Marianne Cusato is a designer, author and lecturer in the fields of real estate trends and housing. Her messages speak to the ever-changing needs of homeowners striving to balance the practical requirements of economy and durability with the desire to love where we live.

Cusato is the author of two books: The Just Right Home: Buying, Renting, Moving...or Just Dreaming--Finding Your Perfect Match! (April 2013, Workman Publishing) and Get Your House Right, Architectural Elements to Use and Avoid, with Ben Pentreath, Richard Sammons and Leon Krier, foreword by HRH The Prince of Wales (January 2008, Sterling Publishing).

She is currently developing a new series of designs with Clayton Homes, a Warren Buffett/Berkshire Hathaway company. She’s been a visiting professor at both The University of Notre Dame and The University of Miami and is a blogger for Huffington Post.

Cusato is well-known for her work on the Katrina Cottages. In 2006, her 308 s.f. cottage design won the Smithsonian Institute’s Cooper-Hewitt Design Museum’s “People’s Design Award.” That same year, Congress appropriated $400 million for an alternative emergency housing program, based on Cusato’s designs. In 2006, she was ranked the No. 4 most influential person in the home building industry by Builder Magazine. In 2012, Cusato was voted one of the 30 Most Influential Women in the Housing Economy by HousingWire Magazine.

She and her work are featured often in the media including The New York Times, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, The Chicago Tribune, The Washington Post, Associated Press, Reuters, Forbes, Time magazine, The Week, InStyle Home, Fitness Magazine, Builder magazine, Architectural Record, ABC News, CNN, CNBC and NPR.

Cusato is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame School of Architecture and is based in Miami, FL.

Ben Pentreath’s architectural and interior design studio has established a powerful reputation across a variety of disciplines from master-planning and urban development, to private houses and playful interiors.

Ben’s background is in Art History, which he studied at the University of Edinburgh before attending the Prince of Wales’s Institute of Architecture.

He worked for five years in New York and then with the Prince’s Foundation, before starting his own practice in 2004.

In 2008, Ben opened a tiny eponymous design store in Bloomsbury which has become one of the most influential small shops in London. 

Ben's aesthetic is inspired by tradition and a respect for carefully detailed, authentic materials and design, but combined with a love of contemporary culture, which means that life is never dull.

He writes regularly for the Financial Times, and his weekly blog, Inspiration, is followed by many thousands of readers in the UK, America and around the world.

His book, English Decoration was published in 2011 and his sequel interiors book, English Houses launches in September 2016.