Design: Design Lines

TOAD HALL and Eeyore's field of thistles; Mrs Tiggywinkle's kitchen, piled high with clean washing - the notion of home in children's literature is a particularly powerful one, as characters are often defined by where they live. The Architectural Gallery's spring season opens with an exhibition focusing on literary houses, from Dickens and Beatrix Potter, Lucy Boston and AA Milne. A related exhibition, Through a Child's Eye, investigates how modern children see their own homes.

Child's Eye: Houses in Children's Books is at the Architecture Gallery, 66 Portland Place, London W1 (0171-307 3641) until 13 March, Mon-Fri, 10am-6pm. Through a Child's Eye runs from 20 Mar-1 May. Admission free

WANT TO sit about in style? Search out Sitting on the Edge, a lavishly illustrated volume of 100 chairs, couches and other modernist seating furniture and objects culled from the collection of Michael and Gabrielle Boyd, published next month by Rizzoli International (pounds 26.95). Michael Boyd provides the introduction, Aaron Betsky, Paola Antonelli and Philippe Garner contribute essays. The book accompanies an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco, which showcases great modern masters including Le Corbusier, Peter Behrens, Marco Zanuso and Otto Wagner.

ALTHOUGH CUTHBERT Brodrick, architect and Francophile, who retired to live near Paris, was active in his profession for only 25 years, from 1845 to 1870, his work, extravagantly over-the-top and largely influenced by Continental models, inspired much of the municipal architecture in this country as well as parts of the Empire and the United States. Today he's probably best known for the baroque splendour of the Grand Hotel at Scarborough, described by Henry-Russell Hitchcock as "the climax of English Second Empire", but a current exhibition at the Riba Heinz Gallery will provide a new introduction to his work.

Towers and Colonnades: the architecture of Cuthbert Brodrick is at the Heinz Gallery, 21 Portman Square, London W1 (0171-307 3628) until 6 Mar and at Leeds City Art Gallery, 17 Apr-20 June

RESEARCH INTO the history of design and style has just been made a whole lot easier with the opening of a new bookshop and gallery specialising in modern out-of-print and rare books, magazines and prints on architecture, art, design, graphics and photography. Book Art and Architecture is conveniently near the new British Library.

Book Art and Architecture is at 12 Woburn Walk, Bloomsbury, London WC1 (0171-387 5006)

Left: competition design for the Corn Exchange (unexecuted), by Cuthbert Broderick