Naked Airport: A Cultural History of the World's Most Revolutionary Structure

Although airports are now best known for interminable waits at check-in counters, liquid restrictions for carry-on luggage, and humiliating shoe-removal rituals at security, they were once the backdrops for jet-setters who strutted, martinis in hand, through curvilinear terminals designed by Eero Saarinen. In the critically acclaimed Naked Airport, Alastair Gordon traces the cultural history of this defining institution from its origins in the muddy fields of flying machines to its frontline position in the struggle against international terrorism. From global politics to action movies to the daily commute, Gordon shows how the airport has changed our sense of time, distance, and style, and ultimately the way cities are built and business is done. He introduces the people who shaped and were shaped by this place of sudden transition: pilots like Charles Lindbergh, architects like Le Corbusier, and political figures like Fiorello LaGuardia and Adolf Hitler. Naked Airport is a profoundly original history of a long-neglected yet central component of modern life. “This charming history documents why airports have always been such intriguing places. Gordon wittily deconstructs air terminal architecture. . . . Here is a book with more than enough quirky details to last a long layover.”—People “[A] splendid cultural history.”—Atlantic Monthly “Gordon, an architecture and design critic, tells his story well, bringing to life some of the main characters and highlighting some of the important issues concerning urbanism and airports.”—Michael Roth, San Francisco Chronicle “Gordon provides a truly compelling account of how airports had over the course of three-quarters of a century become the locus of not only modern dreams but postmodern nightmares as well. Don’t leave home without it.”—Terence Riley, director of the Miami Art Museum

Business & Money

Gordon, Alastair

Industries

University of Chicago Press

An extraordinary collection of mostly unseen photographs of the Beatles during the making of Help!. Published to coincide with the fiftieth anniversary of the release of the Beatles’ second motion picture, Help!, this almost entirely unpublished collection of photographs marks a pivotal turning point in the band’s history, as they evolved from much-loved musicians into the most important group of all time. The Beatles’ first movie filmed in color, Help! is a madcap adventure featuring cinematography and film sequences widely considered to be hugely influential to the modern performance-style music videos of today. Specialist set photographer Emilio Lari was invited by director Richard Lester to shoot stills of the production at Twickenham Studios and document behind-the-scenes larking about as the band relaxed in their hotel between takes. With an introduction by Lester and intimate, never-before-seen images, The Beatles: Help! provides new and fascinating insights into the band that changed the history of music and the world.

The Beatles: Photographs from the Set of Help!

Arts & Photography

Lari, Emilio

Photography & Video

Rizzoli

Rizzoli Universe Promotional Books

The first full cultural history of the ultimate modern structure: the airport, revealed as never before Since its origins in the muddy fields of flying machines, the airport has arguably become one of the defining institutions of modern life. In Naked Airport, critic Alastair Gordon ranges from global geopolitics to action movies to the daily commute, showing how airports have changed our sense of time, distance, style, and even the way cities are built and business is done. Gordon introduces the people who shaped this place of sudden transition: pilots like Charles Lindberg, architects like Eero Saarinen, politicians like Fiorello La Guardia, and Hitler, who built Berlin’s Tempelhof as a showcase for Fascist power. He describes the airport’s futuristic contributions, such as credit cards, in the form of fly-now-pay-later schemes, and he charts its shift in popular perception, from glamorous to infuriating. Finally, he analyzes the airport’s function in war and peace—its gatekeeper role controlling immigration, its appeal to revolutionaries since the hijackings of the 1960s, and its new frontline position in the struggle against terror. Compelling and accessible, Naked Airport is an original history of a long-neglected yet central creation of modern reality and imagination.

History

Europe

Metropolitan Books

American Dream documents the Houses at Sagaponac, a groundbreaking architecture project initiated by real estate developer Harry J. Brown. The project features homes designed by internationally recognized architects on a 10-acre site near the tip of Long Island. THe region has nurtured modern housing in previous decades, and the weekend homes and artist studios of the 1960s and 1970s serve as early precursors to the project. Additonal sources of inspiration for the Sagaponac houses include Case Study Houses in California commissioned by Arts + Architecture magazine in the 1950s and the famed 1927 Weissenhof Siedlung experimental housing in Stuttgart, Germany. Pritzker Prize-winning architect Richard Meier is creative advisor to the initiative and is also designing one of the houses. Meier collaborated with Brown on architect selection, bringing together well-known figures like Michael Graves, Philip Johnson, and Richard Rogers with acclaimed younger practitioners, including Gisue and Mojgan Jariri, Jesse Reiser and Nanako Umenoto, Lindy Roy, and Deborah Berke. The designs of all the Sagaponac Houses are illustrated in full-color and are accompanied by floor plans, architectural drawings, and computer renderings.

American Dream: The Houses at Sagaponac: Modern Living in the Hamptons

Meier, Richard

Brown Jr., Harry (Coco) Joe

Architecture

Rizzoli International Publications

The utopian sixties inspired revolutionary and alternative ways to live, love, and entertain—and equally radical spaces to do it in. Stimulated by the psychedelic drug culture, rebel designers and architects distorted space to create womblike coves and isolation chambers, forging a spatial vocabulary that still reverberates today. At the same time, the tune-in-turn-on-drop-out message lured youths into far-flung communes, often under the roofs of brightly painted geodesic domes draped and tie-dyed fabric. Idealistic and anarchic enclaves with names like Drop City and Morning Star redefined the concept of community, inventing a wildly spontaneous way of building and dwelling. For the first time, these ephemeral spaces are brought together in Spaced Out. The many never-before-published photographs and an inventive text by acclaimed author Alastair Gordon show in detail the spirit and ideas of this radical period.

