Design students and groupies will enjoy the lavish new title from design writer Dominic Bradbury. The Iconic Interior: Private Spaces of Leading Artists, Architects, and Designers takes you on an extravagant international tour of famous personal digs.

These are interiors that have been widely photographed and shown in other sources. The charm is in finding them all together between the same hard covers. For each place, Bradbury offers a tidy essay about the designer’s work and what makes the place so special. Here is a sampling:

In London, UK, visit Nancy Lancaster’s lavish, traditional, butter-yellow living room or Jasper Conran’s handsome sitting room. In Conran’s home traditional style is filtered through contemporary restraint.

Step into the free-spirited, bohemian world of artists Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell at their renowned Charleston farmhouse in East Sussex.

In Belgium, Axel Vervoordt’s home is his castle – literally. This antiques dealer/ designer/entrepreneur is known for his unique combination of classicism and rusticity. He moved with his company into the castle after four years of renovation work.

Have a look at Vicente Wolf’s bright and airy New York loft which is the perfect stage for his photography and then check out Frederic Mechiche’s book-lined Paris apartment.

Todd Oldham owns a quirky country house in rural Pennsylvania filled with furnishings that speak of his creativity and success as a fashion designer.

And you get to explore Jonathan Adler’s exuberant and surreal surroundings. His playful home appears on the cover of the book.

- Jane

High-profile designer, Nate Berkus, gets up close and personal with his latest design book, The Things that Matter. He reveals intimate details of his life and upbringing and talks about the people who have influenced him and his sense of style.

Yes, he takes you home with him and into the homes of 12 other stylish people as well. As you would expect, all of the places are beautiful and executed with an exceptional eye for detail. But, this is a text-heavy book where he shares stories about the people who live in the handsome places and what is meaningful to them.

The homes all have eye-catching collections of interesting and unique objects and each tells a tale. A brass gazelle named Fiona sits regally atop a smoked glass table in the heart of a chic black-and-white living room. Fiona is a treasured object from a humble source: EBay. Other treasures in other homes speak of esoteric interests and exotic places.

The homes are not all palatial. Fiona lives in a cookie-cutter contemporary apartment of modest proportions. He visits the tiny apartment (450 sf) in Greenwich Village of his hair dresser whose charming home is skillfully edited.

Some places are sleek and glamorous; others are cozy and filled with vintage furnishings. You see the home of Dr. Ruth Westheimer, sex therapist and media personality. You also see the swanky digs of Chris Gardner whose rags to riches career – and year of homelessness – was chronicled in the movie, The Pursuit of Happyness.

Along with the many talents that have made him a successful designer, Berkus is a good story teller.

- Jane

Today's blog comes from David Ramsey, Central Library staff:

Do you find today’s mass market furniture too commonplace? Are you looking for seating with a unique style? Are you bored with IKEA ubiquity?

Check out a recent addition to the Arts collection: Furniture with Soul: Master Woodworkers and their Craft by David Savage.

The author, whose work is also profiled, delves into the lives and work of ten furniture makers. No assembly-line designs for them; these creative types eschew the ordinary. For these artisans, form follows function – but at a distance and with a detour or two.

These innovators tapped their imaginations in the creation of a wide range of furniture. And what imaginations they have! Inspiration comes from many sources including nature, civil engineering and modern media.

These talented woodworkers could have followed the straight and narrow and produced conventional pieces; but something inspired them to change course, be it flora or fauna, whimsy or fantasy. They followed their hearts and forged a new path.

Their designs require labour-intensive, exacting work, not suited to endless copies. The pieces produced according to their heart’s calling are rich in detail which couldn't be justified on a purely functional chair or table for mass production.

Some call them furniture sculptors. Is their work art or craft? Can an art form have function?

Maybe it depends on the amount of soul….

- Dave

Today's blog comes from Janet Millett, Central Library staff:

When we need help with home decorating, a lot of us reach for books with titles like Cheap Chic, Dime Store Decorating or Junk Beautiful. Creating a fabulous space on a shoestring can be creative and fun. There are times, however, when it can also be fun to glimpse the rarified lives of those who decorate with an unlimited budget and an in-demand designer.

Martyn Lawrence Bullard is such a designer and his clients are a variety of well-moneyed celebrities. Bullard discovered at an early age that he had an affinity for design. By the age of 16, he ran a profitable little antiques business with a dedicated following of dealers and collectors.

