creadores de todo el mundo, este libro explora cómo y por qué se desarrolló este arte y se ponen de manifiesto las cruciales innovaciones de diversos artistas. Esta desmitificadora introducción al tema permite conocer con profundidad y disfrutar en toda su extensión el arte más revolucionario creado en las últimas décadas.

Inviting, perfect in proportion, exquisite in detail—such are a few of the ways to describe homes designed by John Simpson. Well known for his work with the British royal family at Buckingham and Kensington palaces and for his buildings at Eton College in the U.K. and at the University of Notre Dame in the U.S., he is perhaps most brilliant at the level of the house and home. Building Beautiful is an invitation to enter the work of this master designer, as one might visit with a treasured friend. From a dream made real within a Venetian palazzo—a former seventeenth-century near-ruin, brought back to glorious, fancifully detailed life—to an English countryside cottage with a thatched roof, the featured homes are expressions of Simpson’s unerring eye and extraordinary sense of beauty. Here we find drama in contrasts of scale and the seductive effects of light, where a cozy reading nook opens to an expansive living room with a double-height ceiling that nevertheless feels not overly large but rather just right. This is Simpson’s subtle art—a mastery of scale, balance, and a pervading sense of elegance.

Over two decades, William Curtis and Russell Windham have worked to show that classical architecture can embody the same attention to context and custom approach to design often ascribed to more modern movements, underscoring how versatile classical ideals and details can be. In styles reminiscent of the great Tudor manor houses of England to quaint symmetrical clapboard farmhouses, quintessentially Mission-style haciendas, and of course neo-Georgian mansions, the firm builds houses with a faithful adherence to historical detail, proportion, and materials that makes them stand out as truly world-class designers. With interiors as much a part of their core practice as exteriors, this firm is able to carry through an integrity of vision—graciously curved banisters, warm and inviting mantels, detailed brickwork, and coffered ceilings—that makes every project feel truly whole, complete. Yet a strong sense still pervades every featured home that they are organized to support modern lifestyles, taking the best of the past and adapting it to create homes that are truly comfortable and functional for today’s families.

Conceived by William Cecil, Lord High Treasurer to Queen Elizabeth I, and built between 1555 and 1587, Burghley House is a testament to the ambition and vision of the most powerful courtier of the first Elizabethan age. Designed by Cecil himself, in consultation with the Dutch Renaissance architect and painter Hans Vredeman de Vries, the architecture and interiors at Burghley reflect a mix of contemporary fashionable influences. The house’s facades are each markedly different, with a striking and ornate Gothic gatehouse beneath a roofline of cupolas and obelisks, and with French and Italian styles visible in the windows and pilasters. And inside, where the State Rooms house remarkable collections of furniture, textiles, and Old Master paintings acquired over the centuries, Cecil’s Gothic-style Old Kitchen remains alongside the magnificent Renaissance staircase and Italianate fireplace in the Great Hall.

The sophistication and modern femininity of the American luxury fashion house Carolina Herrera is captured in this evocative and vividly hued volume photographed by Elizaveta Porodina. A collaborative series of images, the first chapter of which was created in 2020 over Zoom, feature Porodina’s signature timeless, painterly style—an effect achieved through complex lighting techniques and equipment— capture the brand’s evolving collections designed by Creative Director Wes Gordon in a dreamy, otherworldly light. Inspired by dance, movement and the Herrera signature of bold color, this mesmerizing tome is flooded with photography of models and dancers in motion to reflect the vibrant energy and optimism of the clothing, arranged according to the chroma wheel instead of chronologically. Ethereal beauties, including singer and actress Dove Cameron, dancers Wendy Wheelan and Misa Kuranaga, and models Maggie Maurer and Mao Xing Xing, wear sweeping ballgowns, bold, saturated colors and dramatic silhouettes across ten collections designed by Wes Gordon over the past four years, capturing the fantastical universe of Beauty that is Carolina Herrera.