Balcony Press

BOOKLIST

$34.95

Hardcover

Scott Johnson
TALL BUILDING: Imagining the Skyscraper
The skyscraper, whatever it may be as physical fact, looms large in our lives and as a figment of our imaginations carries with it ideas of wealth, ambition, and dominance. The image of the skyscraper has been made and remade in the news, in literature and film, and now in all forms of our now global media. Paradoxically, as the building type continues to become more complex and is designed to address fundamentally different cultural conditions, the image, that is to say, the idea, of the skyscraper in the public mind seems to become simpler, more omnipresent, and more consumable. Building Tall explores what the skyscraper evokes in us as a curious and complex technical achievement and also as a powerful image that has inspired artists for over 100 years. Johnson’s readable text and his intimate knowledge of tall building brings the skyscraper to life both technically and emotionally. Numerous rarely seen images of landmarks of architecture make this book a visual treat.

8.5 x 14 inches
280 pages
ISBN: 978-1-890449-47-6
200 color and b/w

$65

Hardcover

Future Tense: Zimmer Gunsul Frasca
Featuring a collection of work designed by the firm over the past dozen years, Future Tense explores a variety of building types, from hospitals to commercial office buildings, from university laboratories to residential condominium towers, embassies, and airports. Sustainable design and environmental stewardship are evident throughout the projects profiled, as is ZGF’s design process, with its emphasis on reflecting client culture, community building, and integrated design.

Limited Edition Reprint

$20.00

Paperback

Margaret Leslie Davis
BULLOCKS WILSHIRE
This elegant book chronicles the efforts of the impressive team of international architects, designers and retailers who created Los Angeles' famed Art Deco masterpiece.
Original Pub Date 1996

8 x 10 1/2 inches
120 pages
ISBN: 0-9643119-4-1
100 duotone photographs

$30

Photographs by Meg McComb
THE GAMBLE HOUSE COOKBOOK: Good Design Good Food
Introduction by Mark Peel
Preface by Robert Harris, FAIA

One of the important principles of the arts and crafts movement was the lifestyle it represented. The natural use of materials, the flow of space, the abundant fresh air all represented a slow, graceful and organic way of living. After 100 years as one of the arts and crafts most important architectural landmarks, The Gamble House Cookbook portrays this lifestyle through Mrs. Gamble’s own recipes in her original handwriting reinterpreted for today by celebrity chef Mark Peel.

Contemporary recipes and stylish menus round out the culinary experience while an introduction by architect Robert Harris conveys an architect’s appreciation for the experience of the dining room itself gleaned from his many meals shared their with colleagues. Intimate images of the domestic landscape by photographer Meg McComb transport the reader to a more relaxed time in one of America’s most beautiful homes.

7" x 9 "
192 pages
ISBN: 978-1-890449-48-3
40 color images

$65

Photographs by Gil Garcetti
WATER IS KEY: A Better Future for Africa
With Essays by Kofi Annan
Jimmy Carter
Steven M. Hilton
Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf
Mary Robinson

With their elegant profiles, warm smiles and distinctive costumes these portraits of life in West Africa are deceptively beautiful. The images in this book do not all tell a positive story. Over a billion people worldwide are without safe water. When safe water is available, entire village economies change and the lives of the inhabitants are transformed from disease and malnutrition to hope and success. In these lush images, so intimately composed, photographer Gil Garcetti puts the reader on the front line of one of the world’ s most critical issues.

