Product Description

Mediterranean Design reveals the vibrant color, outdoor-living emphasis, and diverse cultural influences that have created this unique style. Defined by an eclectic mix of natural elements: sunlight bouncing across textured walls, rooms arranged around porch-lined courtyards, terra-cotta tile roofs covering wood-beam ceilings, arched passages and porticos, vibrantly colored interiors, and courtyards and fountains that take advantage of the temperate climate. Mediterranean Design brings home the romantic and worldly appeal of a style that finds its heritage in the diverse lands of Morocco, Spain, Greece, Turkey, France, and Croatia.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #431890 in Books
• Published on: 2006-08-17
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 184 pages

From the Inside Flap
More countries line the Mediterranean Sea than any other body of water. "Mediterranean" conjures up passionate, sensual visions of the ocean and charming villages. Mediterranean Design has universal appeal, reaching from the roots of Morocco, Spain, Italy, Greece, Turkey, France, and Croatia to interpretive architecture in the United States, most especially in California, Arizona, Texas, and Florida.
Mediterranean architecture touches people through comfort on a basic level with charm, beauty, and nature, wrapped in sculptural elements and tempered by vivid colors and tactile textures. Mediterranean communities are tight-knit, friendly circles where partnership is valued. Invite this engaging design into your living space to encourage social interaction and elegant warmth.
Author Mary Whitesides, an accomplished designer and photographer, has created designs for everything from interiors and home furnishings to pottery and coffee mugs. Her unique Peruvian-inspired furniture collections are widely distributed, and her African and Peruvian-inspired accessories are featured in museums, including the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. One of the four founding members of the Sundance Catalog, Mary was a partner in developing the Sundance look and style. She is also the author of Wine Country, Desert Style, Mountain Style, and Wicker Design. Whitesides travels frequently to South America and throughout the United States. She makes her home in Park City, Utah.

About the Author
Eminent designer Mary Whitesides has designed everything from interiors and home furnishings to pottery and coffee mugs. Her Peruvian-inspired furniture collections are widely distributed and featured in museums, including the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. In addition, she was one of the four founding members of the Sundance Catalog and a partner in developing the Sundance look, as well as the author of Desert Style, Mountain Style, and Wicker Design for Gibbs Smith, Publisher. She lives in Park City, Utah.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Just mentioning the word "Mediterranean" conjures up passionate sensual visions of the sea and charming villages. More countries line the shores of the Mediterranean Sea than any other body of water. It is as if the cultures that touch the Mediterranean have fallen into a great big mixing bowl of ideas and concepts generated over centuries of invasions, occupations, and exchanges. Because these countries have been engraved by so many civilizations and societies, it is a complex consortium of a highly sophisticated world of tangible architectural structures and a revealing immaterial essence.

Customer Reviews

Ideas for Exquisite Living
"The stonework is hand chiseled and laid in an organized pattern, with wide chinking and wooden accents. Wood-framed windows deep-set in very thick walls purposely shade the rooms from the hot Mediterranean sun yet swing open easily to direct the sea breeze throughout." ~ pg. 108, Stone Casitas

Luxurious designs are displayed in all their glory throughout this beautiful collection of inspired ideas. From the incredible spa-like pools in creative shapes (including stars) to the sapphire blue tiles in a Moroccan-style bathroom, the pictures are breathtaking. Dreamy outdoor settings filled with sunflowers and fountains look like scenes from a novel you would want to live in and the terrace with a tented roof garden is so romantic!

Sunlit walls surround an outdoor seating area and sheer orange curtains allows light to filter into a room with ancient walls. Light plays with color and texture throughout the book and makes this fascinating.

Villa Rockledge has an enviable reading room with a cozy chair upholstered in a crimson fabric that is mirrored in the carpet, but with less complexity. The room seems especially comforting and may give you some ideas for your own reading room/library.

The walls of the rooms throughout are almost as interesting as the furnishings. In one room a lime-washed pumpkin walls glows in the light of candles, a chandelier and a fireplace. An outdoor room seems to glow with hints of lavender blue as sunlight filters in onto the stone pillars and tiled floor. The stonework in the Ada Hotel in Turkey is fascinating and create the feeling that you are living inside a castle.

Every page of this book is a masterpiece! It is rare to feel such longing to dissolve into the pages of a book and to wander through intoxicatingly designed rooms, covered verandas and courtyards. The aquamarine seating area that matches the color of the water in a pool is a must-see. You can truly imagine spending much more time outside with such beauty. Unlike many architecture books of exclusive homes, this one showcases a few hotels you could actually visit!

~The Rebecca Review

A gorgeous, inspirational survey.
More countries line the Mediterranean than any other body of water, and MEDITERRANEAN DESIGN thus reaches into the cultures of Spain, Italy, Greece, France and others to incorporate a wide range of architectural styles. When it transplants to the U.S. and blends with local needs here, it can be truly astonishing, as MEDITERRANEAN DESIGN teaches in a survey of Mediterranean living spaces both at home and abroad. Full page color photos of home interiors accompany detailed historical notes and descriptions which include period changes and trends. A gorgeous, inspirational survey.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

Too many American-Mediterranean design
I felt that I did not get my money's worth with this. I wanted to see more pictures of Mediterranean design located in the Mediterranean not the USA