Architectural Guide Japan
From the Publisher. Contemporary Japanese architecture has, over half a century, achieved world-wide recognition not only for its highly innovative, often futuristic qualities, but also for its sensitive response to Japan’s cultural and physical context in the challenging setting of its increasingly urbanized environment. Today it is admired perhaps as much as its traditional counterpart, with which it often maintains a meaningful dialog.
Botond Bognar’s Architectural Guide Japan introduces over 700 of the most prominent examples of this fertile architecture, while outlining its development since the mid-19th century until the present in a concise historical essay. All texts and the individual entries are illustrated with about 750 color photos, all taken by the author, and many drawings. Detailed information about each entry is enhanced by geo-data in the form of QR codes.
In 2012 Berlin’s DOM Publishers put out a two-volume guide (half firsthand account, half government propaganda) to Pyongyang, North Korea, an odd locale given that few people can or will ever visit the city. But this year DOM released an excellent guide to a place where architecture buffs rightfully flock: Japan. While a single guide for a country like the United States does not make sense, Japan is only 9/10 the size of California but home to three times as many people. This guide reinforces the amazing quantity of great 20th- and 21st-century architecture in the country, and Japan expert Botond Bognar’s descriptions give just the right amount of background on the 700 buildings; his introductory essay on the “course of contemporary architecture” is valuable in its own right. This is also a print guide for the digital age, with QVR codes that enable mapping of each entry on a smartphone.
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Now is Better by Stefan Sagmeister
Now is Better
By Stefan Sagmeister
Publisher: Phaidon Press
Published: October 2023
Combining art, design, history, and quantitative analysis, transforms data sets into stunning artworks that underscore his positive view of human progress, inspiring us to think about the future with much-needed hope.
Design Emergency: Building a Better Future by Alice Rawsthorn and Paola Antonelli
Design Emergency: Building a Better Future
By Alice Rawsthorn and Paola Antonelli
Publisher: Phaidon Press
Published: May 2022
Rawsthorn and Antonelli tell the stories of the remarkable designers, architects, engineers, artists, scientists, and activists who are at the forefront of positive change worldwide. Focusing on four themes—Technology, Society, Communication, and Ecology—the authors present a unique portrait of how our great creative minds are developing new design solutions to the major challenges of our time, while helping us to benefit from advances in science and technology.
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Why Design Matters: Conversations with the World’s Most Creative People by Debbie Millman
Why Design Matters: Conversations with the World's Most Creative People
By Debbie Millman
Publisher: Harper Design
Published: February 22, 2022
Debbie Millman—author, educator, brand consultant, and host of the widely successful and award-winning podcast “Design Matters”—showcases dozens of her most exciting interviews, bringing together insights and reflections from today’s leading creative minds from across diverse fields.
Milton Glaser: POP by Steven Heller, Mirko Ilić, and Beth Kleber
Milton Glaser: POP
By Steven Heller, Mirko Ilić, and Beth Kleber
Publisher: The Monacelli Press
Published: March 2023
This collection of work from graphci design legend Milton Glaser’s Pop period features hundreds of examples of the designer’s work that have not been seen since their original publication, demonstrating the graphic revolution that transformed design and popular culture.
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Meet Me by the Fountain: An Inside History of the Mall by Alexandra Lange
Meet Me by the Fountain: An Inside History of the Mall
By Alexandra Lange
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Published: June 2022
Chronicles postwar architects’ and merchants’ invention of the shopping mall, revealing how the design of these marketplaces played an integral role in their cultural ascent. Publishers Weekly writes, “Contending that malls answer ‘the basic human need’ of bringing people together, influential design critic Lange advocates for retrofitting abandoned shopping centers into college campuses, senior housing, and ‘ethnocentric marketplaces’ catering to immigrant communities. Lucid and well researched, this is an insightful study of an overlooked and undervalued architectural form.”
Die Fläche: Design and Lettering of the Vienna Secession, 1902–1911 (Facsimile Edition) by Diane V. Silverthorne, Dan Reynolds, and Megan Brandow-Faller
Die Fläche: Design and Lettering of the Vienna Secession, 1902–1911 (Facsimile Edition)
By Diane V. Silverthorne, Dan Reynolds, and Megan Brandow-Faller
Publisher: Letterform Archives Books
Published: October 2023
This facsimile edition of Die Fläche, recreates every page of the formative design periodical in full color and at original size, accompanied by essays that contextualize the work, highlighting contributions by pathbreaking women, innovative lettering artists, and key practitioners of the new “surface art,” including Rudolf von Larisch, Alfred Roller, and Wiener Werkstätte founders Koloman Moser and Josef Hoffmann.
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