The Way We Live by the Sea (Way We Live (Rizzoli))

Seaside, Florida is a town designed as an "ideal" community in the Southern vernacular style, where houses have front porches and verandahs, picket fences and sleeping porches, and pitched tin roofs with ample overhangs. Seaside, along with other new planned towns and communities, sets an important precedent for all new small towns and will long be looked to as a model for those living in tropical climes, on the water, or in coastal communities.

Now, for the very first time, the reader is given a privileged view of the inside of this extraordinary community-how people actually live in it-how they have arranged their spaces, furnished their homes, and planted their gardens to take advantage of the beauty by which they are surrounded. This book, as the title suggests, lays out a vision of coastal living based on this ideal community.

What sets this book apart is its tremendous variety of taste, environment, ideas, style. Locations really run the gamut; the book is divided into continents, so Africa (for example) gets just as much attention as does Asia. The scope is fabulous: non-chic locations like a rustic cottage on the Baltic Sea, a windswept beach house on the English Channel. The north African featured homes are especially interesting. So there is a beautiful array of styles and ideas on how to highlight a special environment.

Not a source book (no index or listings of architects and products), but an excellent style book. The photos are first-rate, with beautiful balance of detail shots and whole rooms. Quite a lot of landscaping can be seen, even if it's about "interiors", so that's a bonus.

Need not be decorating a seaside home to be able to love and even use this book.

Beach Houses are the first survey of the glamorous beachfront lifestyle and distinctive architecture and design for which Southern California is so famous. The houses featured in this book are located on the coast between Malibu and Laguna and range from common generic types-- New England, Mediterranean and ranch designs-- to high-style homes by well-known architects such as John Lautner, Richard Meier, Frank Gehry, and others.

Beaches and beach houses have played an important part in the historical and cultural development of Southern California, beginning in the 1880s when land speculators wanted to attract home-buyers, and especially during the 1920s when the motion picture community and other nouveau riche built lavish houses and clubs on the shore.

Architectural writer Elizabeth McMillian has selected a stunning array of Southern California beach residences that receive high marks for appearance, comfort, and sensitivity to the environment. Every beach house designer faces similar constraints and challenges: small lots, low-key street facades, enclosed sidewalls, narrow paths to the ocean, and glass-walled and terraced oceanfronts. If a beach house is designed with sensitivity, living on the beach can be an experience that is close to perfection.

Photographer Melba Levick has dramatically captured the California beach house in its enviable seaside context and has focused on interiors that bring the sights and sounds of the ocean into the home by way of glass walls, open courtyards, terraces, and towers.

Interviews with the architects, interior designers, and owners of these fabulous California houses reveal the inspirational dimension embodied in this special architecture.

"A beach house is often the fulfillment of a dream, as well as a quest for the sensual varieties of site, sound, and touch-- the opportunity to feel gentle sea breezes, warm to the reassuring rays of the sun, and hear the lulling, rhythmic sound of wind and waves," explains McMillian.

The beach is the ultimate retreat: a place to escape the frenzied pace of our daily lives and to reconnect with the natural world. In Beach Houses, photographer Roberto Schezen and writer Michael Webb offer a lavish visual and textual tour of America's most fascinating seaside homes -- both traditional and modern, rustic and grand -- illustrating why we are so drawn to beach living.

Encompassing twenty-one structures in all, this is a book as rich and as diverse as the coastline itself. From a simlpe Block Island cottage created by acclaimed architect Robert Venturi, to Richard Neutra's modernist masterpiece in Santa Monica, to a wildlyadventurous Florida residence designed entirely by its owner, each home profiled is a unique work of art and a remarkable reflection of our ever-changing relationship with the ocean. Schezen's 139 original color photographs give us an inside glimpse into each residence, while Webb's essays explain the histories and special features of each home. Artfully designed and beautifully written, Beach Houses will captivate anyone who has dreamed of living by the water and all those who simply love the sea.