Jean Nouvel by Jean Nouvel, volumes 1 and 2

Everything about this weighty double volume screams Taschen, from its over-the-top author-title treatment to its endless full-colour spreads. Even for a collectable coffee-table book, this bombast seems oddly out of tune with its subject, one of the few great living architects whose persona isn’t a major selling point. Yet prologue writer Philip Jodidio wants to reinforce the idea that the French architect is worthy of inclusion in the starchitect pantheon. It’s a reductivist argument, especially when Nouvel’s varied works (the two tomes cover 1970–1992 and 1993–2008) speak so well for themselves.

From the beginning, Nouvel has tested French conservatism, playing the serial iconoclast by trading a signature style for a continually mould-breaking approach. He started out as a rebel (in his first major commission, Maison Dick, in Saint-André-les-Vergers, France, he retained the outline of his original design in a scheme that was eventually compromised by officialdom), and he’s gone on to gain worldwide acclaim with sensitive cultural projects and cutting-edge, eco-smart ones. His Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris takes its cues from Arab design, while his Quai Branly Museum, also in Paris, and the Agbar Tower in Barcelona display ­in­gen­ious references to nature and context.

Of course, one doesn’t purchase this behemoth for the words (including Nouvel’s Louisiana manifesto, a cry for a return to vernacular, place-specific architecture) but for the images. Selected by Nouvel, the photographs are for the most part dark and often repetitive (eleven double-page spreads depict the Agbar Tower in varying degrees of proximity). At times, the redundancy is more pointed: multiple images of the lived-in Nemausus apartments, in Nimes, France, demonstrate how residents invented their own “homes” in these generous settings – vindication for Nouvel’s controversial decision to increase the standard square footage by 47 per cent by using industrial materials, such as exposed concrete and aluminum. These architecture-in-context visuals (including drawings, renderings and painterly collages), supplemented by an ample appendix in English, German and French, add to the comprehensive feel of Taschen’s book – all in all, an encyclopedic resource for Nouvel devotees.  Elizabeth Pagliacolo

Taschen   ISBN 978-3-8365-0935-0

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Building the New Millennium/Living in the New Millennium

It’s good to be living in the 21st century, especially if you’re an architect at the top of your game. Cities around the world, striving for international stature, have major feats of construction on their wish lists, from art museums and concert halls to spectacular suspension bridges and sports stadiums. Along with the drive to impress comes the rapid advancement of new technology that appears able to solve any engineering problem. How all this bravado will look in the coming decades is anyone’s guess. Meanwhile, Phaidon has published two slim volumes, one on houses, the other on buildings, that distill the past decade into the best and greatest, 36 houses and 38 buildings in total. The usual suspects are present: Frank Gehry’s Walt Disney Concert Hall in L.A., and Foster  + Partners’ “Gherkin” (which redefined the skyline of London’s financial district) stand out among the top buildings. Similarly, the houses are hardly conventional  – some burrow into hillsides, and others appear to stretch well past cliff edges in search of perfect views. Architecture will possess another sensibility by the time 2020 rolls around, and these two volumes are like time capsules that will be just as interesting with the benefit of hindsight.  Catherine Osborne

Phaidon   ISBN 978-0-7148-5600-1/978-0-7148-5599-8

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