Hall of Femmes: Lella Vignelli
From the Publisher. The Italian architect and designer Lella Vignelli has turned her hand to every kind of project, from furniture, interiors, showrooms, and exhibitions to product design, silverware, and clothing. In the beginning of the 1960s she established the Vignelli Office of Design and Architecture in Milan together with her husband, Massimo Vignelli. In the end of the decade the pair settled in New York and launched one of the world’s biggest design firms at the time, Unimark International. Lella Vignelli received the AIGA Gold Medal in 1983. Hall of Femmes: Lella Vignelli includes an introductory essay by Martha Scotford, Professor of Graphic Design and author of Cipe Pineles: a Life of Design. It is richly illustrated, much of it never before published.
Hall of Femmes is a series of smartly edited monographs celebrating the life and work of female designers. Created by Samira Bouabana and Angela Tillman Sperandio in Sweden, the books unfold a canon of inspiring female role models for women in the profession.
The latest volumes explore the work of Lella Vignelli and Tomoko Miho, two women who helped shape the American design landscape at mid-century and beyond. Consisting of 64 tall, narrow pages, each brisk and invigorating book will instantly expand your sense of design’s horizon. Replete with illustrations and vintage photographs, the volumes emphasize the human dimension of design practice, presenting moving portraits of women who have excelled in a field where even today, few of us make it to the very top. Generous in purpose and method, each Hall of Femmes book transmits the designer's voice through compelling interviews, thoughtful critical essays, lovingly selected vintage photographs, and dozens of reproductions. From Lella Vignelli we glimpse the energy of one of modern design’s great partnerships.
More than just a publication series, the Hall of Femmes project includes lectures, exhibitions, and events, all conceived in a joyful spirit by the founders and authors.
Announcements
If Walls Could Speak: My Life in Architecture by Moshe Safdie
If Walls Could Speak: My Life in Architecture
By Moshe Safdie
Publisher: Grove/Atlantic
Published: September 2022
One of the world’s greatest and most thoughtful architects recounts his extraordinary career and the iconic structures he has built—from Habitat in Montreal to Marina Bay Sands in Singapore—and offers a manifesto for the role architecture should play in society.
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Design Emergency: Building a Better Future by Alice Rawsthorn and Paola Antonelli
Design Emergency: Building a Better Future
By Alice Rawsthorn and Paola Antonelli
Publisher: Phaidon Press
Published: May 2022
Rawsthorn and Antonelli tell the stories of the remarkable designers, architects, engineers, artists, scientists, and activists who are at the forefront of positive change worldwide. Focusing on four themes—Technology, Society, Communication, and Ecology—the authors present a unique portrait of how our great creative minds are developing new design solutions to the major challenges of our time, while helping us to benefit from advances in science and technology.
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Why Design Matters: Conversations with the World’s Most Creative People by Debbie Millman
Why Design Matters: Conversations with the World's Most Creative People
By Debbie Millman
Publisher: Harper Design
Published: February 22, 2022
Debbie Millman—author, educator, brand consultant, and host of the widely successful and award-winning podcast “Design Matters”—showcases dozens of her most exciting interviews, bringing together insights and reflections from today’s leading creative minds from across diverse fields.
Growing Up Underground: A Memoir of Counterculture New York by Steven Heller
Growing Up Underground: A Memoir of Counterculture New York
By Steven Heller
Publisher: Princeton Architectural Press
Published: October 2022
An entertaining coming-of-age memoir from Steven Heller, award-winning designer, writer, and former senior art director at the New York Times, that takes readers on a visually inspired look back at being at the center of New York’s youth culture in the 1960s and ’70s.
Meet Me by the Fountain: An Inside History of the Mall by Alexandra Lange
Meet Me by the Fountain: An Inside History of the Mall
By Alexandra Lange
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Published: June 2022
Chronicles postwar architects’ and merchants’ invention of the shopping mall, revealing how the design of these marketplaces played an integral role in their cultural ascent. Publishers Weekly writes, “Contending that malls answer ‘the basic human need’ of bringing people together, influential design critic Lange advocates for retrofitting abandoned shopping centers into college campuses, senior housing, and ‘ethnocentric marketplaces’ catering to immigrant communities. Lucid and well researched, this is an insightful study of an overlooked and undervalued architectural form.”
Women Holding Things by Maira Kalman
Women Holding Things
By Maira Kalman
Publisher: Harper Design
Published: October 2022
In the spring of 2021, Maira and Alex Kalman created a small, limited-edition booklet, “Women Holding Things,” which featured select recent paintings by Maira, accompanied by her insightful and deeply personal commentary. The booklet quickly sold out. Now, the Kalmans have expanded that original publication into an extraordinary visual compendium. We see a woman hold a book, hold shears, hold children, hold a grudge, hold up, hold her own. In visually telling their stories, Kalman lays bare the essence of women’s lives—their tenacity, courage, vulnerability, hope, and pain.
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