Martin Wood

Nancy Lancaster, who was born in 1897 into a wealthy Virginian family, became one of the greatest influences on interior decoration and garden design in Great Britain and America in the second half of the 20th century. She created what is known today as the 'English Country House Style' – a mixture of faded colors, chintzes and painted and antique furniture. In the garden, she worked in a formal yet romantic neo-Georgian style, which is still a strong spirit in British garden design. This book examines Nancy's contribution to the arts of interior decoration and garden design by chronicling her own homes and gardens –and her extraordinary life. Mirador, her family's Virginian country house, was to remain her key inspiration throughout her life. Nancy herself, her houses, her gardens and her friends are shown in an intriguing collection of photographs by distinguished photographers of the era, including Horst and Cecil Beaton.

English Country House Style

Nancy Lancaster

John Dyson

Mark Bryden

Jaimie Johnston

What opportunities does Design to Value afford the built environment? Design to Value is a commitment to process above all else. Well understood and applied in the manufacturing industries, its potential is only now starting to be realised in architecture, engineering and construction. It challenges designers to lead the way in creating more innovative and stakeholder-centric analyses, workflows, construction techniques and products. Through architectural thinking, value in the built environment can be maximised. Seeking to create deep and lasting impacts on industry, society and the planet, Design to Value rejects architecture’s current professional services model. The design and delivery stages of traditional procurement routes are not sustainable, and Design to Value outlines a new path for informed design processes. Bryden Wood, leading international expert in Modern Methods of Construction (MMC) and the Platform approach to Design for Manufacture and Assembly (P-DfMA), has spent the last fifteen years developing Design to Value as part of a new framework for the future of the design and construction industry. In this essential book, the practice challenges architects and the wider industry to think differently about how value is generated, enhanced and retained in the built realm, providing a method that will improve outcomes for architects, clients, industries and society. Architects must bend and break habitual processes to build better systems, better buildings and better futures. Features: Over 125 images, including photographs, sketches and diagrams Over 20 international case studies, including those from Canada, France, India, Italy, Japan, Saudi Arabia and USA Projects from leading practices, such as Atelier Bow-Wow, BIG, David Miller Architects, Kieran Timberlake and Lacaton & Vassal, as well as Bryden Wood.

The architecture of holistic design and creative technology

Design to Value

Against the background of Laura Ashley's life - from her birth in South Wales in 1925 to her sudden death in 1985 - Martin Wood tells the story of the iconic brand she and her husband, Bernard, created. Beginning with the textiles they designed and printed at home in their three-room flat in the 1950s, Wood looks at how, when they began designing and selling dresses, blouses and other clothes, and launched a range of household textiles and furnishings, `Laura Ashley style' became a phenomenon. The story is richly illustrated with more than 200 photographs and drawings, many never previously published, from the company's archives and the Ashley family's private records. From reviews of Nancy Lancaster 'Excellent . . . the best title on taste and design published this year' Financial Times 'Of all the books on houses and gardens . . . this one takes the cake' Deborah, Duchess of Devonshire, Spectator 'A rare treat, fluently written and superbly illustrated Daily Telegraph

Laura Ashley

John Fowler was an interior decorator who set fashions and changed tastes. The English country house style, which he developed with Sibyl Colefax and Nancy Lancaster, his partners in the firm of Colefax & Fowler, has proved a source of continuing inspiration to decorators and home-owners on both sides of the Atlantic and indeed across the world. Today, a hundred years after his birth, his influence is almost as powerful as it was in the mid 20th century, when he was working on many of Britain's finest and most famous houses, including Uppark, Chequers and Buckingham Palace, as well as dozens of more modest projects. Fowler's style has been so widely imitated that it is easy to forget what an innovator he was. In the 1930s and 1940s his style was a breath of fresh country air, sweeping away heavy velvets and damasks in favour of crisp cotton chintzes, replacing glossy mahogany with painted Regency furnishings, elaborate porcelain and glitzy ormolu with modest pottery and painted tin. Even after the war, when he came to specialize in the decoration of architecturally important interiors, he continued to prefer 'humble elegance' and 'romantic disrepair' to pomposity.

Martin Wood

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