Flip through the latest issue of Gulf Weekly.
Students of interior design in Bahrain and abroad can soon look forward to a new handbook to improve their skills and create beautiful spaces.
Best-selling author, academician and interior decorator Treena Crochet has just finished penning her latest book, Designers Guide to Building Construction and Systems, that will hit shelves by August next year.
New York Institute of Technology's (Adliya) assistant dean and associate professor for interior design, Treena, who has been teaching students in the US, Qatar and Bahrain for the last 25-years, said: "This is written for the student who is going to be designing projects but doesn't understand how things get built. It has artist drawings and photos and tells a student how a house gets constructed.
"From the foundation, to the walls, to the roof, to all the interior walls, it tells you how to specify paint, floor materials, lighting and where to locate electrical outlets. It is a very comprehensive guide not only for residential complexes abut also for commercial spaces."
This is the third in her series of text books for interior design students, all of which have been published by Prentice-Hall, one of the biggest publishers of text books in the US.
Her first text book entitled Designer's Guide to Furniture Styles won the American Society of Interior Designer's Joel Polksy Prize for Educational Excellence in 1999. Treena is now working on the book's third edition that is scheduled for completion early next year.
Designer's Guide to Decorative Accessories was the second in the series and highlights various styles and was released in August last year.
Treena said: "The reason I started the textbooks was that when you are in the classroom trying to convey the knowledge acquired working in design to your students, you are at the mercy of textbooks or you have to come up with your own handouts with slides and drawings.
"After more than 10 years of frustration I decided to write my own book as there are not enough of them in this field. My other two books came out for a completely different reason. I was giving a lecture in a conference in Washington DC on American tradition in architecture.
"Restoration and renovation is a big movement in the US where they are trying to protect old houses and old buildings, anything through colonial times to some of the modern ones that are either in danger of being torn down or get fuddled (trying to modernise a historic property and ending up totally ruining it).
"At the end of my one-hour talk, the editor-in-chief of Taunton Press wanted me to do a series of books. So we came up with ideas for five on truly American housing styles - Victorian homes, Georgian and federal homes, modern ranch, bungalow-style and colonial-style. It was kind of being in the right place at the right time."
The last two, Bungalow Style: Creating Classic Interiors in Your Arts & Crafts Home and Colonial Style: Creating Classic Interiors in Your Colonial, Cape and Saltbox Home were published in 2005 and the former was a number one bestseller on architectural books list for two years.
They are more 'do-it-yourself' books for owners of old houses who either want to do their own remodelling or renovation work and want to learn what would be appropriate for their own home.
Treena added: "The first explains what a colonial house is, how you can recognise a house with some of the characteristics and then goes into interior details. How would you deal with doors, hardware or staircases? It covers the whole range of issues and goes into colours and also has a whole section on how to introduce a modern kitchen which does not look out of place, or out of character, in your home."
An important aspect of all her books are visuals, many of which have been sourced from museums in the US, UK, Greece and Italy. With her bungalow-style and colonial-style books, there has been a painstaking process of identifying eight houses for each one and taking numerous images of different spaces in each house.
The books' successes included a two-year project to design and decorate a $12.5 million arts and crafts house on the ocean at Kennebunkport in the US.
Despite Treena's writing and consulting prowess her main love remains teaching. On the panel of Aga Khan Architectural Award Nominations for Bahrain, she now plans to change track and take a doctorate in Arabesque symbolism.
