on 28 June 2002This is one ugly book. It’s the wrong size and the wrong thickness, with the wrong picture on the front at the wrong resolution. The layout is wrong and the typography is wronger.
Fortunately it’s not a book about book design, it’s a book about experimental architecture, based on the most recent conference of ArchiLab, a French-based initiative to promote radical building design. And all radical building design is here. There are pods on stilts, tin sheds with grass on the roof, apartment blocks made out of shipping containers, wavy skyscrapers with organic bits sticking out, and funny little shoeboxes with video walls.
If any of that sounds like news to you, you’re in dire need of an up-to-date coffee-table book. This one’s as good as any, and bigger than most, which helps make up for its ugliness, and the fact that it’s annoyingly erratic in telling you whether projects are real or hypothetical. Perfect, then, really: you can leave it on your coffee table, and when people politely remark, ‘Oh, what an ugly book,’ you can chip in, ‘Yes, but quite interesting if you like experimental architecture.’
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