The first biography of an extraordinary woman and architect who left her mark on world capitals and reshaped modern designElla Briggs (1880–1977) was a talented architect, designer, and writer whose influence was felt on both sides of the Atlantic. She trained with the Viennese Secessionists and brought their radical ideas to Gilded Age New York. She designed modernist housing for the masses in Austria, was jailed as a suspected spy in Mussolini’s Italy, and thrive...

Tell My Sister Where I Am and Other Stories by Hanhtiet Le and Barbara Penner tells the vivid account of one woman's experiences of war and its aftermath, tearing families apart, and making neighbours out of strangers.Excerpt from Tell My Sister Where I Am and Other Stories:Grandmother summons me. I tiptoe to her and stand straight but small, stare at my ten toes lined up taut in the sand. Her lecture on disobedience rains down on me. ...

A collection of 85 ‘extinct’ objects, now superseded, unfashionable or simply forgotten.

Sexuality and Gender at Home is the first book to explore the meanings and experiences of home through the framework of sexuality. Looking at a broad spectrum of sexuality, gender and domesticity, it examines the many ways in which home is constructed, performed and experienced in relation to sexuality and gender. Considering identity issues such as age, class, ethnicity and gender, the authors problematize intimacy and question conventional ways of thinking about allegedly ‘private’ home ...

It's the late 1960s. In Canada, a girl thinks of war only as a boys' game; the aftermath can be handled by some new and improved detergent. Six small Khmer girls scattered about Cambodia are oblivious to the catastrophe looming over their homeland. In the human tsunami that casts survivors of the Khmer Rouge on Thailand's eastern border, each of these young women finds refuge during the early '80s. A second country isn't a second home. Our stateless six taste more than rationed rice in the re...

The story of the modern bathroom is both one of grand feats of engineering and mass production, and of the unremarkable and repressed. The most private place in the home, the bathroom is where we perform the most intimate of our daily routines; it is also a space where we take refuge from the outside world. Yet the moment we turn on a tap or flush the toilet, the smallest room is hooked up to a massive network of pipes, pumps and treatment plants. How can the mundane reality of daily bathro...

This significant reader brings together for the first time the most important essays concerning the intersecting subjects of gender, space and architecture. Carefully structured and with numerous introductory essays, it guides the reader through theoretical and multi-disciplinary texts to direct considerations of gender in relation to particular architectural sites, projects and ideas. This collection marks a seminal point in gender and architecture, both summarizing core debates and point...

A captivating exploration of the ever-evolving world of architecture and the untold stories buildings tell.When a building is finished being built, that isn’t the end of its story. More than any other human artifacts, buildings improve with time—if they’re allowed to. Buildings adapt by being constantly refined and reshaped by their occupants, and in that way, architects can become artists of time rather than simply artists of space.From the connected farmh...

At twenty-something, Alice is eager for the milestones of adulthood- leaving home, choosing a career, finding friendship and love on her own terms. But with each step she takes she feels the sharp tug of invisible threads- the love and worry of her parents, who want more than anything to keep her from harm. Her father fears for her safety to an extraordinary degree - but why?As she digs further into her father's story, Alice embarks on a journey of painful discovery- of memories lo...

A visionary yet practical guide to building a more sustainable future, by one of the most important voices in environmentally aware designAre there practical solutions to the many global challenges—climate change, poverty, insufficient healthcare—that threaten our way of life? Author John Thackara has spent a lifetime roving the globe in search of design that serves human needs. In this clear-eyed but ultimately optimistic book, he argues that, in our eagerness to ...

When Nathalie Chambers and her husband, David, first took over Madrona Farm, 27 acres on southern Vancouver Island with a deep history, they never thought their small-scale agricultural business would blossom into an international political act. As pressures from heirs, land developers and industrial farmers grew alongside their rows of organically produced food, the Chambers took action. Considered by many to be revolutionary and by some to be rebellious, their story opened many eyes to t...

Art is always ambiguous. When it involves the female body it can also be erotic. Erotic Ambiguities is a study of how contemporary women artists have reconceptualised the figure of the female nude. Helen McDonald shows how, over the past thirty years, artists have employed the idea of ambiguity to dismantle the exclusive, classical ideal enshrined in the figure of the nude, and how they have broadened the scope of the ideal to include differences of race, ethnicity, sexuality and ...