Despite his talent in this area, he still made his way to Hollywood with aspirations of becoming an actor. However, his passion for decorating and design resurfaced and won over those who visited his space.

Through word of mouth he became a very popular designer. As his celebrity clientele grew, he soon found himself jetting around the world, collecting the perfect textiles and artworks with an unerring sense of style and cultivated eye. And, as life can ironically work out, he now is the host of the television show, Million Dollar Decorators.

Being a confidant and a friend to celebrities such as Elton John, Ellen Pompeo and Cher, Bullard has insight into their characters and lifestyles. This he confides in the introduction of each chapter. You then lose yourself in the sumptuous photos with a greater understanding of how and why they came to be.

He can also be very discreet. In the October 2011 issue of In Style magazine, he was asked about his more eccentric décor requests. He replied, “One of the maddest things I was asked to do was to apply gold leaf to the interior of a garage! I actually declined, thinking it would ruin my reputation.” No name was disclosed.

Love of colour and design is universal. And although these spaces are decorated with budgets most of us can only dream about, you can still see how his inspirations might just work in your own humble abode.

-Jan Millett

The world is a scary place.

“Two hundred million people … have been affected by natural disasters and hazards in the last decade…Ninety-eight percent of these victims are in the developing world.”

This sobering information comes from the introduction to Beyond Shelter: Architecture and Human Dignity. The book presents 25 reports from the field by experts who work on disaster prevention and recovery.

After a disaster, designers face the challenge of “building back better” while working quickly and within the capacity and rhythms of the community.

In Banda Aceh, Indonesia, following the earthquake of 2004, 190 temporary barracks were built by the military. The sites selected were chosen by fear of new quakes and tsunamis. However, these sites were so remote that refugees could not return to work or assist with reconstruction.

When project planners began working with the community, women were initially excluded. Residents were opposed to building traditional stilt houses which are climatically efficient and earthquake safe. They favoured modern houses with masonry walls that are often fatal during an earthquake or tsunami.

Providing the building materials threatened to exhaust local resources which could potentially cause a secondary environmental disaster. And the construction boom sent the price of materials soaring.

The story of reconstruction outlines the enormous complexity faced, the solutions that evolved and what the project team learned from the experience.

The book is a call-to-action to the architectural and design communities to provide leadership and innovative solutions to enormous global problems. It's a fascinating read.

For those of you who like to make lists of ways to improve yourself* in the New Year, here is the perfect book.

101 Things I hate about your house, by James Swan, is a delightfully opinionated view of how your home décor is sliding off the rails and all the ways he would fix it. It’s a book that will have you yelling, “YES!” in agreement one minute and screaming, “Are you crazy?” the next.

Here are two things my colleague, Kate Kasinski, loved and hated.

Loved: Swan sneers at a bathroom with a dish full of mucky soap.

“YES!” says Kate who can’t imagine anyone with a family having anything but a soap pump.

Hated: Swan wants you to cover your bedroom floors with the thickest, most luxurious carpet you can find.

“Are you crazy?” asks Kate who knows that bedding produces an excessive amount of dust, hair from pillows and other unmentionables. Whoa, think of the dust mites.

I’m with Kate on both counts and we’re thinking that he probably doesn’t do his own cleaning.

I really enjoyed his riff on open kitchens which I agree are overrated. Some cooking styles benefit from a discreet wall between the grease and clutter and the guests. And some of us can no longer perform simple cooking tasks and carry on a conversation.

You know, like walking and chewing gum.

*I have attained such a level of perfection (AKA common-sense grip of reality) that I would never dream of doing this.

The last two blogs have looked at the growing interest in vintage style which integrates older furnishings into modern life. In an earlier blog I wrote about David Shah’s prediction of the growth of DIY design and a new frugality with consumers.

Certainly we are seeing this reflected in the new books arriving in the Arts department. The pendulum has swung in the direction toward the hand-crafted and authentic, away from the shiny new and slick.

Japan has a design aesthetic called wabi sabi that reveres the natural beauty of imperfection that comes with age and weathering. “It is an expression of the beauty that lies in the brief transition between the coming and going of life, both the joy and melancholy that make up our lot as humans”. (Wabi sabi: the Japanese art of impermanence, p.1)

Robyn Griggs Lawrence updates an earlier work with Simply Imperfect: revisiting the wabi-sabi house. For her the philosophy is about embracing a simpler and more authentic lifestyle and the eliminating the baggage and clutter that is part and parcel of consumerism.