HELP BRING SAFE WATER TO THE PEOPLE OF WEST AFRICA

A percentage of the revenue from book sales will be donated to the non-governmental organizations working on safe water projects in West Africa. Donations can be made online at: http://www.worldwater.org/donate.html

12" x 13 "
128 pages
ISBN 1-978-1-890449-22-3
110 b/w images

$42.95

Hardcover

Photography by Warren Marr
DESCANSO: An Urban Oasis Revealed
Rancho del Descanso-The Ranch of Rest-Descanso Gardens is one of Los Angeles' oldest botanical gardens. Previously a Spanish rancho and later the estate of publisher and horticulturist E. Manchester Boddy the 160 acres was granted to the people of Los Angeles County including one of the world's finest collections of camellias and oaks. Marr's garden images called to mind the long tradition of photographers who have responded creatively to the garden and its timeless appeal. Descanso Gardens is what Marr refers to as a "natural light box," and the result of his photographic explorations is what Getty curator Anne Lyden calls "lyrical and luminous." The lush panoramic images combined with essays on the significance of the Gardens' plants and history make an elegant volume for photography and garden lovers.

14" x 9 "
96 pages
ISBN: 978-1-890449-37-7

$24.95

Softcover

$50.00

Hardcover

Photography by Ann Mitchell
AUSTIN VAL VERDE: Impressions of a Montecito Masterpiece
Exclusive Montecito, California, is home to some of America's most spectacular private residences, new and historic. Perhaps the one met with the most amazement is Val Verde, the house built in 1915 by architect Bertram Goodhue. Val Verde also bears the distinction of being the earliest American free-standing single-family house in the Spanish Colonial Revival style. Ann Mitchell's haunting studies of Val Verde reveal its original grandeur layered with the now-shabby elegance of later owners. From the overgrown Italian landscaping to draped and furnished boudoirs her evocative images afford the reader the rare opportunity of exploring the estate as if the owners had just left.

8-3/4 x 12”
144 pages
ISBN: 978-1-890449-31-5

$24.95

paperback

by Jennifer Zobelein
A FOREST OF PIPES: The Story of the Walt Disney Concert Hall Organ (Includes Bonus CD)
By now, almost everyone has witnessed the Disney Concert Hall's curved metal skin has also seen the cockeyed arrangement of organ pipes that is the brainchild of Frank Gehry. The organ represents the culmination of 16 years of design, planning and construction, and it has been a reverberating success since its inaugural concert in 2004. Although compact and visually enticing, this book includes fascinating interviews with the key figures including Manuel Rosales (the Los Angeles organ designer who worked with architect Frank Gehry) and Caspar Glatter-Goetz (the German organ builder), as well as the architect himself. World famous organists describe their experiences performing on one of the most significant new organs built in the last 100 years. Illustrations include drawings, course-of-construction photos and final portraits of the finished instrument by photographer Grant Mudford.

8" x 8"
96 pages
ISBN: 978-1-890449-43-8

$27.00

paperback

by William H. Fain, Jr., FAIA
ITALIAN CITIES AND LANDSCAPES: An Architect's Sketchbook
This compact and lovely sketch book was created by architect Bill Fain while on a six-month Fellowship at the American Academy in Rome. Exploring the city on bicycle and eventually the countryside of Italy, he created in colored pencil this, his 41st sketchbook. The sketches start out modestly, small with a single method, and become more developed later on as the momentum of discovery built through the course of the journey. Readers will experience the same sense of discovery as they peruse the pages to find their favorite scene. This book is about growing and experiencing the glories of life; about the passion to know about those that have gone before; about the luxury of time, and setting some of it aside to reflect and to let the other side of the brain take charge, where instinct and intuition reside.

5" x 7 "
264 pages
ISBN: 978-1-890449-32-2

$14.95

softcover

Photography by Troy Fuss
CRUISING LA: Architectural Styles in 5 Easy Drives
Inevitably, all visitors to Los Angeles discover that the automobile defines the L.A. experience. Unlike in New York or London, for instance, where complex networks of subways and buses provide access to nearly all points of interest throughout the city, in Los Angeles one must rely on one's own navigation and driving skills to get from point to point. Thus, more often than not, visitors to Los Angeles spend much of their time in the city's often-frustrating vast freeway system, away from the ground and the most endearing aspects of the place. Cruising L.A., the first driver's companion guidebook to Los Angeles, replaces the frustration that is unique to touring L.A. with an expertly guided five-day driving route that exposes one to the most scenic neighborhoods Los Angeles has to offer, revealing the culture, architecture, and stunning landscape features that comprise the draw that brings so many visitors to L.A. to begin with.

