Portia Jewelry Black Friday Cyber Monday Coupons

Portia Jewelry's Gift Shop section has everything you need to know for this holiday season. Not only are there hot jewelry picks and gift ideas but there's extreme "black friday"/ "cyber monday" coupon codes you can use right now. Get up to 40% off the entire store, plus use these coupons on already marked down jewelry and handbags. Below is a few snapshots of Portia's Gift Shop for 2009. Check it out by clicking the image above or clicking this link- PortiaJewelry.com Gift Shop

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2010 Minimalist Bedroom Designs Trends with Modern Luxury Furniture

These are the pictures of the bedroom design with minimalist style that can become your inspiration on how to design beautiful elegant luxurious bedrooms of your home.

Creating a new concept of designs need fresh ideas. Thus, the samples pictures of modern minimalist bedroom furniture designs which is so inspiring might be very helpful for any one looking for new and fresh designs of minimalist bedroom furniture designs. The designs look so amazing as they have been highly demanded by new home owners as the great inspiration to create minimalist bedroom designs. The combination of color and the use of the best bedroom material become the main power of these minimalist bedroom designs. Thus, creating your bedroom using the bedroom styles displayed is a good step to create the harmonic look of minimalist bedroom designs.

Traditional Mexican Style Exteriors

Incredibly beautiful, classic, and timeless architectural details of Mexican style are shown in over 300 color photographs of new, old, and remodeled traditional homes and gardens. From Spanish Colonial facades in San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato, Mexico, to the best of the Mission and Spanish Eclectic homes, this volume is a must for everyone interested in Mexican architecture and outdoor charm. This book excites the readers imagination through nine chapters, including facades, doors, gates, portales & patios, columns, fountains, pools, cantera stonework, and gardens.

Arcades support massive tiled roof overhangs and bring shade to the outdoor sala an affirmation for outdoor living at its best. Sparkling pools and spouting fountains bring tranquility to flower-filled gardens and courtyards. The pictures will inspire decorators, designers, architects, builders, and homeowners looking for traditional and exciting ideas. Everyone who enjoys looking at beautiful facades, outdoor living areas, and gardens will covet this book.

Designing Your Perfect House

If you ve ever considered building your dream home, here is a step-by-step guidebook that will take you through the design process. Designing Your Perfect House: Lessons from an Architect concerns the thought process of planning and creating a house, the methodology of the design, and how to get everything right.


Reading this book, you will gain insights about how to:

Gain control of the design and building process

Choose a perfect site for your house

Avoid costly mistakes

Unify an architectural design

Not just design a house, but how to design a home

Budget in a realistic manner

The basic premise of the book is that there is no such thing as the perfect house; there is only your perfect house. An architect s task is to help you achieve that dream. The experience of home design and construction should be controllable, gratifying, and enjoyable. With the valuable advice that Designing Your Perfect House: Lessons from an Architect provides, it can be.

Chief Architect Architectural Home Designer 9.0

Architectural Home Designer 9.0 is all-in-one Home Design software and includes: Home Design, Remodeling, Decks & Landscaping, Interior Design, Site Planning & Estimating. It leverages the same professional quality from Chief Architect making it the most powerful and easy to use home design software. Quickly place and arrange walls, windows, doors, and cabinets. Choose colors, place furniture, create decks and landscaping. Powerful building tools like standard CAD tools, automatic roof generation, dormers, stairs, framing, foundations, and Plan Check make it easy. Choose from a Library of more than 3,600 plants and 7,000 items including windows, doors, lighting, furniture, interior/exterior fixtures, cabinets, and more. HOME DESIGN Choose from thousands of styles, colors, wallpaper, flooring, and materials. Move a wall, change a color, add a room, redesign a kitchen, create your own cabinets, and estimate costs before you build. REMODELING Experiment and create models and virtual tours. Arrange walls, windows, doors, decks, and automatically generate 3D models to visualize at any angle. Powerful building and remodeling tools include automatic roof generation, foundations, stairs, and more. INTERIOR DESIGN Choose or import thousands of items to customize your design. Point-and-click to change wall colors, flooring styles, countertops, and more. Choose from name-brand colors and materials or create your own. DECKS & LANDSCAPING Over 1,500 botanically accurate flowers, trees, and shrubs. Create gardens, pathways, hills, valleys, ponds, and more for your outdoor living area. Powerful deck tools allow you to design, visualize, estimate, and build your outdoor living project. SITE PLANNING & ESTIMATING Design your lot and plans with easy terrain tools. Identify your costs and materials for your next project before you begin. Design in 2D or 3D. Add, resize, and automatically dimension your plans.

