Design

Express your love of Brisbane and her iconic architecture through colouring. Relax your mind as you fill in the spaces with your own colour selection and enjoy spotting familiar buildings in the river city. Pencils are best to use as there will be more scope for colour mixing, shading and less likely the colours will bleed through the pages. Please feel to share your work on social media with the tag #debrahoodart

Imagine you woke up one morning to find everything created by engineers had disappeared. What would you see?

No cars, no houses; no phones, bridges or roads. No tunnels under tidal rivers, no soaring skyscrapers. The impact that engineering has had on the human experience is undeniable, but it is also often invisible.

In BUILT, structural engineer Roma Agrawal takes a unique look at how construction has evolved from the mud huts of our ancestors to skyscrapers of steel that reach hundreds of metres into the sky. She unearths how engineers have tunnelled through kilometres of solid mountains; how they've bridged across the widest and deepest of rivers, and tamed Nature's precious - and elusive - water resources. She tells vivid tales of the visionaries who created the groundbreaking materials in the Pantheon's record-holding concrete dome and the frame of the record-breaking Eiffel Tower. Through the lens of an engineer, Roma examines tragedies like the collapse of the Quebec Bridge, highlighting the precarious task of ensuring people's safety they hold at every step.

With colourful stories of her life-long fascination with buildings - and her own hand-drawn illustrations - Roma reveals the extraordinary secret lives of structures.

Australia has wildly differing topographies and climates, and its best residential architecture draws on those site conditions in inventive ways. This book illustrates the strength of the country's shift from British-influenced Georgian-style homes to more indigenous structures attuned to the land - a movement led by Australian architects such as Glenn Murcutt, Richard Leplastrier, and Gabriel Poole in the 1970s. Witness a range of new houses that grapple with the locales in which they are built. Up north, down south, and on the coast, from small and low-budget to multimillion-dollar dwellings, the focus is on the use of raw materials, energy efficiency, adaptable spaces, and embrace of the great outdoors for which the country is known. Drawings and interviews with the architects shed light on how they apply their intelligence and creativity to produce striking buildings that are uniquely Australian.

AUTHOR: Steve Huyton is a an architectural writer for international magazines and a blogger at Total Design Reviews.

There's something very special about being able to relish a quality espresso or expertly brewed filter coffee in beautifully designed surroundings. What is the magic formula that makes a café space so inviting, so successful, with a buzz in the atmosphere that's so enjoyable? Cafe Culture: For Lovers of Coffee and Good Design brings together a selection of well-crafted interior spaces by those with both a strong sense of good design aesthetics and a refined appreciation of the art of a good coffee experience.

As the much-anticipated follow-up to Robert Schneider's very successful first book, Coffee Culture: hot coffee + cool spaces - design inspiration that presents coffee shop designs from across the United States, in his new book Schneider expands on the theme by showcasing a wonderful new collection of designs, this time from around the globe, including from Australia and New Zealand, Europe, China, South Korea and Japan, Britain, and North America.

Richly illustrated throughout with full-colour photos that capture the feel and personality of each coffee shop, and with detailed analysis of each design and its features, along with an insightful overview of the industry trends in design across the globe, this book successfully connects an appreciation for great coffee with spaces that invite human interaction and create memories through good design.

Book Features:

• Successfully interweaves coffee, art, architecture, and design by providing the full range of retail spaces, including coffee shops located in historic buildings, modern architecture, ex-industrial warehouses, offices, and more
• Features an expertly curated list of architectural interior spaces from around the globe, including from Australia, Britain, Canada, China, Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, and the United States

300 colour images

About the Author

Robert Schneider received degrees in political science, finance and investments - providing the foundation for a successful career in capital markets, including research, marketing/business development, and working with start-up/early-stage companies. He currently pursues his lifelong interest in art and design. He lives and studies art, architecture, design, and photography in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in the United States.

We all look for ways to manage the pressures of everyday life, and to alleviate feelings of stress. Mandalas provides not only a wonderfully creative outlet,
but also a way of focusing attention away from external stress, thereby encouraging a sense of relaxation and increased wellbeing.

Used for centuries across different cultures and religions, a 'mandala' is a spiritual symbol used in Buddhist and Hindu traditions to represent the universe, and is often used as an aid to meditation. Mandalas can therefore be spiritually healing and help to create a peaceful state of mind. Although sometimes basic in design, they are often extremely intricate.

Traditionally, the mandala consists of an outer circle, sometimes shown on fire to represent the universe and the dangers it holds, and an inner 'palace', housing deities and the enlightened. With 100 patterns based on Tibetan and Hindu traditions, as well as some original designs, this beautiful art book will enable you to relax and rediscover the pleasures of being creative.