Concrete New York is the latest Blue Crow guidebook to sculptural architectural design

Blue Crow Media cements its reputation as one of the leading purveyors of guidebooks to contemporary architecture with a new publication, Concrete New York. It joins their burgeoning library of brutalist celebration, a series that has already taken in London, Berlin, Paris and a more generalist guide to Asia.

New York’s concrete legacy doesn’t immediately spring to mind; it’s a city of history, verticality, innovation and architectural drama. It’s true that the rough-hewn textures of brutalism are largely absent from the five boroughs, but concrete, in all its forms, is one of the drivers of the city’s skyline.

As ever, Blue Crow Media’s approach mixes the well-known with more off-the-beaten track examples. The cover features Frank Lloyd Wright’s instantly recognisable Guggenheim, but author Allison C. Meier has taken a more eclectic path through the city’s architectural history, taking in everything from Pier Luigi Nervi’s muscular George Washington Bridge Bus Station (1960-63) to the ribbon wall of the Tribeca Synagogue (William N.Breger Associates, 1965-67), which offers a proto-Zaha relationship between building and street.

Throughout the book there is photography by Jason R. Woods, rendering these disparate but dramatic structures in elegant black and white. All in all, there are more than 50 featured buildings, ranging from the familiar and the friendly to the faintly sinister. It also serves as an excellent companion to the publisher’s earlier Concrete New York Map.

Alongside classic works by Wright, Saarinen and Marcel Breuer, Concrete New York continues right up to date with works by Studio Gang, David Adjaye and Steven Holl, providing an all-round introduction to New York’s concrete architecture old and new.

Concrete New York, £24, BlueCrowMedia.com, @BlueCrowMaps

The book is also available as part of a three-book Architectural City Guides set, £56