Modern to Classic - Residential Estates by Landry Design Group, which is being released to bookstores by ORO Editions in November 2006 represents a collection of twenty years of the work of Richard Landry and Landry Design Group. The book encompasses the consummate vision of one of today’s most celebrated residential architects.

In its presentation of 17 extraordinary homes, this sumptuous book takes the reader behind the gates of some of today’s most inspiring residential estates, from the exclusive neighborhoods of Beverly Hills to the bluff tops overlooking the Pacific Ocean.

Whether it is a modernist gem or a French chateau, the architecture firm Landry Design Group has designed each project with an exquisite attention to detail and a keen understanding of its clients’ unique lifestyles.

The projects featured in Modern to Classic are detailed with perspective drawings and hundreds of specially commissioned color photographs.
       
 

According to Richard Landry, owner and principal of the internationally acclaimed architecture firm Landry Design Group, the design of a house should reflect the memories, individual aspirations and unique experiences of the owners. This belief explains why every Landry house has a distinct personality.

ORO Editions will release MODERN TO CLASSIC – RESIDENTIAL ESTATES BY LANDRY DESIGN GROUP, showcasing 17 of Landry’s unparalleled designs, to fine bookstores throughout the country, in November 2006.

In the book’s foreword, Paul Goldberger places Landry’s work in the context of American architectural history:

“Richard Landry belongs to the great tradition of American eclecticism, a tradition that, at its best, has yielded masterpieces, and has also created a vastly larger quantity of decent and civilized buildings than it has been given credit for.”

His homes – whether a French chateau, Italian villa, English manor, Neoclassical estate, or contemporary compound – thrive on traditional idioms, while creating an appropriate bridge to his clients’ contemporary lifestyle requirements. They comprise a hybrid architecture, influenced by the past, without trying to recreate it.

  
   

“Landry’s way of looking at things is remarkably similar to that of the eclectics of this earlier age. He cares about designing buildings well, and he has no ideological predispositions whatsoever. Houses are settings to him, not polemics. He is interested in pure composition, not in architectural dogma, and he practices it with skill.” - Paul Goldberger

       
   

Landry’s style, which cannot be easily summed up, is a synthesis of his own architectural beliefs, and a response to what his clients seek to achieve. He claims:

“For our clients, the architecture we create is a tangible reflection of their dreams and aspirations. We invent buildings that are as colorful and diverse as the people who inhabit them.”

Each of the 17 residential estates featured in MODERN TO CLASSIC reflects a keen understanding of the clients’ unique lifestyles.

In the many estates that celebrities, sports icons and successful business entrepreneurs have commissioned Landry to design during the last 20 years, he has never lost a sense of warmth and depth, creating houses that are both elegant and impressive.
       
 

As Goldberger further states, “It is not easy, today, to design houses for clients who seek grandeur and to be able to satisfy them by producing buildings that are both disciplined and relatively serene. It may sound odd to call a 14,000-square-foot Italianate villa unpretentious, but Landry’s houses, for all their sumptuousness, do have a certain understatement about them.

Richard Landry has only begun his journey on his architectural quest. He believes his firm’s best work is yet to come. “As we continue to create architecture influenced by our clients, influenced by life itself, I believe we will continue to create architecture that contributes to the understanding that diverse architectural styles can coexist in our modern world.” In the book’s introduction, Michael Webb concludes, “Landry is determined not to ease off, and, in propelling himself, he may push his clients to reach higher and take a chance on something they hadn’t imagined.”

       
 

About the Editor:

Oscar Riera Ojeda is author of The New American House and Contemporary World Architects and editor of numerous architecturalbooks.

About the Contributors:

Paul Goldberger is a Pulitzer Prize winning architecture critic for The New Yorker and Dean of Parsons School of Design.

Michael Webb is author of 26 books on architecture and design.

Maria Shriver is the First Lady of California and a broadcast journalist.

Lynn Morgan is a freelance writer based in Los Angeles who specializes in architecture and design.

Erhard Pfeiffer is an award-winning architectural and interior design photographer based in Los Angeles.

 

MODERN TO CLASSIC - Residential Estates by Landry Design Group features:

  • Endorsement by Maria Schriver
  • Foreword by Paul Goldberger
  • Introduction by Michael Webb
  • Essay by Richard Landry, AIA
  • Edited by Oscar Riera Ojeda

ISBN: 0-9774672-1-X Hardcover / 11.5 ” x 11.5 ” / 430 pages Over 350 color photographs and 18 perspective drawings $75 US and CAN $90 ORO Editons Release Date: November 2006