The Victorian Home
Ellen M. Plante
A comprehensive tour of 19th century fashion and decor, The Victorian Home leads you through a typical period house, then describes how to recreate the warmth and charm of Victorian style in your own home.

by Robin Middleton and David Watkin (1980)
This volume offers a complete survey of European architecture during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, examining in particular the influence of the cultural trends of the period on the architects' works. The first section of the book deals with the history of eighteenth-century architecture in France and England, countries where Cartesian-school philosophical speculation and Anglo-Saxon philosophical empiricism wielded a determining influence. After analyzing the developments of the classical tradition and its propagation throughout Europe, the book studies in depth the history of architectural movements, comprising neo-classicism, neo-Renaissance and neo-Gothic architecture. The outstanding, fore-running personalities of this brilliant artistic period who, in the course of the nineteenth century, offered fecund theoretic and stylistic contributions, include Gottfried Semper, John Ruskin and Eugene Viollet-le Duc.
Ellen M. Plante
A comprehensive tour of 19th century fashion and decor, The Victorian Home leads you through a typical period house, then describes how to recreate the warmth and charm of Victorian style in your own home.
Keith Moskow and Robert Linn
"Each year the pristine beaches, lush pine forests, and picturesque New England towns of Martha’s Vineyard draw tens of thousands of admirers to this beautiful island. Some of these visitors have become part-time residents, building contemporary homes alongside the traditional Victorian cottages, sea captains’ mansions, and colonial farmhouses that comprise the island’s cultural and architectural heritage. Rarely does one find such a concentration of outstanding contemporary design. Authors Keith Moskow and Robert Linn... present twenty-five new houses that extend the traditional Vineyard vernacular of shingled houses and cottages. Each of the architects has described the goals for the project and the source of the design. Some reference nautical themes, others environmental concerns, and still others appropriateness of materials and scale. A significant number rely on a plan strategy based on a series of pavilions to minimize intrusion in the landscape while still taking advantage of views and prevailing breezes. What links the houses is that they are all built to stand the test of time in the sometimes extreme marine environment and they respectfully break with tradition."--Publisher description.
Alina Payne
"In the late 19th century, a centuries-old preference for highly ornamented architecture gave way to a budding Modernism of clean lines and unadorned surfaces. At the same moment, everyday objects--cups, saucers, chairs, and tables--began to receive critical attention.Alina Payne addresses this shift, arguing for a new understanding of the genealogy of architectural modernism: rather than the well-known story in which an absorption of technology and mass production created a radical aesthetic that broke decisively with the past, Payne argues for a more gradual shift, as the eloquence of architectural ornamentation was taken on by objects of daily use. As she demonstrates, the work of Adolf Loos and Le Corbusier should be seen as the culmination of a conversation about ornament dating as far back as the Renaissance. Payne looks beyond the usual suspects of philosophy and science to establish theoretical catalysts for the shift from ornament to object in the varied fields of anthropology and ethnology; art history and the museum; and archaeology and psychology"--
guest-edited by Neil Spiller
We are entering a new era of architecture that is technologically enhanced, virtual and synthetic. Contemporary architects operate in a creative environment that is both real and digital; mixed, augmented and hybridised. This world consists of ecstasies, fears, fetishisms and phantoms, processes and spatiality that can best be described as Surrealist. Though too long dormant, Surrealism has been a significant cultural force in modern architecture. Founded by poet Andre Breton in Paris in 1924 as an artistic, intellectual and literary movement, architects such as Le Corbusier, Diller + Scofidio, Bernard Tschumi and John Hejduk realized its evocative powers to propel them to 'starchitect' status. Rem Koolhaas most famously illustrated Delirious New York (1978) with Madelon Vriesendorp's compelling Surrealist images. Architects are now reviving the power of Surrealism to inspire and explore the ramifications of advanced technology. Architects' studios in practices and schools are becoming places where nothing is forbidden. Architectural languages and theories are 'mashed' together, approaches are permissively appropriated, and styles are not mutually exclusive. Projects are polemic, postmodern and surreally media savvy. Today's architects must compose space that operates across the spatial spectrum. Surrealism, with its multiple readings of the city, its collage semiotics, its extruded forms and artificial landscapes, is an ideal source for contemporary architectural inspiration.