Pietro Cicognani: Architecture and Design

I’m a sucker for beautifully detailed floor plans, and this book delivers—the garden designs alone have me rethinking my own backyard. It’s a hefty, satisfying read that captures thirty years of thoughtful custom work without feeling pretentious.

The pool house section is worth the price alone — I've never seen that kind of detailing drawn so clearly. Thirty years of work in one book, and you can feel every bit of it on the page.

The garden plans in here are what sold me — I didn't expect a design book to include full planting layouts alongside the house photos. The photography of the country houses is gorgeous too, and the paper quality actually holds up to repeated page-flipping.