I Hate Red, You're Fired! The Colorful Life of an Interior Designer by William W. Stubbs
4to. pp. 144. profusely illustrated. hardcover (fine condition). [New York]: Harry N. Abrams, [2004].
ISBN-10: 0810955776 / ISBN-13: 9780810955776
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Hailed by Architectural Digest as one of the top 100 designers and architects today, Bill Stubbs has designed penthouses, vacation retreats, and country mansions around the globe from Acapulco to Moscow. In this lively, irreverent memoir, Stubbs recounts the extraordinary, exasperating, and often hilarious adventures in his stellar career.
Illustrated with more than 150 color photographs of the spaces Stubbs has transformed, the book details the activities and thought processes that went into some of his most spectacular projects. These include the metamorphosis of an abandoned country dacha into a baronial mansion in the Ukraine, the renovation of a 100-year-old schoolhouse into stylish apartments for senior citizens in Newport, Rhode Island, and the project that inspired the book's title, a Houston penthouse designed around the color red, which caused his impulsive client to fire him over the phone. (Of course, when the client saw the finished apartment, he loved it-to the point that Stubbs had trouble convincing him to abandon the color in subsequent renovations.) This entertaining volume is a rarity, a design book that people will actually read.