6" x 11 "
64 pages
ISBN: 978-1-890449-42-1

$35.00

Paperback w/ flaps

by Scott Johnson
THE BIG IDEA: Criticality and Practice in Contemporary Architecture s
In this engaging memoir from the design partner of award-winning Los Angeles architecture firm Johnson Fain, the author shares his personal experiences as a designer on the rise in the latter half of the twentieth century as he considers the last forty years of the relationship between practice and theory in American architecture. From his childhood days in California’s Salinas Valley to his tenure with legendary architect Philip Johnson to his time with Skidmore, Owings & Merrill to the formation of his own firm and its rise toward the top of the architectural firmament, Johnson’s unique insight makes for a fascinating discussion of each of the major movements that have characterized the world of architecture since Modernism.

6" x 8"
192 pages
ISBN: 978-1-890449-38-4

$50.00

Hardcover

Photography by Berge Aran
AUSTIN VAL VERDE: A Montecito Masterpiece
Exclusive Montecito, California, is home to some of America's most spectacular private residences, new and historic. Perhaps the one met with the most amazement is Val Verde, the house built in 1915 on a breathtaking seventeen-and-one-half-acre coastal plot by architect Bertram Goodhue, the American designer renowned as the supervisory architect of the Panama-California International Exposition of 1915 in San Diego. Besides its status as the most preserved of the great early twentieth-century Southern California estate properties, Val Verde also bears the distinction of being the earliest American free-standing single-family house in the Spanish Colonial Revival style-a building style that would become enormously popular across the United States in the wake of Val Verde's completion, and one that remains popular to this day. In the first book to reveal the full extent and richness of Val Verde's architecture, interiors, and gardens, the reader is treated to the never-before-published color photographs of the house and its gardens by the late Berge Aran, a former UCLA professor of architecture and leading expert on Val Verde. Aran spent years visiting and carefully documenting Val Verde, and through his images the enchanting spirit of this American architectural icon is succinctly captured here, affording the reader the rare opportunity of exploring this wonderful place, inside and out.

8 3/4" x 12"
144 pages
ISBN: 1-890449-39-3

$65.00

Hardcover

Photography by Gil Garcetti
DANCE IN CUBA
Garcetti’s new book of photographs, Dance in Cuba, is a visual chronicle of Cuba’s little-known, yet extremely vibrant, dance culture. Working with Alicia Alonso, Director of the Ballet Nacional de Cuba, Garcetti enjoyed unprecedented access to classical ballet and contemporary dance studios in addition to street and folk dance troupes.

114 pages

$34.95

Carol Bishop
Introduction by Margo Stipe
Frank Lloyd Wright: The Romantic Spirit
In Frank Lloyd Wright: The Romantic Spirit, Carol Bishop’s paintings and photographs capture both the radiant energy and the ephemeral quality of Wright’s architecture. Bishop’s work also reveals how Wright’s architecture inspires thoughts and feelings about the harmony between nature and humanity.

114 pages

$29.95

Hardcover

Joseph Giovannini
MEHRDAD YAZDANI
Mehrdad Yazdani, the first monograph of his work, presents a collection of 25 projects, large and small, built and unbuilt, illustrate Yazdani’s responsiveness to issues of public engagement, program complexity, and site context.

114 pages



$39.95

Limited Edition Hardcover

$24.95

Softcover

Alissa Anderson
NELL BROOKER MAYHEW:
Paintings on Paper
Nell Brooker Mayhew brought a bold and bright new spirit to the Southern California art scene at the turn of the nineteenth century. Nell Brooker Mayhew: Paintings on Paper, the first monograph of her work, features new research as well as numerous color images taken directly from the original paintings.

