March book news: 10 of this month's finest tomes
March book news: 10 of this month's finest tomes
Google, Volume 1
By King Zog
The digital era has irrevocably transformed traditional print publishing, with iPads and Kindles among the phenomena revolutionising the way people digest information today. The inverse effect, however, is rarely explored, and the translation of digital to print has been a rocky road. One ingenious effort by Parisian publishing house Jean Boîte Editions has made a firm case for making our online quotidian tangible, with a hefty tome mapping the first Google result image for each word in the Oxford Pocket Dictionary in alphabetical order. Comprising over 22,000 screenshots, the book is the first in a series, but just like the lightning speed of our digital lives, those terms and their associations will be due for an update - right about now.
Published by Jean Boîte Editions, €95
Writer: Dan Thawley
A spread from the book showing screenshots of Google's results for the letter m, featuring mountains, mice and mouths
From hypnotherapy to hysteria, and ibex to icebergs
100 Getaways around the World
Edited by Margit J Mayer
Not the kind of book to slip into your carry-on, 100 Getaways is aimed at the armchair traveller (who may need to reinforce their laps). Margit J Mayer’s twin-volume magnum opus is a slip-cased sojourn in the world’s most impressive retreats, scaled up to provide an ‘as if you were there’ view into a host of vacation spaces that aim to create truly otherworldly experiences. Castles, deserts, lakes, fjords and other far-flung spots; they’re all here.
Published by Taschen, £34.99
Writer: Jonathan Bell
From the book: Amangiri, Canyon Point, USA. © Ken Hayden and Richard Se. Amanresorts/TASCHEN
Treehotel, Harads, Sweden. © Mårten and Gustav Cyrén; Treehotel
A bedroom in Qasr Al Sarab Desert Resort, Abu Dhabi. © Qasar Al Sarab Desert Resort/TASCHEN
Our Time
By Cat Garcia
The quiet restraint of London-based photographer Cat Garcia's immaculately composed compendium almost belies the enormity of her recent undertaking. In a new self-published tome, Our Time, Garcia ventures into the private domains of 60 of Britain's most creative talents, offering unguarded views into their homes and workspaces. Opening with artist Sir Peter Blake, and concluding with fashion designer Sir Paul Smith, the beautifully crafted book takes us on a revelatory journey, stopping by a few of our friends and creative favourites along the way.
Published by Cat Garcia, £35
Writer: Jessica Klingelfuss
Printmaker and designer Anthony Burrill in his studio. Photography: Cat Garcia
Writer, curator and Wallpaper* editor-at-large Henrietta Thompson was photographed at home and out having tea before meetings across London. Photography: Cat Garcia
Set designer Robert Storey was captured creating a set on location. Photography: Cat Garcia
B is for Bauhaus
By Deyan Sudjic
The historian Deyan Sudjic has always been one of the most vocal advocates of contemporary design. Now, as director of London’s Design Museum, (shortly due to move into its new Pawson-styled space in Holland Park), he’s become a fully-fledged member of the establishment. B is for Bauhaus is not intended as a dictionary, rather, it is a manual for decoding the design signs that are now all around us as the once-esoteric preserve of an obsessive minority branches out into the mainstream. Combining Sudjic’s obsessive attention to obscure detail with a pop culture-honed eye for influence and connection, ‘B’ is a handbook of why things are the way they are.
Published by Particular Books, £18.99; available from 27 March
Writer: Jonathan Bell
London-based designer Matthew Young created the graphics for inside the book, with each entry preceded by a page with its own matching visual identity
Golden Meaning: Fifty-five graphic experiments
By GraphicDesign&
GraphicDesign& continues its mission of publishing and promoting delightfully scaled, meticulously designed micro-monographs. Golden Meaning is an artistic exploration of the golden mean, the visual division that offers up the most mathematically and mentally perfect proportions. With an introduction by Alex Bellos, the book contains 55 explorations of this millennia-old formula, using a rich array of modern print processes to keep everything close to perfection.
Published by GraphicDesign&, £15
Writer: Jonathan Bell
A spread from the book showing 'Talbot Type', by Adrian Talbot
'Homework', by Jerzy Skakun and Joanna Górska
'Sennep', by Matt Rice and Christoph Lorenzi
Arup Associates 50
Edited by Declan O'Carroll and Michael Bevan
2013 was the 50th anniversary of Arup Associates, a quiet celebration for an architectural firm that usually keeps in the shadows of architectural establishment. As the architectural arm of parent company Arup, Arup Associates has forged its own path and has a host of impressive architectural projects to its name. Occasionally AA works in cahoots with Arup (like for Singapore's new Sports Hub), but the architects take an independent, and rigorously formed, path of their own. This new monograph celebrates the first half century of the original multidisciplinary design firm - the 'total architecture' envisaged by Ove Arup.
