Unique Homes: Personalize Your Home Through Good Design

Do our surroundings really make a difference in how we feel? In the harmony with which we conduct our daily lives? In our exploration of our personal, professional and spiritual paths? The answer, as shown in The Art of Dramatic Living: Personalizing the Home through Good Design, is a resounding "Yes!" Form, color, texture, light, proportion and material -- as well as cleanliness and order -- are powerful tools for expressing who we really are.

In these pages, Dr. Carol Soucek King visits more than thirty residences around the world in which good design echoes the identity of those who live there. A house in Israel connects an active family with their cherished land and the sea beyond. A rustic lodge/camp dwelling in Texas celebrates its owners' retreat from urban life to a setting amid oak trees, creeks and hills. In Italy, a bachelor pares down the size of his living space and number of possessions but not his full expression of his devotion to music, lyrical spaces and elegant entertaining. In Tokyo, a Japanese entrepreneur creates a background to share his interests in global business and fine art with visiting business leaders and diplomats as well as his family. A couple in Sydney, Australia, uses every aspect of their home's historic site and style as background for their thoroughly up-to-the-minute interests and worldwide travels.

Today's homeowners want to shape their house to their lifestyle, not adapt their lifestyle to the home. An individual's home is a mirror of their inner self and a person's environment affects their mind, body and spirit. This book goes beyond design to health and well-being. In these and an array of other homes, Dr. King shows how a variety of people in vastly different circumstances have realized that, in creating a home, one is creating one's own universe, and that in order to live life to its fullest, one should make the most of all the tools of good design.

Dr. Carol Soucek King has long been interested in good design's ability to communicate on the deepest levels. She believes that our own design doesn't just stimulate others, but also profoundly affects ourselves; it reverberates back to us on a daily basis and tells us how we want to live, who we truly are, and who we wish to be. King has lived in Pasedena California with her husband for nearly three decades, where she has established the Institute of Philosophy and the Arts, and interdisciplinary forum created to deepend awareness through the convergence of artistic experience, classical philosophy, and contemporary critical thinking. Dr. King earned both her B.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Southern California and an M.F.A. from Yale University. She also studied at Cambridge University in England.