India Modern

India Modern Review

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Showcases the best of contemporary Indian interiors - homes, bars, restaurants, hotels, resorts, spas, shops. Features stunning, previously unpublished photography by Michael Freeman. This book reveals the latest in Indian style, from the first boutique hotel in Delhi, The Manor, designed by the architects Shirley Fujikawa and Vinay Kapoor, to the restored fortress, and now hotel, of Devigarh, where each room is designed around a particular theme. Today, Indian design is a fascinating mixture of local styles and modern interpretations. Divided into four chapters - Breaking with Tradition, Reworking the Legacy, Courtyard and Tent, and Retreats - Modern Indian Interiors reveals the changing face of Indian interior design, and the innovative ideas being introduced by not only Indians, but also foreign architects and designers who have moved to India. With over 250 unpublished colour photographs by the renowned photographer Michael Freeman, this book will show the modern side of India that has not been seen before.

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Industrial Revolutionaries: The Making of the Modern World 1776-1914

Industrial Revolutionaries: The Making of the Modern World 1776-1914 Review

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In this vivid, sweeping history of the industrial revolution, Gavin Weightman shows how, in less than one hundred and fifty years, an unlikely band of scientists, spies, entrepreneurs, and political refugees took a world made of wood, powered by animals, wind, and water, and made it into something entirely new, forged of steel and iron, and powered by steam and fossil fuels. Weightman weaves together the dramatic stories of giants such as Edison, Watt, Wedgwood, and Daimler, with lesser-known or entirely forgotten characters, including a group of Japanese samurai who risked their lives to learn the secrets of the West, and John “Iron Mad” Wilkinson, who didn’t let war between England and France stop him from plumbing Paris. Distilling complex technical achievements, outlandish figures, and daring adventures into an accessible narrative that spans the globe as industrialism spreads, The Industrial Revolutionaries is a remarkable work of original, engaging history.

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Modern Architecture : Photographs by Ezra Stoller

Modern Architecture : Photographs by Ezra Stoller Review

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The title of this handsome, oversize book may be a bit of a curveball: it is a book of photography, not a treatise on modern architecture. Ezra Stoller, like all the other great architectural photographers, is a meticulous, patient craftsman as well as an artist, so much so that readers tend to forget that his occupation is essentially a commercial venture. Most of the time, members of his profession take pictures because they are hired to, and only rarely do they shoot subjects on their own initiative. In the course of his 50-year career, Stoller documented the products of some of American architecture's best and most famous figures, including Frank Lloyd Wright, Eero Saarinen, Kevin Roche, I.M. Pei, Philip Johnson, Paul Rudolph, Richard Meier, and particularly the firm of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. His sensibility was perfectly attuned to the ethos of the best modernist design of the day--valuing rationality, clarity, controlled surfaces, and occasionally some drama.

Nowadays, architecture is almost always shot in color, but the most artful examples of this genre are in black and white. Most of the 400 images in this book are satisfyingly monochromatic, and many are exquisite demonstrations that art and commerce are not mutually exclusive. Harvard professor William Saunders supplies a learned introduction, and Stoller provides useful and revealing notes to individual architects and photos. --John Pastier

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