A Weekly Dose of Architecture Books

Just as last week's Places in Time III post featured a trio of books that were initially listed in my earlier  holiday gift books post , two of the three monographs featured here were also on that list. As happened when I wrote this post, each book begins with a rhetorical question pertaining to monographs. This post features the last reviews of the year. A week from today I'll have a year-capping roundup of my favorites from the many books featured on this blog in 2023. An Atlas of Es Devlin  by Es Devlin, edited by Andrea Lipps, published by Thames & Hudson , December 2023 ( Amazon  /  Bookshop ) Is it possible to love a monograph on a designer whose work you're largely indifferent to? Es Devlin is a phenomenally famous artist and designer who is best known for creating the sets and backdrops for U2, Adele, Miley Cyrus, Beyoncé, and other big-name musicians, and for such events as the 2022 Super Bowl halftime show. Her London studio's designs for these an...

Writing a blog devoted to architecture books means featuring monographs — lots of monographs. Not exclusively, of course; but before this blog transitioned to its current weekly format, one of the thematic days of the week was appropriately devoted to monographs: Monograph Monday . Monographs are an unavoidable part of architecture books. No matter how often they are decried as passé, endangered , or even dead, monographs persevere as one of the best means of presenting a firm's built and unbuilt works  and  for marketing the same to new clients. These "uses" of monographs find their origins in books on Frank Lloyd Wright but were most influential in Le Corbusier's Oeuvre Complete , put out in eight volumes between 1929 and 1970, the last one posthumously. Though edited by others, the series of monographs were strongly controlled by Le Corbusier, which enabled a comprehensiveness many contemporary monographs forget about in their photo-heavy presentations. These three...