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...

A collection of 85 ‘extinct’ objects, now superseded, unfashionable or simply forgotten.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

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. ...

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...

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...

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...

"The familiar tale of star-crossed lovers is revisited with gripping immediacy and compelling freshness . . . a voice readers will not soon forget" (Stephanie Kallos, national bestselling author).A fiercely beautiful love story for the ages, The Disappeared traces one woman's three-decades-long journey from the peaceful streets of Montreal to the war-torn villages of Cambodia, as a brief affair turns into a grand passion of loss and remembrance, set agains...

In this dazzling debut novel, four young brothers in a small Nigerian town encounter a madman, whose prophecy of violence threatens the core of their family Told from the point of view of nine-year-old Benjamin, the youngest of four brothers, The Fishermen is the Cain and Abel-esque story of an unforgettable childhood in 1990s Nigeria. When their father has to travel to a distant city for work, the brothers take advantage of his extended absence to skip school and go fishing. At the forbid...

Our gadgets, appliances, and cars are sleeker and more elegant than they’ve ever been; in our free time, we trawl the internet for pictures of flawless minimalist interiors; and even the great industrialist of our time—Steve Jobs—is admired more for his visual savvy than his technological inventiveness. And yet with Instagram and Pinterest at our fingers and great design more available—and more affordable—than ever, we’ve had no guidebook to this ever-fascinating field. Though it’s an ines...

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 ...