Published by Arup Associates, £35
Writer: Jonathan Bell
A spread from the book showing the Singapore Sports Hub for Dragages, one of the firm's ongoing projects. The roof of the stadium will be the largest free-span dome in the world when it is completed later this year
Arup Associates' 50-year history is outlined by architectural historian Ken Powell
A working sketch for the design of London's Imperial War Museum. The project's third phase was completed in 2000
Fashionable Selby
By Todd Selby
New York-based photographer Todd Selby has quietly assumed almost total authority over modern eclecticism - a look that’s often imitated but only really brought to life through his imagery of authentically diverse subjects and the spaces they live in. Fashionable Selby is the third print offering from Selby’s influential online springboard, this time taking studied aim at the people, spaces, places and things that come together to shape the modern fashion industry.
Published by Abrams, £22.99
Writer: Jonathan Bell
From the book: Brother Vellies creative director Aurora James tracing patterns onto leather in her Brooklyn studio © 2014 Todd Selby
Colourful and chaotic scrapbook pages from Tokyo-based fashion designer Yoshikazu Yamagata © 2014 Todd Selby
Natalie Gibson, designer, lecturer, gardener and cook at work at Central St Martin's College of Art and Design in London © 2014 Todd Selby
BMW Art Cars
Edited by Thomas Girst
Of all the myriad programmes of corporate self-betterment, BMW's Art Car series is the one with the most credibility, history and integrity. The series celebrates its 40th anniversary next year, originally kicked off by Alexander Calder’s geometric BMW 3.0 CSL in 1975. The company’s art cars have ranged from eye-catching paint jobs for high-speed machines to entire re-imaginations of what a car actually is. This new monograph from Hatje Cantz (overseen by BMW’s culture supremo Dr Thomas Girst), is the first to collate all 17 artists’ designs, wrapped in a cover designed by Jeff Koons (2010’s artist) and featuring in-depth looks at these unique rolling canvases.
Published by Hatje Cantz, €29,80
Writer: Jonathan Bell
American sculptor Alexander Calder kicked off BMW's Art Car series in 1975, with his geometric makeover of a BMW 3.0 CSL
British-born artist David Hockney immortalises his dachshund, Stanley, on the body of a BMW 850CSi; to the right is the small-scale working model, 1995
Jeff Koons' take on the BMW M3 GT2, 2010, was inspired by the history of race car graphics
Future Living: Collective Housing in Japan
By Claudia Hildner
The design of the modern Japanese house has long fascinated Western architects, with its apparent revolving door approach to new forms and new ways to live. Future Living looks at a form with slightly more longevity: the small apartment block. The book explores how architects manage to conjure up elegant homes in tiny footprints, balancing privacy, programme, site and budget to create collective housing with more character than almost any other country in the world.
Published by Birkhäuser, €39.95
Writer: Jonathan Bell
From the book: Soshigaya House, by Be-Fun Design + EANA, Tokyo, 2012. Photography: Hiroyuki Hirai
One-Roof Apartment, by Akihisa Hirata Architecture Office, Jōetsu, 2010. The building is stretched over the foyer like a tent, while the striking form of the spacious entry sets the tone for this multi-storey apartment building both outside and inside. Photography: Toshiyuki Yano
Yokohama Apartment, by On design & Partners, 2011. Four residential units for artists span a semi-public space in a residential neighbourhood in Yokohama characterised by small buildings. Photography: Koichi Torimura
Henri Cartier-Bresson: Here and Now
By Clément Chéroux, foreword by Alain Seban
Here and Now is another Henri Cartier-Bresson monograph from Thames & Hudson, this time in association with the latest French retrospective on the photographer, at Paris' Pompidou Centre, a decade after his death. The tome still manages to eke out unpublished images by the master photographer, co-founder of Magnum and instigator of the modern art of street photography. If you only buy one book on the great Cartier-Bresson, make it this one and 500 of his best images will be yours.
Published by Thames & Hudson, £45
Writer: Jonathan Bell
'Martine Franck', by Henri Cartier-Bresson, Paris, France, 1967 © Henri Cartier-Bresson/Magnum Photos, courtesy Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson
'Livorno', by Henri Cartier-Bresson, Tuscany, Italy, 1933 © Henri Cartier-Bresson/Magnum Photos, courtesy Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson
