Books for the 2024 Holiday Season Picked by the Editors

Drifting Symmetries: Projects, Provocations, and Other Enduring Models,

by Marion Weiss and Michael Manfredi. Edited by Eric Bellin. Park Books, 496 pages, $80.

Drifting Symmetries is Weiss/Manfredi’s first monograph in 15 years—and clearly the architect duo used that hiatus to radically reimagine how their buildings could be presented in such a format. As readers leaf through it, they encounter changes in paper stock, from white and pastel tones to translucent vellum. Photographs and illustrations of the firm’s wide-ranging work are mixed with written contributions by leading voices in contemporary architecture and design, including Tatiana Bilbao, James Corner, Meejin Yoon, and more. There is one downside, however: it won’t be available until January. Matthew Marani

Peter Zumthor 1985–2013: Buildings and Projects.

Edited by Thomas Durisch. Scheidegger und Spiess, 856 pages, $370.

Those who missed the opportunity to purchase this collection 10 years ago can rejoice. The five-volume monograph of the 2009 Pritzker Prize laureate, spanning nearly three decades of his work, has been reprinted—this time with deep indigo clothbound covers. The visual stories of 43 buildings, from the Chapel of Saint Benedict in Graubünden to early schemes of the long-awaited (and set-to-open-soon) addition to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, are told slowly, with a certain Swiss exactitude, using some 750 images, drawings, and sketches. Deliberate and considered—just like Peter Zumthor’s architecture. Leopoldo Villardi

The global urgency surrounding housing, compounded by the impact of climate change and the pandemic on the domestic space, spurred Fernanda Canales to ask how we can redesign houses, improve our experiences in them, and tackle homelessness. In My House, Your City, she interrogates these issues by examining the last 200 years of “major domestic revolutions.” The book has a special focus on the work of Frank Lloyd Wright, Mies van der Rohe, Luis Barragán, and Buckminster Fuller, but it touches on a broader cohort of architects as well. Dante A. Ciampaglia

In Depth: Urban Domesticities Today,

by Florian Idenburg and Jing Liu. Contributions by Ted Baab, Karilyn Johanesen, and Nicolas Kemper. Lars Müller, 360 pages, $52.

Few have been shaking up housing as much as Brooklyn-based SO—IL. Urban Domesticities Today catalogues the firm’s recent and ongoing residential projects, which break formulaic and outdated models by experimenting with open-air corridors and courtyards. Ample documentation—including scenes of everyday life captured through the lens of RECORD contributor Iwan Baan—is served up with playful idiosyncratic embellishment. In some pictures, lustrous metallic inks have been superimposed on architectural elements, and windows have been silkscreened with braille varnish to give them a lifelike glimmer. LV

The People’s Architect: Carol Ross Barney.

Introduction by Iker Gil. Oscar Riera Ojeda Publishers, 200 pages, $55.

She “works in a wide range of scales and across typologies, always thoughtful, determined, and empathetic,” writes Iker Gill in this 13-work survey-slash-salute to architect Carol Ross Barney published following her AIA Gold Medal win. Indeed, Barney’s gift for designing places and spaces where people congregate en masse truly does run the gamut; showcased in the book are synagogues and elevated transit stations, federal buildings and supersized fast-food flagships, and, as hinted on the cover, transformative urban parks, including the Chicago Riverwalk. Matt Hickman

Point Line Plane,

by Kengo Kuma. Thames & Hudson, 216 pages, $35.

Kengo Kuma argues that present-day challenges demand an escape from the suffocating shadow of 20th-century concrete boxes and an embrace of building methods that “reconnect people with things, the environment, and each other.” Kuma draws on everything from quantum mechanics to gravel under railroad ties and the 19th-century woodblock artist Hiroshige in this manifesto and curated architectural history. And, by examining his projects such as Stone Plaza in Nasu, Japan, and the V&A Dundee in Scotland, he explores how breaking volumes into points, lines, and planes has guided his work. DAC

Architecture. Research. Office.

Edited by Stephen Cassell, Kim Yao, Adam Yarinsky. Text by Brooke Hodge. DelMonico Books, 416 pages, $85.

This monograph, published some 20 years after ARO’s first, highlights 30 of the firm’s most significant projects, including the Princeton University School of Architecture and the new campus for the Rothko Chapel in Houston, alongside text, archival and contemporary photography, and drawings. The work is imbued with the firm’s seven overarching principles (established at its founding in 1993), which are revealed through conversations between writer Brooke Hodge and the firm’s three partners, Stephen Cassell, Kim Yao, and Adam Yarinsky. Architecture. Research. Office. is intended to serve not only as a monograph, but as handbook for the field writ large. MM

Salty Urbanism: A Design Manual for Sea Level Rise Adaptation in Urban Areas.

Edited by Jeffrey Huber. Oro Editions, 300 pages, $45.

In this detailed, richly illustrated manual, Brooks + Scarpa principal Jeffrey Huber presents a new design methodology for an increasingly “salty” landscape, as rising seas reshape both built and natural environments. Using Fort Lauderdale—“the Venice of America”—as a case study, Huber has developed a comprehensive framework that encompasses infrastructure, architecture, and urbanism, challenging designers to rethink our relationship with water and explore how future development can become a resilient environmental asset rather than a liability. Pansy Schulman

The Land Is Full: Nelson Byrd Woltz Landscape Architects.

Contributions by Thomas L. Woltz, Nina-Marie Lister, Brent Leggs, and Robert Pogue Harrison. Foreword by Andrea Wulf. Edited by Bradford McKee. Monacelli, 240 pages, $65.

Divided into four sections, each featuring an introductory essay, this handsomely produced title showcases landscape architecture firm Nelson Byrd Woltz’s superlatively site-sensitive work—work in which the history of the land, “urban or rural, wild or toxic,” is never overridden, allowed instead to tell its unique tale. Guided by what founding principal Thomas Woltz calls “slow listening,” the firm’s approach enables the studio to “gain knowledge that inspires and shapes the vision for [the] land . . . it allows us to open our hearts and minds and develop a sense of kinship with the place.” MH

Shigeru Ban: Complete Works, 1985–Today,

by Philip Jodidio. Taschen, 696 pages, $200.

This monograph clearly qualifies as a tome. At 12½ by 15½ inches, and more than 2 inches thick, the book, which presents Shigeru Ban’s four-decade career chronologically, weighs a hefty 15 pounds. The luxuriously sized photographs—accompanied by diagrammatic drawings and short explanatory text—showcase the Pritzker Prize laureate’s inventive use of materials, adventurous forms, and thoughtful emergency-response work. Ban’s genius could have been conveyed in a more compact format, so this book is best suited for those with plenty of desk space to spare! Joann Gonchar, FAIA

For other notable books, peruse our book reviews here or in previous issues of the magazine.