The only comprehensive book on the fascinating life and work of the celebrated architectural designer, John Pawson.
This visual biography brings together John Pawson's architecture, life, clients, travel, photography, design, books, and ideas. Written by Deyan Sudjic, an architectural historian and long-time friend, it explores the full scope of Pawson's life, from his Yorkshire upbringing and time spent in Japan to the fashion years and the influence of art, and provides a thoughtful and intimate insight into his life, inspirations, and work.
It features wonderfully engaging stories and anecdotes about Pawson's work with such clients as Bruce Chatwin, Calvin Klein, Karl Lagerfeld, Shiro Kuramata, Martha Stewart, and many more. The book features documents, photography and ephemera, including never-seen-before images from Pawson's personal and professional archives - richly illustrated, this is the ultimate book on John Pawson.
The incredible life story of one of the 20th century's most important designers, who knew everyone from Hemingway to Picasso.
Ettore Sottsass and the Poetry of Things chronicles the life and times of one of the most important, prolific, and, above all, interesting designers and architects of the 20th century. Sottsass (1917-2007), originally trained as an architect and worked as a design consultant for Olivetti, where he developed the iconic Valentine typewriter, before going on to found the Memphis Group in the 1980s, ushering in an era of influential designs in furniture, ceramics and lighting that continue to inspire design minds today with their flamboyance and use of color.
Author Deyan Sudjic (Director of London's Design Museum) does not limit his narrative to an examination of Sottsass' iconic designs. Though a native son of Italy, Sottsass cast a shadow of influence on the entire world, traveling extensively over the course of his life and interacting with some of the 20th century's most iconic figures, including Picasso, Hemingway and Allen Ginsberg. Sudjic's writing, complemented by unpublished personal photographs from Sottsass' archive, offers a unique view of Sottsass from the perspective of the world that surrounded him, recounting anecdotes of encounters between the designer and his famous contemporaries. The result is a unique and comprehensive portrait not only Sottsass but of the last 100 years of design in Italy and around the world.
Features anecdotes of his encounters with the biggest creatives of the time, and details of his influences and inspirations, documenting the contemporary design scene both in Italy and abroad.
Shiro Kuramata (1934-91) was a truly exceptional designer of furniture and interiors. Many of his poetic, precise and unique pieces, like the expanded-metal-mesh How High the Moon Armchair and the acrylic, aluminium and paper-flower Miss Blanche Chair, are still highly prized, collected by museums like MoMA and the V&A and sold at auction. Sadly, however, most of the hundreds of interiors he designed no longer exist, and can only be glimpsed in photographs or described by those who saw them.
This combination of the precious and the disappeared is appropriate for a designer like Kuramata, whose work was neither modern nor nostalgic, neither western nor Asian, but which has a remarkable creative power as well as a sense of endless invention. This compelling and highly influential work is documented here in this beautiful monograph.
