McAlpine: Romantic Modernism

A celebration of the recent work of McAlpine, the award-winning architecture and interior design firm, with a collection of residences that embrace modernism, classicism, and romanticism.

The work of renowned Southern interior design firm McAlpine has always communicated the power of romanticism, speaking directly to the heart through the beauty and poetry of the home. Tapping diverse influences, the residences draw on architectural languages ranging from Elizabethan and Old Dutch to colonial Caribbean and agrarian American. The book opens with Bobby McAlpine’s own newly designed house, featuring exquisite spaces that are modern in expression but classical in order and balance.

Other projects include a white-on-white neoclassical pavilion by the sea in the Bahamas, a masonry dwelling in the rolling hills of Virginia, a quintessential American country house in Tennessee that combines the familiarity of a farmhouse with crisp minimalism, and an exuberant house sited on the edge of a pastoral golf course in Alabama. Freely choosing from architecture’s treasury, McAlpine creates houses that are familiar, bold, and surprising all at the same time—reflecting the complexity of the human experience.

Bobby McAlpine is an architect, romantic, poet, and entrepreneur. In 1983, he founded his architectural and design practice, which has embraced a diverse array of traditional styles for clients all over the country. Today the firm, known as McAlpine, is made up of an eclectic family of professional architects and interior designers with offices in Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia, and New York. Susan Sully is the author of numerous design books and has coauthored books with Bobby McAlpine, including the best-selling titles The Home Within Us and Poetry of Place.