Words Jim Larkin / Stephen Szczepanek

Avant Gardeners: 50 Visionaries of the Contemporary Landscape

by Tim Richardson
Thames & Hudson, New York

352 pp.; 474 color and 10 b&w illus.; $60

It isn’t easy to straddle the divide between engaging profile and academic monograph, but former Wallpaper landscape critic Tim Richardson manages the feat in this smart, accessible survey of today’s most exciting and imaginative landscape and garden projects. Structured as a series of profiles, broken up by deeper essays concerning the ways in which landscape design is embracing “the latest thinking in materials, science, and interactive design,” Avant Gardeners looks at works by the field’s conceptual pioneers. Among those covered are such designers as Martha Schwartz (the introduction’s author) who utilize multimedia installations; others who craft more elemental, Andy Goldsworthy-like works, such as Jean-Pierre Brazs and Shunmyo Masuno; and finally serene plantsmen like Gustafson Porter, who create unintrusively within the landscape.

From school playgrounds and country clubs to community gardens and apartment buildings (such as the De Plussenburgh complex in Rotterdam by the always provocative Petra Blaisse, at left), Richardson’s concise, informative, no-nonsense voice quickly sorts out the key traits and inspirations of the 50 designers profiled. Most of the occasional essays and musings are thoughtful, though some are less illuminating. “Maxims Towards a Conceptualist Attitude to Landscape Design,” for example, has an energetic, mind-mapping graphic layout, but does little to inspire with such trite advice as “Don’t talk to the plants. Let the garden speak to you.” Yet despite its groan-worthy title, Avant Gardeners delivers an informed look at the freshest ideas regarding our decorative interactions with the environment around us. –JL

New Tent Architecture

By Philip Drew
Thames & Hudson
208 pp.; 250 color and b&w illus.; $60.00

Descended from suspension bridges and the shelters of nomads going back millennia, contemporary tensile building gets a welcome new look in this thorough, lavishly illustrated volume from architectural historian Phillip Drew. The straightforward, case-study format of thirty projects examines familiar works such as London’s Millennium Dome and the Denver International Airport, as well as new tent-based structures, such as Stuttgart’s Main Station and Beijing’s National Swimming Stadium, nicknamed “the Water Cube.” Drew discusses emerging technologies along with the value that tents, which are lightweight, strong and durable, offer in today’s environmentally aware times. In sum, New Tent Architecture is not only an enjoyable visual journey, but with its additional line drawings, glossary, and bibliography, a valuable reference guide for architects, designers and engineers. –JL

Japan Style

By Gian Carlo Calza
Phaidon

303 pp.;150 color illus.; $49.95

“The apogee of elegance is to be found in what is sensed, but does not draw attention to itself, ever,” writes Gian Carlo Calza, the Venice-based authority in Japanese art. In his new book, Japan Style, he offers a potently detailed tour through the “realm of causes” out of which Japanese style, as we know it, has emerged. Essays with such enigmatic titles as “Images of Emptiness,” “The Seductiveness of Impermanence,” and “An Intimate Perception of Reality” are made accessible by more than 150 remarkably beautiful, full color photographs of Japanese architecture, art, crafts, cinema, literature, and fashion, drawn from historical and contemporary sources. Demonstrating the parallels and differences between the cultural tendencies of Japan and the West, Calza provides the Western reader with the “interpretive tools” to appreciate the underpinnings of Japanese style, and his essays achieve much to this end. –SS