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68 A rchitect Lauren Rottet's extraordinary creative influence is felt the world over. Her firm is based in Houston, but she has just returned from meetings in London, where's she planning the design for a new hotel in Anguilla. In June, she debuted a stunning and innovative collection of furniture under the Rottet Studio brand at NeoCon in New York City, and earlier this year, she finished the redesign of the historic New York Stock Exchange, which celebrates its 225th anniversary. Pritzker Prize-winning architect Renzo Piano has tapped Rottet to collaborate on a future 36-story high-rise in San Francisco, and as we speak, she's putting the finishing touches on Houston's sleek Hotel Alessandra, which opens this fall. Rottet's professional laurels include Fellow status in both the American Institute of Architects LAUREN ROTTET ROCKS THE DESIGN WORLD WITH A NEW BOOK FROM RIZZOLI, A DEBUT COLLECTION OF FURNITURE AT NEOCON, AND A SLEW OF EXCITING PROJECTS. ORDeR NEW WORLD BY REBECCA SHERMAN and International Interior Design Association — the only woman in history to be so honored. Her first book, Authentic Design: Lauren Rottet and Rottet Studio (Rizzoli, $75), is due out early this month and corrals some of her most exciting work from the past 15 years, including the American Embassy in Frankfurt, The Surrey hotel in NYC, Loews Regency New York Hotel, Bernhardt Design showrooms, St. Regis Aspen, The Beverly Hills Hotel Presidential Bungalows, Four Seasons Hotel Casa Medina in Bogotá, Viking Cruises ships, and hotels, houses, apartments, and offices across the globe. Pulitzer Prize-winning architecture critic and Vanity Fair contributing editor Paul Goldberger wrote the foreword. Rottet is best known for her cutting-edge contemporary work, but as this book illustrates, she excels in a variety of periods and vernaculars. No matter the project, it's all about exploring light and the definition of space, she says. She's always been influenced by art, and a two-year stint working in Los Angeles exposed her to the work of California's light and space artists James Turrell and Robert Irwin, among others. "I can be extremely minimal and contemporary, or love craft and detail and history. We put a traditional image on the cover, and I love it," she says of the early 20th-century Beaux Arts building in Manhattan that graces the cover of her book. She also worked on Haussmann-influenced residences in Paris and pre-war apartments in New York. Everything manages to feel of the moment, without compromising its origins. "I'm a huge believer in not destroying history," she says. Her home in Houston has 1920s Southern Colonial/Neoclassical roots, but as she writes in the book, "I am a minimalist at heart and would happily live in a white box with beautiful light." It's this push- pull of the old and new that gives her work a strong point of view and energy. Rottet grew up in Houston, watching the skyline form, with its high-rises by Philip Johnson and I.M. Pei and others. Her father allowed her to take an afternoon off from school one day to visit some Stolle residence, Houston