Book: Contemporary World Interiors

The line between interior design and architecture is blurred ever thinner by Phaidon's latest brick-sized survey. Contemporary World Interiors covers homes, offices, hotels, bars and churches; in short, just about everything.

There's little point in searching for a unifying theme, although if pushed we'd say that the new eclecticism threatening to bubble out throughout the past decade has finally boiled over, as evinced by the riot of colour, texture, surface, material and pattern on display here.

The religious section makes for the most inspirational browsing, where spatial drama is eschewed for the eternal, with a refreshing visual calmness as a result.

13 September 2007 | Design