Holiday Gift Books: 2009.4

As in the last four years, I'm presenting a list of gift books just in time for the holidays. This time around I'm presenting one each by 50 publishers, posted in five digestible installments of ten each, in alphabetical order. Below is the fourth installment. Once posted, the rest can be found here.

Phaidon:

Anish Kapoor by David Anfam
"This is the most extensive monograph ever published on the artist, covering more than thirty years of work and illustrated with hundreds of full-color images including sketches and technical diagrams from his most ambitious projects."

Poligrafa:

The Feeling of Things by Adam Caruso
"Principal of the London based architecture office Caruso St John, together with Peter St John, Adam Caruso has develop an intense activity as writer, focusing his thoughts on the architectural practice and the updated of some figures of the so called other tradition of the Modern Movement."

Prestel:

Albert Speer & Partner: A Manifesto for Sustainable Cities by Jeremy Gaines
"Many of [the firm's] trailblazing projects are discussed in this compelling and timely look at what has been accomplished in an effort to satisfy the array of social, economic, and environmental demands of the twenty-first century."

Princeton Architectural Press:

Design Ecologies: Sustainable Potentials in Architecture edited by Lisa Tilder and Beth Blostein
"A new generation of architects, landscape architects, designers, and engineers aims to recalibrate what humans do in the world according to how the world works as a biophysical system. Design Ecologies is a ground-breaking collection of never-before-published essays and case studies by today's most innovative designers and critics. Their design strategies—social, material, and biological—run the gamut from the intuitive to the highly technological."

Reaktion Books:

Twenty Minutes in Manhattan by Michael Sorkin
"A personal, anecdotal account of [Sorkin's] casual encounters with the physical space and social dimensions of this unparalleled city. His perambulations offer him—and the reader—opportunities to not only engage with his surroundings but to consider a wide range of issues that fascinate Sorkin as an architect, urbanist, and New Yorker."

Rizzoli:

Frank Gehry: The Houses by Mildred Friedman
"[The architect] has achieved worldwide fame for such large-scale public projects as the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, and the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, California, but it was in private houses that Gehry first explored and interrogated the principles of modern architecture."

Rockport:

1000 Ideas by 1000 Architects by Sergi Costa Duran and Mariana R. Eguaras
"This book provides behind the scenes insight into the work of 100 top international designers through the deconstruction of 1000 architectural details and projects. An unrivaled sourcebook for ideas, this collection also provides details and information that are not available on this level through any other source."

Routledge:

Climate and Architecture by Torben Dahl
"Beautifully illustrated with photographs, diagrams and building plans, the book sets out the environmental basis for sustainable design into the 21st century."

Skira:

The New Acropolis Museum edited by Bernard Tschumi Architects
"The book provides an in-depth look at the creation of the building, set only 280 meters from the Parthenon, as well as the restoration, preservation, and housing of its exhibits through over 200 photographs, drawings, and texts."

Steidl:

Edward Burtynsky: Oil edited by Marcus Schubert
"Burtynsky locates and documents the sites that urban dwellers never see, and questions human accountability. His imagery is vast in both scale and ambition, revealing the apparatus behind the energy we mine from dwindling resources, and the ongoing effects of the industrial revolution."