Brad Mee--the interior designer seen on HGTV and The Christopher Lowell Show, and subject of a profile in USA Today--takes his design smarts outdoors. Using dozens of beautiful color photographs as examples, Mee reveals how to fashion a personalized garden haven that's vibrant, unique, and serves its purpose, whether that be entertaining or relaxation.

A colorful handbook shows how to design, construct, and personalize a variety of outdoor living spaces to suit a range of styles, tastes, and budgets and offers helpful tips on maintenance, decorating, furniture and accessories, walkways and arbors, and planting schemes.

Whether budget allows for a few added accessories and plants or a full landscaping project complete with a deck or patio, this book will offer readers the many options they have to get the perfect outdoor space. With hundreds of photos, this text sets the perfect foundation for the dream outdoor space.

"150 how-to photographs. Step-by-step instructions. Easy sewing."--Back cover.

people places Second Edition Design Guidelines for Urban Open Space edited by Clare Cooper Marcus and Carolyn Francis A resurgence in the use of public space continues throughout North America and many other parts of the world. Neighborhoods have become more outspoken in their demands for appropriate park designs; corporations have witnessed the value of providing outdoor spaces for employee lunch-hour use; the rising demand for child care has prompted increased awareness of the importance of developmentally appropriate play and learning environments; and increased attention is being focused on the specific outdoor space needs for the elderly, college students, and hospital patients and staff. Now available in an updated, expanded second edition, People Places is a fully illustrated, award-winning book that offers research-based guidelines and recommendations for creating more usable and enjoyable public open spaces of all kinds. People Places analyzes and summarizes existing research on how urban open spaces are actually used, offering design professionals and students alike an easily understood, easily applied guide to creating people-friendly places. Seven types of urban open space are discussed: urban plazas, neighborhood parks, miniparks and vest-pocket parks, campus outdoor spaces, outdoor spaces in housing for the elderly, child-care outdoor spaces, and hospital outdoor spaces. People Places contains a chapter-by-chapter review of the literature, illustrative case studies, and design guidelines specific to each type of space. People Places has a number of features that can be easily incorporated into the design process: * Clear, readable translations of existing research on people's use of outdoor spaces. * Performance-based design recommendations that specify key relationships between design and use. * Design review checklists that help readers plan and critique designs. * A clearly organized, concise format equally useful to the design practitioner and the design student. The newly revised edition of People Places also includes: * Discussion of accessibility issues, including ADA regulations and the concept of universal design; and of design responses aimed at crime reduction. * Procedures for conducting post-occupancy evaluations of designed outdoor spaces. * Updated and new information on each type of outdoor space, with special attention to hospitals, child care facilities, and campus outdoor spaces where specific advances have occurred since 1990. * A completely new color-photo section and 50 new black and white illustrations. Winner of the Merit Award in Communication from the American Society of Landscape Architects, People Places is an essential working tool for landscape architects and architects, city planners, urban designers, neighborhood groups, and anyone else concerned with the quality of urban open space.

This book presents the current research on space-based navigation models and the contents of spaces used for seamless indoor and outdoor navigation. It elaborates on 3D spaces reconstructed automatically and how indoor, semi-indoor, semi-outdoor, and outdoor spaces can mimic the indoor environments and originate a network based on the 3D connectivity of spaces. Case studies help readers understand theories, approaches, and models, including data preparation, space classification and reconstruction, space selection, unified space-based navigation model derivation, path planning, and comparison of results. Features: Provides novel models, theories, and approaches for seamless indoor and outdoor navigation path planning Includes real-life case studies demonstrating the most feasible approaches today Presents a generic space definition framework that can be used in research areas for spaces shaped by built structures Develops a unified 3D space-based navigation model that allows the inclusion of all types of spaces as 3D spaces and utilizes them for seamless navigation in a unified way Intended to motivate further research and developments, this book suits students, researchers, and practitioners in the field, and serves as a helpful introductory text for readers wanting to engage in seamless indoor/outdoor navigation research and teaching.

“Patterns” of Threshold Spaces in the Historical City of Jeddah explores the meaning of threshold spaces and investigates the relationship between the public spaces and residential units in the historical city of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, while at the same time revisiting Christopher Alexander’s theory in his canonical 1977 book, A Pattern Language. This book questions and analyses “patterns” relating to the cultural, social, and environmental particularities of Jeddah, with special attention paid to the effect of gender segregation in the city’s urban configuration. It discusses the extension that has been undertaken through testing a concept from the urban design theory of the West (the United States and Canada) and applying it to an Islamic city to find patterns in four different scales, which form the basis of the investigation (body, building, street, and city). Empirical methods have been used in the context of historical Jeddah, through which patterns are investigated using different approaches for the different scales. The book aims to explore the meaning of threshold spaces in old Jeddah. Furthermore, it shows that there are eighteen patterns of threshold spaces in the old town: patterns that are solely related to this specific case study, as well as modified patterns to the ones explored by Christopher Alexander. This book shall allow not only a better understanding of the relationship between housing and the historical city but also an exploration of the role of the threshold space in shaping the old city of Jeddah. It will be of interest to researchers, students of architecture, urban planning and anthropology studies, and people involved in cultural heritage, both academics and practitioners.

Brings together extensive research and practical experience to prove the opportunities and benefits of open spaces to society and individuals.

Demonstrating that it is essential to be sensitive to the cultural backgrounds of people with dementia in order to provide truly person-centred care, this book shows that it is possible to create culturally appropriate outdoor spaces and experiences that resonate with people with dementia on a fundamental level and are a source of comfort and wellbeing. Contributors drawn from a variety of backgrounds describe the significance of nature in the lives of people with dementia from diverse cultures, faiths, traditions and geographical locations, providing helpful insights into how access to the natural world may be achieved within different care settings. There are contributions from the UK (Scottish island, urban North East England and Norfolk farming communities), Canada, Norway, Japan, Australia, Sudan and South Africa, as well as a chapter on the specific difficulty of providing access to nature for people with dementia in hospitals. The voices of people with dementia and their carers are prominent throughout, and the book also contains evocative poetry and photographs of people with dementia enjoying nature and the outdoors in different contexts. A rich source of information and ideas for all those interested in creating culturally appropriate outdoor spaces and experiences for people with dementia, including dementia care practitioners, especially those at managerial level, policy makers, commissioners and those involved in designing and commissioning buildings and services.