American Modern

Danny Danziger

Museum: Behind the Scenes at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

An ?intriguing? oral portrait of the people behind the Metropolitan Museum of Art ( Entertainment Weekly ) Using more than fifty interviews, award-winning writer Danny Danziger creates a fascinating mosaic of the people behind New York's magnificent Metropolitan Museum of Art. From the aristocratic, acerbic director of the museum, Philippe de Montebello, to the curators who have a deep knowledge and passionate appreciation of their collections, from the security guards to the philanthropists who keep the museum's financial life blood flowing, Danziger brings to life this extraordinary world through the words of those who are devoted to making the Met the American institution it surely is.

Herbert Ypma

Mexican Contemporary

Here are some of the most outstanding recent projects by Mexican architects and designers such as Jose de Yturbe, Manuel Mestre, Luis Barragán, and Ricardo Legorreta. The diverse traditions of Mexico's architectural and design history are reflected and re-created in their work: the mysterious monolithic architecture of the pre-Columbian era; the baroque, tile-clad cathedrals of the Catholic conquistadors; and the rugged character and massive proportions of the colonial hacienda. To the three defining elements of Mexican architecture-- the wall, the courtyard, and the ubiquitous use of color--this new generation has brought exciting innovations of scale and texture, creating spaces of massive volume and surfaces of exposed adobe, rusted steel, and weathered timber and stone.

Eva Hagberg

Dark Nostalgia

As the late twentieth-century fascination with rounded shapes, organic influences, and plastics fades, interior designers are increasingly drawn to deep colors, polished woods, velvets, furs, leather, dark metals, and brick that have a nostalgic quality--materials used liberally in centuries gone by. Efforts to shape a more authentic, less austere present by creating an idealized version of the past have begun to appear in commercial and residential design throughout the country and abroad. Dark Nostalgia presents twenty-six projects that exemplify the smooth incorporation of evocative historic detail into current interiors. Public spaces, including New York's famous Royalton Hotel lobby renovation, the Clift Hotel bar in San Francisco, and Alain Ducasse's newest restaurant, Adour, as well as private residences and smaller, intimate restaurants and clubs by cutting-edge designers, including AvroKO, David Rockwell, Roman & Williams, Julian Schnabel, Philippe Starck, and Adam Tihany, demonstrate the many successful ways this trend towards a dark nostalgia has been incorporated in recent designs.