BELLAS ARTES

America the Beautiful showcases the stunning spaces closest to our nation's heart--from the woods in the Great Appalachian Valley that Davy Crockett once called home to the breathtaking sweep of California's Big Sur coast to the wilds of Alaska. It also celebrates the people who have made this country what it is, featuring a wide range of images including the Arikara Nation in the early 1900s and scientists preparing for travel to Mars on a Hawaiian island. Culled from National Geographic's vaunted photo archives, spanning a period of more than 130 years, this provocative collection depicts the splendor of this great nation as only National Geographic can, with a dramatic combination of modern and historical imagery--from the creation of architectural icons like the Golden Gate Bridge and Lady Liberty to the last of the country's wild places preserved in our national parks. With a structure inspired by the original song "America the Beautiful," this book recognizes what makes our nation great, region by region. And all 50 states and six territories of the U.S. are honored with 50 words from celebrities, historians, activists, conservationists, and politicians who call America home. Profound and inspiring, this is a book for everyone who has ever marveled at the beauty of the United States.

Readers will respond to the warm and sophisticated work of Hugh and Simon Jacobsen, whose style of architecture and interiors might best be described as American modern vernacular—the place where traditional comfort and modern design meet. Hugh Newell Jacobsen, the legendary architect and late co-founder with his son, Simon, of Jacobsen Architecture, once said “the best house is polite to her neighbors and never shouts.” This statement is a key to the philosophy of the firm, whose houses are suffused with a kind of quiet sophistication that mingle elegant, subtle modernism, with respect for local vernacular traditions. Low-key on the outside, on the inside these houses offer dancing symphonies in white. Unmarked by moldings, walls and ceilings express simple volumetric forms composed of solid planes and voids, while, upon floors of burnished wood or travertine, furniture, much of it designed by the firm, allows for serene repose and practical, unfussy use. Featured here are exemplars of the firm, from Harbor Hill—a cluster of 12 small structures, appearing at first as a group of smallish shingled Nantucket cottages, that reveals itself as a single serene residence overlooking Nantucket Harbor—to Windsor, a Florida Colonial abstraction in Vero Beach. Featuring inviting interiors, exteriors, and gardens, the book is an expression of eloquent design.

An in-depth look at Charles and Ray Eames's prolific legacy—one that has placed them among the most important American designers of the twentieth century and at the forefront of modernism. Charles and Ray Eames's expansive and monumental career in furniture design ran from 1941 to 1978. This comprehensive and illustrated text serves as a guidebook to their most important pieces and themes. As beloved figures in design, art, and architecture who emerged from the optimism of the 1950s, the couple’s egalitarian and humanistic furniture designs made them household names. Most famous for their chairs, they also created seminal works of architecture and film. Written by their grandson, Eames Demetrios, An Eames Primer is an easy-to-read and informational book to the world's most famous and influential furniture designers.

This is the first of Pentreath’s books to present his own output in its entirety—from his personal residences in Dorset, London, and Scotland that brought him international fame to many old and new houses that he has designed and some of the larger, town-scaled projects that make his practice unique in the world of traditional design. Although the results range from his colorful and romantic versions of the English country cottage to traditional splendor, there are underlying ideas that inform the breadth of his output—a sense of scale, proportion, craft, detail, sustainability, and appropriateness—that have a universal relevance today.

In this essential TASCHEN introduction to Tadao Ando we explore the hybrid of tradition, modernism, and function that allows his buildings to enchant architects, designers, fashion designers, and beyond. Through key projects including private homes, churches, museums, apartment complexes, and cultural spaces, we explore a uniquely monumental yet comforting aesthetic that draws as much on the calm restraint of Japanese tradition as the compelling modernist vocabularies of Bauhaus and Le Corbusier. With featured projects in Japan, France, Italy, Spain, and the United States, we see not only Ando’s global reach but also his refined sensitivity for the environs: the play of light through windows, and, in particular, the interaction of buildings with water. From the mesmerizing Church of the Light in Osaka to the luminous Punta della Dogana Contemporary Art Center in Venice, this is a radiant tour through a distinctly contemporary form as much as a timeless appeal of light, elements, and equilibrium.

In 1965, Steve Schapiro started documenting Andy Warhol for LIFE magazine: Warhol was cementing a reputation as an important Pop artist who drew his inspiration from popular culture and commercial objects. With his sunglasses, blond wig, and bland public utterances, Warhol was enigmatic, charismatic, intensely ambitious, and aware that to become a star, you needed the presence of people to document your ascent. Schapiro, also ambitious and hardworking, who in his own words “kept quiet and smiled a lot,” was an ideal witness to Warhol’s relentless rise from cult New York artist to 20th-century icon. Ironically, LIFE never published the story, so many of these images are seen here for the first time, scanned from negatives found deep in Schapiro’s archive.