The book is a quick read on the philosophy applied to home design. It is illustrated with sepia-toned photos of home vignettes; both text and pictures are surrounded by plenty of white space and peppered with pithy quotes.

Occasionally, she gets wabi-sabi silly with her lists (the wabi-sabi cleaning cupboard – give me a break). Still, her summary “uncluttering made easy” offers simple and thorough advice on the topic.

“In modern terms, achieving the sabi style of living entails eliminating everything that is not essential,” says author Boyé Lafayette De Mente in Elements of Japanese Style. (p. 32) This book offers greater depth on the philosophy underlying Japanese design. De Mente provides insight into the way that certain ideas, like the poverty principle, were handy devices for social control.

Check out the Wabi House in Dwell’s September issue. Japan Style and “Japan’s highly considered aesthetic” (p17 editor’s note) are the themes of the issue. Dwell is available in 5 branches where back issues can be borrowed.

Intelligent Design- Part II

Design Futures (2011) examines key factors with potential to shape the design and architecture of tomorrow. “Designers seem to move between two worlds, creating in the now yet anticipating the future markets in which their products will sell,” says author Bradley Quinn.

The Rotor House concept created by Luigi Colani features a cylindrical core that contains a bathroom, bedroom and living room. The space-saving unit rotates the room out of range when not in use.

How handy could this be? If you haven’t made your bed, rotate it out of sight. Same for the spouse or children with whom you are arguing. Good stuff.

A kitchen designed by a French design studio converts food and water waste into a fresh resource and harnesses wind and solar energy to power equipment. Bonus – the stainless steel and enameled green surfaces look really cool.

Quinn describes mega materials which underpin revolutionary innovations – smart plastics, soft concrete, inflatable membranes – and shows examples of products which use them.

At the end of the book, his interview with David Shah is heartening. Shah is known for his expertise in identifying emerging consumer trends and his predictions are counter-intuitive to the high-tech content of the book.

He says we are living in a participatory culture where consumers are “wresting control of their own lifestyles and purchasing decisions from marketers, celebrity-based media and insensitive corporations.”

He also predicts a future with growth in the DIY design movement inspiring people to make more things themselves. As well, he sees a new frugality where consumers are more likely to try and make things last longer.

Now that’s a good-news day.

I just finished reading Tina Fey’s irreverent memoir Bossypants. The book is as wacky and off the wall as the characters she creates. Sometimes, you think you have the inside track to her world and other times it’s, “Nah, she’s just kidding”.

She has advanced self-deprecation as an art form – or perhaps elaborate defense mechanism. It often seems she’s saying the most foul and funny things about herself before anyone else can bushwhack her with them. A very pretty woman takes pains to let you know it’s all Photoshop.

Fey has made it big in a male-dominated world and is determined to make the most of her gains before her best-before date expires and that has been cruelly early for most women in the business. She says, “I’ve known older men in comedy who can barely feed and clean themselves, and they still work. The women, though, they’re all ‘crazy’.”

I would love to quote her next sentence as well, but CPL would probably shut me down if I did. You’ll just have to read the book.

Anyone struggling to handle both a family and a demanding career will relate to her angst; she wants another child but knows that the livelihood of the large crew of 30 Rock depends on her.

Fey has some great advice for women in the workplace: “When faced with sexism or ageism or lookism or even really aggressive Buddhism, ask yourself the following question: ‘Is this person in between me and what I want to do?’ If the answer is no, ignore it and move on.”

She is generous with praise for the very talented people she works with and just as happy to skewer the jerks - or at least get the last word. For fans, the best thing about the book is the sense of hanging out with this really cool and funny person who feels like a friend.

My favourite line of all: “...I am a firm believer in” Intelligent Design,” and by that I mean I love IKEA!”

I’m with you Tina. Don’t you just love it when you shop there and find a solution to a problem you didn’t know you had? Though, having read the book, I can't imagine when you find time to shop. And, BTW, thanks for punting the expression back to the field where it truly belongs.

Of course, this gets me thinking about another new design book that takes a look at where the field is drifting. (Come on now, you knew I would eventually work my way back there.)

Friday’s blog: Design Futures.