Now more than ever, architects and designers are crossing aesthetic borders, and redefining craft to suit their own creative needs, philosophies, and expectations--often by commenting upon or challenging it. By transforming our notions of what might be considered "crafted," today's practitioners have not only put a new spin on an ancient art; they have expanded our understanding of where and how the personal touch is found in the sometimes bewildering or inhospitable terrain of the contemporary aesthetic landscape. Featuring twenty-five residential, commercial, and institutional projects--by major international design figures as well as the relatively unknown and up-and-coming--this volume looks at what constitutes the craft influence in contemporary architecture and design. By turns luxurious and simple; time-honored and leading-edge; small-scale and monumental; unabashedly beautiful, surprisingly witty, socially adroit, and sublimely poetic, these projects are sure to give us a new appreciation of the pleasures of making--and enlarge and enrich our understanding of the presence, and importance, of craft in all our lives.