Exclusive All-in-One Home Design Solution

* Choose from over 2,500 Sample Plans
* Choose from built-in home style templates, create your own custom home design or use the House Wizard
* Powerful building tools like automatic roof generation, dormers, stairs, framing and foundations
* Artistic rendering techniques for Watercolor, Glass House and Technical Illustration

Get Started Quickly and Easily

* The Quick Startup Options Guide will help you begin with "How-To" tutorials based on the type of your project
* Use the House Wizard for quick and easy layout of your rooms
* Select from the pre-designed Home Design and Landscaping Style Templates complete with colors, cabinets, decks and more
* The online help system provides detail information on all types of building projects
* Includes over 40 easy "step-by-step" tutorial training videos that will quickly get you started on your next home design project

Kitchen and Bath Design

* Design the Kitchen of your dreams--move walls, create new cabinets, add appliances--Design your perfect workspace!
* Plan the new layout of your bathroom with custom cabinets, sinks, showers and garden tubs. It's easy to visualize your ideas in 3D.
* Create custom cabinets in minutes by choosing your own colors, countertops, door styles and more
* Design your new kitchen or bath using the Cabinet Designer Tools
* Use the Cabinet Designer tools to create unlimited cabinet styles. Choose your own colors, countertops and door styles.

Interior Design

* Material Painter lets you apply colors and materials quickly and easily
* Choose from thousands of colors and textures or create your own materials using a digital photograph
* Design for your lifestyle and personality--change colors, add lighting and choose furniture to accent your new room
* Choose from a variety of interior items--including chairs, tables, sofas, fabrics, accessories and more. Resize, change colors and materials to meet your exact needs.
* Import your own symbols from 3D files types including .SKP, .OBJ and .3DS
* Smart Design Objects, Drag-and-drop from thousands of design objects in the built-in Library organized by category

Decks and Landscaping

* Powerful deck and patio tools allow you to design and visualize your new deck with 3D models and can help you estimate the costs
* Design single or multi-level decks complete with automatic deck framing
* Quickly lay out your deck with stairs and arrange furniture
* Deck foundations automatically generate to match sloped lots
* Plant Encyclopedia to learn more about the plants in your designs
* Choose from over 3,600 plants with the Plant Chooser
* Plant Hardiness Zone reference maps
* See what your plants will look like in 0 - 20 years
* Pathways--Use the Pathway tool to design curb-appealing landscaping using stone, pavers, or sidewalks--line with trees, shrubs, flowers and more

3D Models and Virtual Tours

* Design in 2D and 3D. 3D Views are automatic with a point-and-click of the camera tool.
* Glass House View provides a full translucent view of your design. Choose other Artistic rendering techniques for Watercolor and Technical Illustration views.
* Planning of furniture placement and traffic flow
* Create a Virtual Tour--draw your record line to Automatically Generate; or record your camera movements
* Visualize your home with day and night views
* Assemble a scale model of your design with Model Maker
* Generate shadows from the sun for realistic 3D views
* Point-and-click to remove wall surfaces, or use 3D Cross-Section Elevation Slider to quickly create a 3D slice of your desired view

Site Planning & Estimating

* Use Automatic Build Terrain and Terrain Perimeter tools to create flat, irregular shaped, or sloped lots--use a GPS to import or enter elevation data
* Create plot and perimeter plans; automatically generate a 3D model of your actual terrain
* Make your backyard design come alive using several easy-to-use terrain and landscaping tools. Add a pool or pond and visualize in 3D.
* Sprinkler Designer tools to easily layout sprinkler zones
* Fences and Driveways--With the Fencing tools you can choose a variety of fencing styles and custom gates. You will also find driveway, sidewalk and curbing tools
* Hill and Valley tools make it easy to add gardens, beds and slopes that automatically appear in 3D views. Choose from landscaping style templates or create your own.
* Cost Estimating--Don't be surprised by the cost of your project. Automatically generate a complete spreadsheet for your project costs, broken down by category. Calculate the amount of lumber for your deck or concrete required for that new patio.

