David Sokol – författare

Workstead designs one-of-a-kind interiors and pieces that balance beauty with necessity, and this book presents a special blend of their tour-de-force historic renovations and innovative yet elegant new constructions. Over the past decade, the multidisciplinary design firm has earned rapid and wide acclaim for both their residential interiors as well as for larger-scale projects, such as the Wythe Hotel in Brooklyn and the Rivertown Lodge in Hudson, New York. In all their projects, Workstead considers both clients and community, working with local artisans to create meticulously crafted modern interiors, architecture, and furniture designs inflected by history. As T: The New York Times Style Magazine put it, Workstead are known as sophisticated pack rats who surround themselves with objects that have a story to tell, and described their collective design philosophy as a cozy, updated version of early Americana, with wood plank floors and a mix of vintage and refined custom-built furniture pieces that are almost Scandinavian in their restraint.

Presenting acclaimed design studio Workstead’s trendsetting commercial projects, public places of both beauty and necessity that embrace a distinct sense of place while making us feel almost right at home.Over the past decade, Brooklyn-based Workstead has earned wide acclaim for its signature residential projects, as well as larger-scale projects such as the Wythe Hotel in Brooklyn and the Rivertown Lodge in Hudson, New York. As their projects expand, Workstead’s design approach continues to feel very of the moment, rooted in an appreciation of craftsmanship, detail, and materiality.Known for their thoughtful approach to design, Workstead works with a network of skilled fabricators, collaborating with craftspeople and artists across all mediums to create customized interior design, lighting, and furniture. The resulting interiors feel homey and welcoming, spaces where we want to spend time, whether they’re a wine bar, a restaurant, or a great room of a hotel.Each of these interiors is crafted to make us feel at home, from the rows of bookshelves and inviting lighting to the cozy banquettes and displays of art and curios; these rooms upend the traditional notions of public and private space. Accompanied by thoughtful, descriptive texts, these interiors reward us with ideas and solutions for our own spaces and design challenges.

Hudson Modern showcases stunning new houses in the Hudson River Valley that embrace the dramatic settings and cultural bounty of this popular region. As the birthplace of American landscape painting, the Hudson River Valley has long been a refuge from the city and a laboratory for new aesthetic expression. Today, thanks to its ascendant reputation as a weekend utopia, architects are extending that tradition into the built environment.Designing residences that revere local climate, landscape, and history in a distinctly modernist language, these talents are sowing a new Hudson River school of architectural thought. Hudson Modern surveys this emerging domestic architecture, featuring nearly twenty houses that integrate with site and region through composition, scale, and materials, and which strike a balance between innovation and rootedness.A reconstructed midcentury house accented in cedar, walnut, and bluestone by Joel Sanders and landscaped by the late Diana Balmori blurs the edge of habitation and nature. KieranTimberlake revises the classic vision of a glass box by cladding a home on a rocky site in Pound Ridge in a tapestry of steel, aluminum, copper, and glass. In Rhinebeck, Steven Holl experiments with a radical form that has both ecological and social dimensions.Author David Sokol presents these and numerous other examples of design-forward residences that are responsive to terrain, building vernacular, and cultural legacy. Together, the new Hudson Valley houses point a way forward for rural living in the twenty-first century.

A visual celebration of New York’s Legendary summer retreat as the vanguard of residential design todayThere are few places in the United States that have experienced as many waves of American modernism as Long Island’s East End, long known as a haven for the wealthy and glamorous. In Hamptons Modern, author David Sokol explores the latest architectural experiments taking place in New York’s legendary summer retreat. With contemporary design increasingly favored in the region, the eighteen residences featured here reflect modernism’s spread across both forks (and as far west as Bellport, which has become a cultural gateway to the Hamptons). Yet perhaps more important, these houses represent a shift away from the image of conspicuously sprawling properties for the elite; these projects return to modernism’s founding principles, shun Instagrammable spectacle, and steward the East End’s increasingly fragile landscape. These houses interface with the seaside landscape in ways that reference the Hamptons’ rich design history and sensitively highlight Long Island’s famed natural beauty. Some are renovations and additions to houses by famed twentieth-century modernists like Andrew Geller, Charles Gwathmey, and Norman Jaffe, and leading offices such as Bates Masi + Architects, Young Projects, Leroy Street Studio, and Ryall Sheridan Architects represent the contemporary approach to twenty-first century regionalism. Hamptons Modern presents these and numerous other examples of designforward residences that are responsive to terrain, building vernacular, and cultural legacy.

Nordic interior design has long been celebrated for its clean aestethic, craftsmanship and empathy for human experience. Nordic Designers tracks down this heritage in the most prominent industrial, interior and product designers of the uprising 21st Century. Today, the tradition has taken on forms such as the idea of democratic design and the burgeoning of ecological consciousness. But author David Sokol has also uncovered other, and new, trends in the region. With young star constellations such as Front, intellectual conceit and con ceptuality have taken the upper hand over form-making. In informal interviews with 59 of the region's best known designers, such as Ilkka Suppanen, Claesson Koivisto Rune, and Monica Förster, David Sokol explores the motives and stories of each designer. Hereby he paints a colorful picture of the importance of sustainable design, the questions of local versus global affinity, and the future of Nordic identity.

Ebbs & Flows, the second volume of Nordic Architects, features the work of 60 leading offices on the Nordic Architectural scene. Showcasing their latest works, including as-yet unbuilt competition entries, this book gives an incomparable view of the present and the future of the new wave in Nordic Architecture. Leading studios such as BIG, Snøhetta and sandellsandberg are already claiming their share of the global market with important assignments in South Korea, Russia, Saudi Arabia and the USA, suggesting warm winds blowing from the north. David Sokol is a New York-based writer and editor specializing in architecture and interiors, planning and product design. A former managing editor of I.D., today he is a contributing editor at Architectural Record, Greensource Magazine, and others. I addition to his work for Arvinius + Orfeus, he is the author of The Modern Architecture Pop-Up Book (Rizzoli).