Stanley Abercrombie

Critic; Curator; Writer; Editor; Lecturer / Architecture; Interior Design / United States / Books Editor, Interior Design magazine

Stanley Abercrombie’s Notable Books of 2012

3 books
Photographs by Eric Piasecki
Introduction by Karen Lehrman Bloch

This is important because it is so beautiful. Formentera, named for the Spanish island where interior designer Juan Montoya once lived, is a 110-acre site near the Hudson River town of Garrison, New York. There is, of course, an interesting house with skillful interiors, but the emphasis here is on nature—trees, forests, streams and ponds, subtly augmented with sculpture, walls and walks. Idyllic.

Editors of Phaidon Press

A compilation that deserves the adjective magisterial. Included are almost 800 20th-century buildings by almost 700 architects in 97 countries, almost all given exterior and interior photographs, floor plans, and explanatory texts. Who has the most entries? Le Corbusier with 12 buildings, followed by Marcel Breuer and Oscar Niemeyer with 11 each. An amazing reference.

John Pawson

England’s famously minimalist architect and designer here shares not his recent work (although some details of his own London house are included) but 260 full-page images from the hundreds of thousands he has collected around the world. I find it fascinating to see what has attracted and inspired him. Some things are, as expected, minimal—one of them just a streak of light on a wall—but many of them, such as a Gothic Revival stair by George Gilbert Scott, not minimal in the least.

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