Promising? This place is a pigsty

Great Adaptations: Making Older Buildings Into Dynamic Homes for Today
Jill Herbers
Harper Design, $35
The yen for great space and grand style is equaled, in some people, by a yearning for a home with a sense of history — one with the materials, craftsmanship and detail that was typical of bygone times. And so today we have the breed of house hunter who can envision domestic bliss in a converted barn or bell tower, an unused church or post office or multi-car garage. Even an abandoned power station or pigsty (yes, pigsty) is not considered out of bounds for adventurous souls seeking shelter and serenity in converted public or commercial buildings that may have been constructed 100 or more years ago.

This book makes it all seem so easy, when in fact it is not. Featuring lush, luminous photos of eccentric spaces adapted into dwellings, it focuses on the end result without delving much into the problems of getting there, as well as glossing over whatever the intrinsic drawbacks might be for those who live, let’s say, in a converted power station where the sculptural conversation piece in the living room is a 20-ton crane.

Of course, by now we’re used to commercial buildings converted by builders into chic living lofts. But this book takes the trend further out on an adaptation limb, without fully illuminating financial and aesthetic costs. Herbers suggests that such adaptations can be expensive but gives few specifics on the setbacks involved. In truth, some renovated spaces she pictures seem quite inhospitable. But the unassuming little pigsty, in Peschici, Italy, has a kind of rounded, roughhewn appeal to which almost any would-be householder can relate. Even if it’s just as a weekend getaway.

Bettijane Levine

*

First impressions are important

The Language of Doors
Paulo Vicente and Tom Connor
Artisan, $26.95
If you don’t know your mullion from your lintel, you may have a flawed relationship with your front door. This is not unusual, since most homes come with functional front doors in place — and in the scheme of things that need redoing, the entry rarely makes it to the homeowner’s list. If it isn’t broken, why fix it, the thinking goes. Of course, the thinking could be wrong.

This book makes clear that “an entrance remodel is the simplest, least expensive and most dramatic way to transform the exterior of a house.� With just a few small additions and rearrangements to the entry, the authors say, the entire house can look redesigned. Architect Vicente and writer Connor have created this handy reference to explain architectural styles and terms for everything related to a portal and its adornments — pediments, porticoes, columns, pilasters, etc.

In a very small way, they’ve tried to do for doors what Audubon did for birds. Using mini blueprint drawings and bare bones prose, they introduce a concept of redesign that is feasible and economical.

Bettijane Levine

*

If only we could live in the pages

Malibu: A Century of Living by the Sea
Julius Shulman and Juergen Nogai
Harry N. Abrams, $50
It’s hard to imagine any U.S. city the size of Malibu — population 12,575 — with so many homes designed by the likes of Frank Gehry, John Lautner, Richard Meier and other architects who rank among the last century’s best.

The book opens with historical pictures from the early 1900s, then quickly (and wisely) shifts into Shulman’s body of work: photos of such gems as the 1954-built Medford House, a Kenneth Lind-designed beach house with an imaginative free-standing fireplace, and the 1979-built Segel House, with Lautner’s swooping structural beams and panels of glass opening to Pacific views.

The strength of these photos emphasizes the book’s omission: Captions don’t identify the year in which pictures were taken. A listing only elaborates which are from Shulman’s archive and which are from his recent collaboration with Nogai — inadequate for someone whose career has spanned more than six decades. But why quibble. Here, Malibu’s inspiring architecture, views and magical light come alive via the page.

— Craig Nakano