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reviewed by Stanley Abercrombie -- Interior Design, 7/1/2001 12:00:00 AM

Hospitality and Restaurant Design No. 2

by Roger Yee

New York: Visual Reference

320 pages, over 600 color illustrations, $49.95.

Another volume in this valuable ongoing series. Design firms invited to participate (36 of them, in this case, including lots of big names and a few newcomers) choose their own projects to be shown. The results are necessarily uneven and lacking the cohesive slant of a single editorial viewpoint, thus combining to offer a uniquely representative and unprejudiced overview of what is actually being produced today in the hospitality field. Roger Yee has brought his experienced editorial skills to the writing of the accompanying text and concluding essay, "What Does Today's Guest Want?," and there is a foreword by Michael Adams.

Building a Legacy: The Restoration of Frank Lloyd Wright's Oak Park Home and Studio

edited by Zarine Weil, Frank Lloyd Wright Preservation Trust

San Francisco: Pomegranate

150 pages, many color and b&w illustrations, $30 paperbound.

The story of the construction, expansions, and alterations of Frank Lloyd Wright's own house and studio in the Chicago suburb of Oak Park between 1889 and 1909 is complex. Equally complex is the story of its restoration to its 1909 state by what is now called the Frank Lloyd Wright Preservation Trust (with substantial funding from Steelcase) between 1974 and 1987. Both stories are made clear in this new book, along with both archival and new photography and drawings. There is an introduction by Eric Lloyd Wright and an afterword by Elizabeth Wright Ingraham, both grandchildren of the architect and both now architects themselves. Most expressive of the house's importance, however, is a brief quotation from Arthur Drexler, former director of architecture and design at New York's Museum of Modern Art: "No literate person can stand in those rooms without seeing ghosts, without hearing the arguments, the laughter, the ideas about how to live and build and make art, that are now part of everyone's history."

Barcelona Interiors

edited by Francesc Alvarez; photography by Eva Serrats

Barcelona: Loft Publications, distributed in the U.S. by Antique Collectors' Club, Wappingers Falls, NY

176 pages, 124 color illustrations, $34.95 paperbound.

An eclectic collection of 19 characterful apartments in Barcelona. Although the one shown on the cover is in Antonio Gaudí's famous Casa Milá, there are few direct references, even in that case, to the history of the city's architecture. Many are in loft and warehouse spaces not originally meant for habitation. Many are highly personal in their décor—a black kitchen with white counters, silk chandeliers above bookshelves of steel pipes, tables made from packing crates, lifesize portraits of prizefighters painted on the walls. It is all an appealing mix of the pristine and the funky, with perhaps a tilt towards the funky. The photographs, like the rooms, are full of personality, but some of them are marred by the unmoderated glare from windows.