64 pages

$65.00

Introduction by Joseph Giovannini
Edited by Morris Newman
FIGURE/GROUND: A Design Conversation with Scott Johnson and Bill Fain
In free-association, Johnson and Fain discuss a broad range of topics such as the globalization of architecture, big architecture vs. urban design, beauty, context and the exigencies of history. Intelligently designed by Cooper-Hewitt National Design Award winner Lorraine Wild, this beautiful volume is an important new addition to the literature of architecture and a must for every firm library.

240 pages

$59.95

Don Hensman
Edited by James Steele
Introduction by Alex Moseley
Preface by Robert H. Timme
Photography by Julius Shulman
BUFF & HENSMAN
Conrad Buff and Donald Hensman produced an impressive body of elegant California modern architecture over their long partnership, including a contribution to Art & Architecture magazine’s Case Study House Program. This book is the first comprehensive look at their achievement with inside commentary on their most important projects, as well as a complete chronology of all of their work.

256 pages

$59.95

Photography by Robert Berger
Text by Alfred Willis
Introduction by Kevin Starr
SACRED SPACES
Setting out to record Los Angeles’ unheralded religious history, photographer Robert Berger visited over 300 historic houses of worship over the course of three and a half years. Lively text by noted architectural historian Alfred Willis makes the buildings come alive.

176 pages
132 color images

$125

Photography by Gil Garcetti
FROZEN MUSIC
In this limited collector edition of only 1500 copies, Gil Garcetti’s brilliant interpretive photographs of the steel skin of the Walt Disney Concert Hall evoke the mystery, fluidity, texture and form of Frank O. Gehry’s lyrical shapes.

96 pages
Hardcover bound in silver metallic cloth
45 duotones

$24.95

Patrick Pascal
Introduction by David Gebhard
KESLING MODERN STRUCTURES: Popularizing Modern Design in Southern California 1934-1962
Beginning in November 1935, William Kesling was Southern California's most prolific and successful practitioner of Streamline Moderne design, then called Modernistic. With never before published photographs by Julius Shulman, this book is the first exploration of the work of an important yet little-known player in Southern California's fertile modern movement.

10 1/2 x 8 1/2
96 pages
ISBN 1-890449-13-X
45 duotones

$14.95

Edited by Gloria Gerace
Photography by Dennis Keeley
URBAN SURPRISES: A Guide to Public Art in Los Angeles
This guide invites its readers to discover hundreds of public works of art; some awe-inspiring, some poignant, and some controversial by both famous and lesser-known artists. Enhanced with neighborhood maps and beautifully reproduced color images by photographer Dennis Keeley, this book reveals the magic of the outdoor museum that is the city of Los Angeles.

6 1/2 x 8
112 pages
ISBN 1-890449-14-8

$39.95

Gil Garcetti
Foreword by Frank O. Gehry
IRON: Erecting the Walt Disney Concert Hall
Photographer Gil Garcetti had unparalleled access to the Walt Disney Concert Hall construction site. The personal relationships he developed with the workers over the course of many months and his admiration for their artistry are evident in the moving portraits contained in this book. Garcetti’s evocative images, reproduced in rich duotones, bring to life the romantic ideal of American industry.

9 1/2 x 11 1/2
144 pages
ISBN 1-890449-15-6

$34.95

Victoria Dailey / Natalie Shivers / Michael Dawson
Introduction by William Deverell
LA’S EARLY MODERNS: Art, Architecture, Photography
This book is about a secret Los Angeles, a Los Angeles filled with optimism about a different kind of “city of the future.” The reader will enter a rarified social realm where client, artist, architect, lover, patron, and publisher merged in a creative ferment that occurs spontaneously and magically at rare moments in a city’s life.

7 x 9
196 pages
ISBN 1-890449-16-4

$24.95

Edited by Danette Riddle
Introduction by Cliff Pearson
GEORGE NIKOLAJEVICH
The architecture of George Nikolajevich exhibits a remarkable balance between restraint and expression. Working in St. Louis—far from the country's coasts of architectural fashion he has created a body of work that delivers modernist élan and formal invention.