Spaced Out: Radical Environments of the Psychedelic Sixties

Historical Study & Educational Resources

A major new evaluation of the trailblazing Miami-based architecture firm upon the advent of its fortieth anniversary. Arquitectonica is the design firm that put Miami on the map for the cool, hip, very now architecture that was first celebrated on TV in Miami Vice. Since their founding four decades ago, the firm has grown exponentially in stature, and its energies have only increased. Arquitectonica is a major presence on the world architectural stage, with offices in New York, Los Angeles, Paris, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Manila, Dubai, Lima, and São Paulo. Founded in 1977, the firm received critical and popular attention and acclaim almost from its inception, thanks to a bold modernism that was immediately identified with a renaissance in Miami’s urban landscape. Principals Bernardo Fort-Brescia and Laurinda Spear continue to this day exploring and pushing the limits of materials and design with their innovative use of geometry, pattern, and color. The first book on this major international architectural design firm since Rizzoli’s own Arquitectonica (2004), this volume is a retrospective of the firm’s forty-year history, considering its earliest projects—the archetypal and hugely influential Pink House and Babylon Apartments—to Regalia Condominium tower, its twenty-first-century masterwork of undulant glass and steel.

Arquitectonica

Travel

Food, Lodging & Transportation

This lavishly illustrated book celebrates one of the most influential and successful retail centers in the world, from its opening in 1965--when it changed the retail landscape by inviting European designers such as Gucci and Valentino to open stores within a shopping mall--until the present day. Theater of Shopping tells the story of retail visionary Stanley Whitman and the creation of Bal Harbour Shops, the most successful luxury fashion shopping center in the world*, and one of the last family-owned malls in America. Written by critically acclaimed author Alastair Gordon, Theater of Shopping is a cultural history of both a place and a personal legacy. The open-air mall opened in 1965 as a pedestrian-friendly environment that turned shopping into a kind of theatrical event, while featuring the work of young design talents like Valentino, Versace, Mugler, de La Renta, and other foreign designers who were unknown in America before first showcasing their collections at Bal Harbour Shops. The text weaves together fashion, luxury commerce, architecture, landscape design, urban development, and family history, to create a highly readable narrative illustrated with more than 300 images including never-before-published drawings, plans and photographs by renowned photographers including Richard Avedon and Ezra Stoller.

Theater of Shopping: The Story of Stanley Whitman's Bal Harbour Shops

History & Criticism

The first monograph illustrating the high-end contemporary residential design of Barnes Coy Architects.\nThroughout their twenty-five-year commitment to modern design, Barnes Coy Architects have specialized in one-of-a-kind dream houses designed for those who prefer to live in highly spatial and modern ways. Assembled in Light is the first exclusive look at this firm's previously unpublished body of high-end residential work.\nThese leisure homes gleam in the sun like sleek, finely tuned machines. Everything has been custom designed, custom made, custom treated. The houses are tastefully furnished with one-of-a-kind artisanal pieces (by Wendell Castle, Chris Lehrecke, etc.) and museum-quality collections of contemporary art hanging on the walls (such as works by Anselm Kiefer, Barbara Kruger, Richard Prince, and Cindy Sherman). They feature infinity pools, outdoor and indoor kitchens, roof decks, temperature-controlled wine cellars, and numerous guest rooms, as well as ten-foot-high doorways and floor-to-ceiling swathes of tempered glass to better gaze out at the dunes and ocean views.\nThe new photography beautifully captures the architects' attention to detail and love of specialized materials, whether it's Carrara marble from Italy or teak from Bali. While most of the houses are located in the Hamptons in New York, a few are found as far afield as Costa Rica, California, Georgia, and Westchester County. All but three homes were built on commanding waterfront sites.

Assembled in Light: The Houses of Barnes Coy Architects

Religion & Spirituality

Other Eastern Religions & Sacred Texts

A celebration of Henry Melich's wonderfully whimsical and romantic island escapes, which continue to inspire the work of designers today. Island Follies is the first book to explore the work of Henry Melich (1924-1999), a Czech-born architect who brought a beguiling form of neoclassicism to the Caribbean. While Melich built projects in the United States and England, he's best remembered for the romantic houses he designed in sunny island retreats like Lyford Cay, Harbour Island, and Windermere Island in the Bahamas. &nbsp; Melich created a romantic sense of escape with a softly cushioned whimsy and discrete air of tranquility. His signature motifs included faux-marbled walls, seasoned wood, colonnades, and tentlike interiors with striped ceilings. Melich's interiors suited the playful mood of the moment documented in this book with the warm touch of Slim Aarons, who came to the Bahamas in the 1960s and 1970s to capture high-society figures in their homes. Gardens with bougainvillea-draped pergolas, ivy-clad alcoves, and palm-lined allées are just some of the features that extend the architecture into the tropical landscape and embrace the indoor-outdoor lifestyle of these houses. &nbsp; Island Follies showcases the best of Melich's island projects, with new photography of many previously unpublished interiors, capturing a lost world of glamour certain to inspire lovers of interior design and island retreats alike.

Island Follies: Romantic Homes of the Bahamas: The Tropical Architecture of Henry Melich

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Gordon, Alastair. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Gordon, Alastair

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Gordon, Alastair. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Naked Airport: A Cultural History of the World's Most Revolutionary Structure

The Beatles: Photographs from the Set of Help!

The Beatles: Photographs from the Set of Help!

Naked Airport: A Cultural History of the World's Most Revolutionary Structure

American Dream: The Houses at Sagaponac: Modern Living in the Hamptons

Spaced Out: Radical Environments of the Psychedelic Sixties

Arquitectonica

Theater of Shopping: The Story of Stanley Whitman's Bal Harbour Shops

Assembled in Light: The Houses of Barnes Coy Architects

Island Follies: Romantic Homes of the Bahamas: The Tropical Architecture of Henry Melich