Patterns of Home: The Ten Essentials of Enduring Design

Coauthors (along with several other writers) of the landmark design guide A Pattern Language, Jacobson and Silverstein join with their architectural partner, Winslow, to further simplify building design by distilling the principles they previously set forth as ten essentials for residential homes. These fundamentals cover such subjects as making the best use of light; keeping all parts of the house from windows to walls to rooms in proportion; and including "in-between" places like porches, window seats, alcoves and sunrooms in the design of the home. Some of their concepts are fairly abstract; for example, they suggest imagining the home as not just a building but a "site" that contains both indoor and outdoor rooms, and they counsel readers to "let the overall form of the house grow naturally out of the forms of its various parts, rather than being superimposed from the outside." These theories are complemented by more concrete advice about how to measure out a human-sized room, balance private and common spaces and much more. The authors include diagrams and color photographs of 33 actual homes with detailed explanatory captions. While it is aimed predominately at professional designers, this guide is useful for anyone contemplating a new home or making renovations to an existing one; certainly it will change the way readers think about the architectural spaces around them.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Why are some houses such a pleasure to visit or inhabit? This spin-off from A Pattern Language, which has been a design resource for decades, successfully answers that question. California architects Jacobson and Murray Silverstein helped coauthor A Pattern Language, and with partner Barbara Winslow they have chosen ten principles or patterns of house design that they consider most important (and which serve as chapter heads): "Inhabiting the Site," "Creating Rooms," "Sheltering Roof," "Capturing Light," "Parts in Proportion," "Flow Through Rooms," "Private Edges, Common Core," "Refuge and Outlook," "Places in Between," and "Composing with Materials." Each pattern is illustrated with sketches and photographs, as the authors provide beautiful examples of 33 homes by various U.S. architects or designers, mostly in the western United States. The well-organized text and layout combine with the 410 outstanding color photographs and 155 black-and-white illustrations to help the reader visualize these patterns in practice. Highly recommended for public libraries and libraries supporting architecture courses.
David R. Conn, Surrey P.L., BC

Brilliant Design of Bathroom with Stylish Ideas

what wonderful bathroom designs these are. Find the idea of bathroom design in these pictures. These sample pictures and photo gallery of inspiring and brilliant bathroom design ideas from Kaldewei must be the ones recommended for any one going to design new bathroom.The use of large space becomes the main power and characteristics of these bathroom. The choice of the lighting and bathtub in good placement can create elegance. Besides, the latest featured bathroom idea from Kaldewei involves a lot of water everywhere.

Brazil's Modern Architecture

This is the new paperback edition of the most comprehensive survey of twentieth-century Brazilian architecture, analyzed by a new generation of critics and historians. The book covers about 200 buildings and urban designs, presenting key events and projects within a series of thematic chapters. It is extensively illustrated with archival black-and-white and new color photographs as well as drawings and sketches. It offers a fresh reading of Brazil's era of high modernism from the 1930s through the 1960s, placing it in context with regards to earlier and later architectural movements as well as the broad changes taking place in Brazilian culture at the time. The book also charts post-Brasilia developments, including case studies of contemporary projects, showing the relevance of Brazilian architecture within the international scene.

