Building Beautiful

Inviting, perfect in proportion, exquisite in detail – such are a few of the ways to describe homes designed by John Simpson. Well known for his work with the British royal family at Buckingham and Kensington palaces and for his buildings at Eton College in the U.K. and at the University of Notre Dame in the U.S., he is perhaps most brilliant at the level of the house and home. Building Beautiful is an invitation to enter the work of this master designer, as one might visit with a treasured friend.

From a dream made real within a Venetian palazzo — a former seventeenth-century near-ruin, brought back to glorious, fancifully detailed life — to an English countryside cottage with a thatched roof, the featured homes are expressions of Simpson’s unerring eye and extraordinary sense of beauty. Here we find drama in contrasts of scale and the seductive effects of light, where a cozy reading nook opens to an expansive living room with a double-height ceiling that nevertheless feels not overly large but rather just right. This is Simpson’s subtle art — a mastery of scale, balance, and a pervading sense of elegance.

About the Authors

Clive Aslet, a novelist, historian, editor, and lecturer, is the former editor of Country Life magazine and the author of more than twenty books.

Architect John Simpson has been the recipient of the Palladio Award, the Royal Institute of British Architects Award, the American Institute of Architects Honor Award, and the Arthur Ross Award, among many others.