Customer Reviews

Maison--Christian Liaigre

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Christian Liaigre. If the name is unfamiliar, the French designer's style-or at least a popularized version of it-is ubiquitous. His palette of warm browns, rich creams, and calmly varied neutrals is the color scheme of a thousand-and-one stylish hotel lobbies, and his sexy low-slung furnishings have been copied for mass consumption by furniture makers worldwide. Yet, if you think you know the man by the knock-offs, you've got another thought coming.

Herbert Ypma's sumptuous MAISON: CHRISTIAN LIAIGRE is here to set the record straight. Weighing in at 256-pages, and featuring 550 color and black & white illustrations, the book quite eloquently makes a case for Liaigre as "possibly the most important-certainly the most copied-designer of our time."

Author Ypma--he of Thames & Hudson's stylish Hip Hotel and World Design series--co-designed the lavish volume with frequent collaborator, Maggi Smith, and the book features the pair's now signature blend of breathtaking one- and two-page spreads of interiors and landscapes, punctuated by checkerboard layouts of myriad architectural details and textures.

These design elements have never been employed more effectively as in this book, and they convey the quiet majestic sweep of a room or garden on one page, while focusing on the smallest of details on the next, all combining to present a vivid and comprehensive representation of each Liaigre's diverse residential projects.

Ypma, a worldly and witty writer, as well as a sensitive and skilled photographer, is responsible for all of the shots documenting eight of Liaigre's recent domestic design projects featured herein. This lends the book a pictorial consistency rare in design literature, and affords the author/photographer opportunity to focus on the formal integrity and quiet constancy of Liaigre's design ethos, as well as its diversity and adaptability. After reading this book, you'll never again think of Liaigre as a "minimalist."

The photos, layout and text quietly conspire to transport the reader from a sunny beach house in Galicia, to a picturesque Bavarian retreat in Tegnersee, to an unconventional pied-a-terre in the quintessentially bohemian Montparnasse district of Paris, as well as to other intriguingly beautiful rooms in other intriguingly beautiful places.

The book is unconventional in many ways: it doesn't attempt a career-long survey of its subject's oeuvre, and neither does it focus on his celebrated commercial projects. It lists no honors, awards, timeline or bio. Moreover, it contains not a single photo of Liaigre. Yet, the book and its richly evocative photos and amusing and insightful text offer as sophisticated and sensitive a portrait as its subject could ever hope for.

In a neat twist on Matisse's aesthetic of "luxe, calme, volupte," Ypma expresses the "luxe, calme, moderne" quality of the work of this quietest and most authoritative of contemporary designers.

Christian Liagre is an artist beyond the usual confines of space filling. He always considers the architecture and site before anything else. And even though his work is immediately recognizable, he never repeats himself- there is nothing formulaic.

Nothing ever screams money. The finishes, the light, the mix are always beautiful and comfortable.

So while I got the book hoping to see a substansial review of his work, I was dissappointed in the chopiness and lack of ability to "see" the house and rooms shown. The designers work saves the book, because it is so complex and interesting. Poor choices in views and cutting off of vistas and lack of detail make the book fail.

I read this book cover to cover in one sitting. Liaigre has been a big inspiration to me ever since I stayed at Le Sereno at St Barth's, a sublime hotel he designed. Much of the furniture and stylistic elements featured in the book were also used at Le Sereno, and I could appreciate how practical and comfortable this design is in the real world, in addition to being incredibly evocative and atmospheric. The book shows several of Liaigre's residential projects in great detail and the common threads of Liaigre's design principles are obvious throughout. It is quite impressive how fresh the spaces look more than five years later.

This is a fantastic introduction to Chrstian Liagre's work.
A beautiful book , consice, elegant with fantastic pictures.
As an architect the only thing I miss are architectural drawings, but the book is simply beautiful.

Even though this book was published some years ago, the interiors Christian creates really are timeless and so the book is as valuable as a wonderful reference as ever.

Everyone should have this on their coffee table. Superior design and broad range of ideas for all nationalities.