9 1/2 x 10 1/2
64 pages
ISBN 1-890449-18-0

$29.95

Hardcover

Gloria Koenig
Foreword by Frank O. Gehry
ICONIC LA: Stories of LA's Most Memorable Buildings
Los Angeles is a city of instant recognition. Like characters in a movie, each of the thirteen landmarks of Iconic LA has played a role in an unfolding human drama complete with political intrigue, personal struggle, tragedy and triumph. Their stories are the story of a city in progress, an urban biography that tells a century’s worth of history.

9 x 11
120 pages
ISBN 1-890449-08-3

$14.95

Hardcover

Three Books by Virginia Comer
THE URBAN DETAILS SERIES
Stairways, fountains and streetlights are among the many overlooked small things that enrich and give character to our cityscapes. Seeing and appreciating them is the idea behind the Urban Details series. Many have significant histories and are associated with important civic leaders, and many are merely the result of some functional requirement, but nearly all are the product of the loving hand labor of talented artisans.

Stairways
5 x 7
64 pages
ISBN 1-890449-09-1

$14.95

Hardcover

$14.95

Hardcover

$29.95

Hardbook

Cathie Gandel
JON JERDE IN JAPAN: Designing the Spaces Between
This book tells the story of the unlikely collaboration of a daring Japanese real estate developer and a freewheeling American architect in the making of the largest private real estate development in Japan, Canal City Hakata. Uniquely contextual yet defiantly flamboyant, Canal City shows what can happen when two cultures joyfully collide.

9 x 9
112 pages
ISBN 1-890449-06-7

$39.95

Hardcover

Romy Wyllie
CALTECH'S ARCHITECTURAL HERITAGE:
From Spanish Tile to Modern Stone
“Romy Wyllie’s history of Caltech’s architecture is instructive, tragic, and challenging. It shows us how American architects of the early twentieth century like Goodhue and Kaufmann were able to shape a clear, firm, harmonious environment, a wonderful place, and how their successors later in the century came close to destroying it. It is the genius of the place that counts, the noble garden.”
—Vincent Scully, Professor Emeritus History of Art, Yale University

9 x 11
288 pages
ISBN 1-890449-05-9

$39.95

Hardcover

Julius Shulman
Introduction by Richard Neutra
PHOTOGRAPHING ARCHITECTURE AND INTERIORS
Photographing Architecture and Interiors is Shulman’s first book and he still considers it his most genuine reflection on the profession and his own artistic philosophy. Originally published in 1962, it includes a forward by Richard Neutra. Frank Lloyd Wright once said that to his mind no better photos had been taken of Taliesin West than those of Julius Shulman. Now reprinted intact with a new foreword by Julius Shulman and digitally scanned reproductions from original prints, this new edition of a classic work is better than the original.

9 x 12
154 pages
ISBN 1-890449-07-5

$27.95

Cloth

Diane Rozas/Anita Bourne Gottehrer
AMERICAN VENUS: The Extraordinary Life of Audrey Munson, Model and Muse
Audrey Munson was once called "the most perfect, most versatile, most famous of American models, whose face and figure have inspired thousands of modern masterpieces of sculpture and painting." It was not an exaggeration. Audrey's career is the classic tale of meteoric rise and tragic downfall--from "Queen of the Artist's Studios" to fragile psychiatric patient.
Pub Date: September 1999

8 x 10 inches
144 pgs
ISBN 1-890449-04-01
30 b/w photographs

$29.95

Cloth

Robert W. Winter
BATCHELDER TILEMAKER
"Robert Winter's masterful and much-needed new book establishes Ernest Batchelder as a giant of the great age of American decorative tile making and a key figure in the history of design within the Arts and Crafts movement." --Cleota Reed, Syracuse University, author Henry Chapman Mercer and the Moravian Tile Works
Pub Date: September 1999

