Shiro Kuramata
From the Publisher. This first-ever monograph on highly influential Japanese designer Shiro Kuramata (1934-91) is a two-volume title presenting all of his compelling and idiosyncratic work for a diverse audience of designers and design enthusiasts who love Kuramata but will be surprised to discover the breadth and depth of his remarkable body of work.
To give equal billing to the book designer as well as author of this nonpareil two-volume monograph on the extraordinary Japanese designer Shiro Kuramata is understandable when you hold this set in your hands. The books are encased in an acrylic box, a reminder of the wondrous furniture and interior decorations Kuramata could derive from unsexy acrylic. But as with everything pertaining to Kuramata, there is more than meets the eye initially. Empty the acrylic box of its sturdily bound volumes, one largely history and analysis of the artist by the attuned design critic Deyan Sudjic, author of The Language of Things, the other a catalogue raisonné with around 600 of Kuramata’s designs). Hold the acrylic box so that its surfaces are exposed to a strong light source. The box becomes prismatic, creating a multi-hued light show you could also create by turning a beveled glass pane, bringing to mind all of the material differences as well as commonalities of glass and acrylic.
During Kuramata’s tragically short life and career (b. 1934 – d. 1991), he playfully yet fiercely worked designing objects, furniture, and interiors (the interiors, sadly, are all demolished now) that existed memorably in the interstices between ambiguously paradoxical material states and states of mind. Confounding the transparencies of acrylic and glass by creating bravura masterpieces like his “Glass Chair” and his acrylic “Miss Blanche” chair, he also intermingled sensations of weight and weightlessness in his chair fabricated from wire mesh and in his cabinets that seem to bend like reeds in a breeze. He also had an uncanny love, perhaps inspired by Joseph Cornell’s art boxes, of creating profuse and asymmetrically configured drawers for bureau-like furniture that resembled what storage units Alice might have discovered in Wonderland.
Mingling ancient and modern Japanese folk fantasy traditions with touches of European Minimalism, Kuramata created a totally beguiling range of objects and furniture with a light and mysterious touch. Deyan Sudjic and book designer Jonathan Hares deserve our gratitude for a monograph that re-animates the sense of wonder and mystery that suffused all Kuramata ever touched in his studio.
Announcements
If Walls Could Speak: My Life in Architecture by Moshe Safdie
If Walls Could Speak: My Life in Architecture
By Moshe Safdie
Publisher: Grove/Atlantic
Published: September 2022
One of the world’s greatest and most thoughtful architects recounts his extraordinary career and the iconic structures he has built—from Habitat in Montreal to Marina Bay Sands in Singapore—and offers a manifesto for the role architecture should play in society.
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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.”
Women Holding Things by Maira Kalman
Women Holding Things
By Maira Kalman
Publisher: Harper Design
Published: October 2022
In the spring of 2021, Maira and Alex Kalman created a small, limited-edition booklet, “Women Holding Things,” which featured select recent paintings by Maira, accompanied by her insightful and deeply personal commentary. The booklet quickly sold out. Now, the Kalmans have expanded that original publication into an extraordinary visual compendium. We see a woman hold a book, hold shears, hold children, hold a grudge, hold up, hold her own. In visually telling their stories, Kalman lays bare the essence of women’s lives—their tenacity, courage, vulnerability, hope, and pain.
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