Beach Houses Andrew Geller, by Alastair Gordon, Princeton Architectural Press, 128 pages, $43.
In an era of unbridled optimism Andrew Geller created beach houses for his clients that brought together the divergent elements of the landscape, their personalities and Geller's unique vision.
As a designer at Raymond Loewy, Geller worked on a wide range of projects from designing shopping centres to logos. In 1955 he designed a beach house for Barbara Reese, who he worked with at Loewy, and it was to become the starting point of a separate career. The A-frame structure he created for Reese received a great deal of media attention and resulted in new commissions for other beach houses.
Author Alastair Gordon examines many of Geller's constructions and shares fascinating details about their creation. Geller worked closely with his clients and tried to interpret their lifestyle into the design. "Each of Geller's houses was like a portrait, a custom-made tribute to its owner's personalities."
While these beach houses embraced a kind of everyman modernism, they were built economically and for summer use, making them within reach of middle class incomes. Geller was not interested in just making a statement with the building's shape. There were many factors at work, as they were located on the site with a focus on the view, prevailing winds, sun angles, high tides and more.
Photographs of the construction stages and finished houses are featured throughout the book, as well as many of Geller's sketches and plans for them. This visionary architect was able to combine the artist's sensitivities to the builder's realities and made beach houses that celebrated life.
Heart & Soil, by Des Kennedy, Harbour Publishing, 240 pages, $24.95.
You won't learn how to fix your aphid problem or what is the fastest growing hedge to create a privacy screen in Des Kennedy's latest book. What you will discover is a collection of stories that will entertain and inspire you towards one of man's oldest activities.
This icon of Canadian gardening shares his thoughts on a wide range of related topics, from the simple joy of turning over a vegetable bed and the resulting connection to the soil to the change in his opinion on mushrooms. At one time he believed that "having mushrooms in the garden was like having cockroaches in the house, revealing one's lack of cleanliness and moral rectitude."
Like a longtime neighbour leaning over the fence, Kennedy draws you easily into his stories with his conversational tone and his entertaining outlook. Planted in the middle of the writings is a selection of photos of Kennedy's breathtaking garden at his Denman Island home.
Kennedy takes a swing at the challenge of nighttime raids on his garden by creatures that move on legs and those that creep along on multiple feet.
Fences, covers, and other techniques are applied but he manages to make each description a chance to joust with his subject matter.
By the end of the book you've discovered a whole lot of interesting garden tips have been slipped into the 60 musings that Kennedy has shared, and you are both entertained and enlightened.
—Terry Peters