9 x 9 inches
112 pgs
ISBN 1-890449-03-2
130 color photographs

$34.95

Cloth

Birgitta Hjalmarson/Foreword by William H. Gerdts
ARTFUL PLAYERS: Artistic Life in Early San Francisco
"Birgitta Hjalmarson has written a thoroughly enjoyable social history of the early San Francisco art community--artists and patrons alike--blending the anecdotal and historical to perfection. It is a well researched, highly readable treatise on how the American art scene developed in the far West." --Peter Rathbone, Director of American Paintings, Sotheby's New York
Pub Date: May 1999

6 x 9 inches
288 pages
ISBN 1-890449-01-6
34 b/w and 46 color photographs

$24.95

Cloth

Michael Webb
THROUGH THE WINDOWS OF PARIS: Fifty Unique Shops
There is no better place to find the real Paris than in the boutiques selling crusty bread and creamy cheese, witty hats and luxurious lingerie. Whether you make the trip from your armchair or hop on the next plane, this book will guide you, in words and pictures, through the windows of Paris.
Pub Date: April 1999

7 x 7 inches
132 pages
ISBN 1-890449-02-4
160 color photographs

$24.95

paperback

Tom Zimmerman/Foreword by Robert Stack
LIGHT AND ILLUSION: The Hollywood Portraits of Ray Jones
Over 100 striking vintage portraits and informative text tell the story of Ray Jones, the head of Universal Studios' stills department through Hollywood's Golden Era.
Pub Date: June 1998

9 x 11 inches
120 pages
ISBN 1-890449-00-8
103 b/w photographs

$25.00

paperback

David Scheinbaum and Janet Russek
GHOST RANCH: Land of Light
This beautifully printed book is the culmination of the efforts of a husband-and-wife team of photographers to capture the spectacular, mystical landscape of Georgia O'Keeffe's Ghost Ranch.
Pub Date: August 1997

11 x 9 inches
96 pages
ISBN: 0-9643119-8-4
70 tri-tone photographs



$50.00

Cloth

$32.00

Paperback

Photography by Robert Berger and Anne Conser
Text by Stephen M. Silverman
THE LAST REMAINING SEATS: Movie Palaces of Tinseltown
100 vivid color images record in lavish detail the spectacular, sumptuous, and often whimsical interiors of 15 of Southern California's most important movie palaces built during the '20s and '30s.
ISBN: 0-9643119-6-8 pb
ISBN: 0-9643119-7-6 hc
Pub Date: June 1997

9 x 11 inches
136 pages
100 color photographs

$23.50

Paperback

Photography by Abigail Gumbiner and Carol Hayden
Text by Jim Heimann
VACANT EDEN: Roadside Treasures of the Sonoran Desert
Vacant Eden captures with humor, photographic, and artistic skill, the cultural and desert motel mirages left behind by a generation who had a love affair with the road.
Pub Date: March 1997

10 x 9 inches
96 pages
ISBN: 0-9643119-5-X
100 color photographs

$49.95

Paperback

John Henken and Michael Buckland
THE HOLLYWOOD BOWL: Tales of Summer Nights
This colorful, scrapbook-style book captures the history and romance of the Hollywood Bowl through a series of essays and rare photographs of legendary performers.
Pub Date: August 1996

9 x 11 inches
152 pages
ISBN: 0-9643119-2-5
160 color photographs

$20.00

Limited Edition Reprint
Coming Soon

Paperback

Margaret Leslie Davis
BULLOCKS WILSHIRE
This elegant book chronicles the efforts of the impressive team of international architects, designers and retailers who created Los Angeles' famed Art Deco masterpiece.
Pub Date: March 1996

8 x 10 1/2 inches
120 pages
ISBN: 0-9643119-4-1
100 duotone photographs

$24.95

softcover

Jeanette A. Thomas
IMAGES OF THE GAMBLE HOUSE: Masterwork of Greene and Greene
Rich precision photography using dramatic available light, explores the sublime details of this Craftsman period treasure.
Pub Date: June 1995

8 1/2 x 11 inches
96 pages
ISBN: 0-9643119-1-7
100 color photographs

Merry Ovnick
LOS ANGELES: The End of the Rainbow

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