Barcelona Pavilion: Mies van der Rohe & Kolbe
Edited by Ursel Berger and Thomas Pavel
The pavilion built for a chair, or so it seems at a distance, remains a milestone. This book pulls the building's daring planes—created for the 1928 World's Fair and reconstructed in 1986—back into view as a “flowing space” for the sculpture of Georg Kolbe. D.A.P.; $60
Eileen Gray
By Philippe Garner
Irish designer, artist, and architect Eileen Gray (1878–1976) has remained in the shadow of modernism's decisive contemporaries, Le Corbusier and Marcel Breuer. But her lesser profile has not kept fans from striving to protect E-1027, one of two houses she designed in the south of France (the other is Tempe a Pailla). Author Garner, a 20th century decorative arts specialist, analyzes the full range of Gray's work, from furniture and interiors to completed buildings. Taschen; $24.99
Doug Aitken: Sleepwalkers
Text by Klaus Biesenbach, Peter Eleey, and Doug Aitken
Foreword by Glenn D. Lowry and Anne Pasternak
The impact of video technology on architecture can no longer be ignored, as the Museum of Modern Art's recent installation with artist Doug Aitken and Creative Time showed in January and February. For a monthlong event called “Sleepwalkers,” eight continuous film sequences were projected onto six exterior walls of the New York museum, bringing minimalist surfaces to life as images of ordinary people made their way through the urban abyss. The rhythms and patterns of human activity are literally raised to new heights (over the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Sculpture Garden), which can't help but put pressure on designers responsible for the streetscape. The city itself emerges as a dreamworld of odd lighting, displaced people, and alien parking lots. Aitken's video art exposes a reality of importance to architects: Individuals create their own world within the official environment of concrete and glass. Which raises a signal question: Can a building be more than a backdrop? The book is the next best thing to sleepwalking in the city that never sleeps. D.A.P.; $39.95
Pedro E. Guerrero: A Photographer's Journey
By Pedro E. Guerrero
Some of the most famous portraits of architects' houses were captured through Guerrero's incomparable lens. This book includes more than 190 shots taken over 60 years but is made richer by the voice of the photographer, who steps from behind the camera to comment on the quirky lives and tastes of his subjects. Beyond architects, Guerrero was a favorite of Alexander Calder and Julia Child, whose homes he captured for posterity. The concept of clutter is redeemed in Childs' undesigned kitchen and Calder's chaotic, but homey, Connecticut refuge. Princeton Architectural Press; $55
XS: Small Structures, Green Architecture
By Phyllis Richardson
There is no glum outlook for the planet in this lively compendium of antidotes to greenhouse gases, overconsumption of natural resources, and slovenly habits. Forty examples of tiny, often eccentric structures celebrate ingenuity on a budget. A sequel to the equally small XS: Big Ideas, Small Buildings, this book includes such familiar names as ShoP, Sean Godsell, and Thomas Heatherwick, and less familiar ones such as Nadar Khalili, who was once asked to design housing for an astronaut colony on the moon. Nifty projects attack issues of square footage with efficient use of resources, experimental materials, and outlandish forms. Amid the domes, honeycombs, inflatables, pavilions, and huts, a “sitooterie” is most inspired. Universe; $49.95
Icons of Twentieth-Century Landscape Design
By Katie Campbell
The rebellious nature of 29 radical designers is barely contained in this compelling survey of great 20th century landscapes. The mushroom-topped pavilions of Antonio Gaudi's Park Guell; Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater, which merges with nature; and Le Corbusier's Villa Savoye, which rises above it, are concisely explained as benchmarks of design. Art inspired Roberto Burle Marx to plant abstract forms in Brazil, while Dan Kiley reveled in formalism in America. Of broader impact today are the landscape designs that sought to humanize the city through dramatic, if not so natural, works—Lawrence Halprin's waterfall plaza in Portland is just one example—and to accommodate industrial wastelands such as Richard Haas' transformed Gas Works Park in Seattle. No landscape reference book would be complete without Charles Jencks' Garden of Cosmic Speculation, and the only pity is that the architect's brilliantly evolving Scottish landforms get less space than Robert Smithson's ephemeral Spiral Jetty in Utah. Frances Lincoln Ltd. Publishers; $45
