Norman Weinstein of The Architectural Record selects his favorite architecture books of the year, which range from a coming-of-age memoir to a treatise on Turkish art and architecture.
Weinstein's list is in semi-alphabetical order, with no particular book ranking more highly than the others. His taste runs to the unusual, such as with this book:
"Jane Alison, editor, The Surreal House (Yale University Press, $70). Archigram's merry pranksters gave legs to future British cities, but back in Paris between the wars, the surrealists gave urban housing erotic breasts, vertiginous stairways to nowhere, and fireplaces serving as toy train stations. Framed by a variety of informative (but unfortunately humorless) scholarly essays that offer a single epiphany – the deepest gift surrealism gave to modern architecture was the rebirth of the Gothic – the hundreds of color illustrations offer a remarkably discerning catalogue of bizarre architectural dreams that could ricochet into whimsically engaging follies for our time."
FULL STORY: Best Architecture Books of 2010
Top 10 Books - 2011
Planetizen is pleased to release its ninth annual list of the ten best books in urban planning, design and development published in 2010. This year's selection includes some big names, some big ideas -- and a book called "Toilet."
Top 10 Architecture Books of the Year
Norman Weinstein, architecture writer for The Christian Science Monitor, picks his top ten books on architecture that came out in 2009.
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