Justin Davidson

Critic; Writer / United States / New York Magazine

Justin Davidson’s Notable Books of 2011

6 books
Cynthia Smith

The catalogue for the second part of an exhibition organized by the Cooper-Hewitt Museum to help show that design is not just about beautiful things—but also about improving the lives of people who have very little. Highlights interesting, clever, inspired, and unconventional applications of design to difficult, thorny urban problems.

Sam Lubell
Douglas Woods

Shulman photographs wonderfully document southern California as it urbanized and formed a modern aesthetic. A wonderful chronicle of the height of the California dream. The quality of the photograph is uniformly magnificent.

Ricky Burdett Editor
Deyan Sudjic Editor

The just-published catalogue of a MoMA show from 2010 that deals with the impact of rising sea levels in New York due to climate change. Examines a full range of extreme, modest, and radical proposals for dealing with this environmental circumstance. Documents elegant design approaches involving the interaction of architecture, planning, engineering, and climate science.

Edward Glaeser

Addresses the centrality of the city as a key evolving world trend. Describes cities as areas of concentration of creativity, energy, communication, that is exponential. The kind of book that makes you want to talk back to it—to sit down with the author and have a discussion—which to me makes it the best kind of book. A real antidote to the heavy sights that people tend to have in response to the rapid growth rate of megacities.

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