Review
'The creative richness of Brazilian architecture, and the very high critical level of some of the writing in this book [...] suggest that far from worrying about Brazil being provincial, as the authors fear, it is we in Europe how need to learn from their experience...the book is filled with the most beautiful, adventurous modern architecture one has seen anywhere...By combining immense beauty with deep tragedy, perhaps this book exactly captures the spirit of Brazilian architecture, as in the samba by Cazuza, its beauty making everything "por um segundo mais feliz" (a little happier, for just a moment).' (Thomas Muirhead, Building Design)'Tells the story...of what made the country's populace open to Le Corbusier's radicalism and Niemayer's modernism while living in shanty towns that would disgrace Calcutta.' (Arena)'Beautifully illustrated.' (RIBA (Royal Institute of British Architects))'Exemplary...The text is serious yet clear, and enhanced by stunning photographs...Best of all, there is a list of buildings to visit, and contacts for those open only by appointment. Plan your trip now.' (Architect's Journal)'Serves up a selection of the most heroic and expressionist modern architecture.' (Wallpaper*)'Having spent a recent trip to Brazil constantly in this book's company, I'm now inordinately attached to it. At each stop, it was reverently taken out of the suitcase, placed on the desk, consulted, then packed up and hauled on to the next stop...Overall, I could not have asked for a more useful or enlightened guide than Brazil's Modern Architecture...well-written...meticulously produced...beautiful visual material.' (Contemporary)'The introduction provides an excellent overview of Brazilian Modernism and its context...an elegantly produced, generously illustrated and highly readable book...It is rare to find a book of this kind covering so well a wide range of issues.' (The Architectural Review)

richard neutra and the seach for modern architecture

The stry of richard neutra's life is in many ways the story of modern architecture. he experienced the buoyant struggles of the movement's early years and the heady excesses of its mid-century ascendancy. in this study thomas s. hines explores the efforts of neutra and his modernist contemporaries to find the forms that would best express the meaning of the 20th century.

100 More of the World's Best Houses

Popular demand has led IMAGES' team of researchers to scour the world for yet another stunning collection of homes. The 100 fabulous homes carefully selected for this volume represent contemporary residential architecture in all its myriad forms. Vast differences in location, climate, culture, style, materials, interiors, and even furniture result in a collection that showcases, with full-colour photographs, plans and drawings, the best in international residential architecture. This is a book that can be browsed through time after time, with each viewing guaranteed to inspire, delight and surprise.

I am not an architect and I have no artistic talent. But architecture is my favorite art form. I buy a lot of architectural books. This is one of a series of three (hopefully more will come) that is excellent for its photography, its selection of things to photograph and the floor plans presented for most home, allowing the reader to conjure up a good picture of each of the masterpieces. The only downside is that when I lay the book aside, I suddenly realize that I am back in my own home. Well, it keeps the rain out.

Modern Architecture

Colquhoun, an eminent scholar in the field of architecture, offers here a new account of international modernism that explores the complex motivations behind this revolutionary movement and assesses its triumphs and failures. The book focuses on the work of the main architects of the movement such as Frank Lloyd Wright, Adolf Loos, Le Corbusier, and Mies van der Rohe, re-examining their work and shedding new light on their roles as acknowledged masters. The author presents a fascinating analysis of architecture with regard to politics, technology, and ideology, all while offering clear descriptions of the key elements of the Modern movement. Colquhoun shows clearly the evolution of the movement from Art Nouveau in the 1890s to the mega-structures of the 1960s, revealing the often-contradictory demands of form, function, social engagement, modernity and tradition.

Review

"Who needs another history of the modern movement? Coloquhoun, emeritus professor of architecture at Princeton, shows us why in this wonderfully succinct, readable, and opinionated account of movements and formgivers, from European art nouveau to the post-war decades in America. Each of the chapters focuses on a theme or a region, ranging from the artistry of Loos to the social engineering of Scandanavia. Though most of the examples are familiar, the author gives them a fresh spin--starting with the cover illustration of Hans Scharoun's Schminke house of 1933, now restored and used as a day care center. It embodies the daring and idealism that powered the modern movement and is now being rediscovered."--L.A. Architect

The Study of Architectural Design

The Study of Architectural Design by John F. Harbeson is the only text in English that describes, step by step, the system of architectural education developed in France and commonly known as the Beaux-Arts method as it was adapted and refined to suit the structure and demands of American schools of architecture.
Used to train every architect in America until the late 1940s, it was supplanted by the advent of modernism. With Harbeson's clear approach to teaching the system, students and practitioners can recover the classic course of study for use today, from the making of the initial sketch, through development, to the rendering of the project for presentation to clients. 320 b/w, 35 color illustrations.

Review
Harbeson’s lost masterpiece is back in print—and provides an invaluable insight into architectural training methods from an age that produced giants….Of particular value to this reprinted edition is the new introduction…a great addition to the architectural literature. (Traditional Building )