David Netto – författare

Francois Catroux is an innovator and explorer in interior design, who has always been a master of contemporary style. From his early days as a design prodigy, creating space-age boutiques for a house of couture and apartments that drew from Art Deco and modern design, to chic, mirror-studded interiors rich with glamour and elegant refinement in residences in Hong Kong, New York, and London, Catroux is at home in the vast world of design. His spaces may surprise with the introduction of irregular elements a chandelier of elk horn or pink florescent lighting in a hallway but Catroux s hallmark sensibility combines the majesty and grandeur of high ceilings, elegant moldings, and gossamer draperies with elements that suggest comfort and tasteful, restrained opulence. Go-to accoutrements include sumptuous sofas, rich carpeting, gentle lighting, rooms lined with books, and ship staterooms in warm wood panelling with brass lamps, all measured according to a modern eye.This book looks at Catroux s career chronologically, featuring his first projects in 1968 through his latest, completed only this year, and includes the interiors of houses and apartments around the globe, from Paris to New York, Hong Kong to Los Angeles. Luxuriously photographed, this volume is more than just a design monograph on one of the great, and so far relatively untold, careers in the history of design it is also a lively and intimate read about a life lived in great style.

Known and celebrated for many of the apartment buildings on Park Avenue, Fifth Avenue, and in Sutton Place 82 in NYC, including the storied 740 Park, sometimes called the richest and most powerful address in New York and whose famous residents included John D. Rockefeller Jr. Candela s work is at once timeless and profoundly of its time. Classical in styling and even modest on the exterior, it is on the insides, in the apartment interiors, the floorplans, the extraordinary and frequently luxurious arrangements of rooms and space, where his designs set a standard that serves as a benchmark and aspirational goal of taste and refinement. The authors explore these seminal spaces through the lens of exteriors and urbanism, planning and interior architecture, and the circumstances and stories of creation. Lavish and comprehensive black-and-white vintage photography as well as color imagery of the exteriors, original plans, and a collection of exceptional interior views give historical perspective (including a seductive Slim Aarons' Park Avenue streetscape) and contemporary sizzle (as seen in Derry Moore s depiction of K. K. Auchincloss s penthouse at 1040 Fifth). The story told is of a genius designer who gave form to the New York of his dreams.