This holiday season, publishers are vying for dominance on your coffee table. The offerings are enchanting, but make sure the table is sturdy. A single tome tipped our scale at 8.55 pounds.
As a measure of cool, there is no competition for Bruce Mau's magenta satin volume "Life Style" (Phaidon, $69.95). The Toronto designer's last book, "S,M,L,XL," was produced with Pritzker Prize-winning architect Rem Koolhaas.
Here, Mau goes it alone, documenting his own creative process and graphic design studio work. It is an anecdotal rendition of the visual world--with snippets of intelligence for navigating modern life.
"Unless we can come to terms with the global image economy and the way it permeates the things we make and see, we are doomed to a life of decorating and redecorating," Mau declares upfront.
Mau won't necessarily help you create your own style, unless you're inspired by the branded, pop culture sensibility that drives him. On the other hand, if magenta's not your color, the book is available in seven other decorator hues. Either way, the book will be the season's hip conversation piece.
For a preview of the millennium, "10x10" (Phaidon, $59.95) is unchallenged as the architecture book of the year. It opens the window on breathtaking designs by 100 emerging architects. Ten international critics weigh in on their work. The scope is global, the implications awesome. Curiously, "10x10" measures 12x12 inches.
The National Gallery of Art's exhibition on art nouveau was responsible for the lushly illustrated collector's volume "Art Nouveau, 1890-1914" (Abrams, $75). Editor Paul Greenhalgh of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, where the show originated, conveys the beauty of Tiffany lampshades, Klimt paintings, Lalique jewelry, Gaudi architecture and more. A softcover edition costs $35.
For pictorial garden history, "The Garden Book" (Phaidon, $39.95 ) is unrivaled. It celebrates 500 gardens with a single image of each. The A-to-Z book opens with Finnish designer Alvar Aalto's asymmetrical pool at Villa Mairea, built in 1941. Szymon Bogumil Zug's 1775 plan for a Radziwill palace garden in Poland comes last.
Aspiring billionaires can learn from "Hearst Castle" (Abrams, $49.50), an illuminating tale at the intersection of capitalism and architecture. Victoria Kastner's saga of San Simeon, the legendary California estate of William Randolph Hearst, who died in 1951, is captured in detail and with more clarity than in Orson Welles' "Citizen Kane." No mention of Rosebud, but plenty on the travails of an unsung architect, Julia Morgan.
