Architecture book news

Concrete
Edited by William Hall

Ah, concrete. Has there ever been a more divisive material? Regular readers will not be remotely surprised to find us singing the praises of a hefty book devoted exclusively to the sculptural qualities of the grey stuff. Concrete gets down and dirty with the notorious material, unashamedly singing its praises through a series of captioned photographs that run the full range of concrete's structural, sculptural, textural and technological applications. Sure, there's plenty here that a savvy Wallpaper* reader will know like the back of their hand, but Hall and his team have done a good job of digging up the more esoteric examples of concrete design. A weighty book with which to administer beatings to doubters.

Published by Phaidon, £29.95; www.phaidon.com

Writer: Jonathan Bell

The Architectural Model: Tool, Fetish, Small Utopia
Edited by Oliver Elser and Peter Cachola Schmal

Published to accompany a lavish exhibition at the Deutsches Architekturmuseum, The Architectural Model is a must for lovers of the care, craft and complexity of the architectural model. Works of art in their own right, the book catalogues the miniaturised origins of some of the most recognisable celebrated pieces of architecture in the world, from shop fittings to entire cityscapes. Some of these projects never progressed further than balsa and wire, while other elaborate structures became works of art in their own right.

Published by Scheidegger & Spiess, £61.50; www.scheidegger-spiess.ch

Writer: Jonathan Bell

Le Corbusier: Furniture and Interiors 1905-1965
By Arthur Rüegg

A mighty book for a massive subject, Furniture and Interiors is a catalogue raisonné of all of Le Corbusier's non-architectural design work, ranging from the well-known to the extremely obscure, from the neo-classical work of his early years through to the machine age influences of the 1920s and 30s and the more personal, artistic works of his later years. Extensively illustrated throughout, with archive photography showing many of the pieces in situ, this is a must for all Corb obsessives.

Published by Scheidegger & Spiess, £140; www.scheidegger-spiess.ch

Writer: Jonathan Bell

Great Lakes Regional Headquarters of the Reynolds Metals Company, by Minoru Yamasaki, 1960

Balthazar Korab: Architect of Photography
By John Comazzi

One of the giants of mid-century modernist imagery, Balthazar Korab's black and white imagery of American architecture helped propel the careers of Eero Saarinen into the corporate stratosphere. Included within this new monograph - the first on Korab's work - are detailed portfolios of the construction and completion of the TWA Terminal at JFK and numerous little known classics from around the States.

Published by Princeton Architectural Press, £25; www.papress.com

Writer: Jonathan Bell

Le Corbusier: Furniture and Interiors 1905-1965
By Arthur Rüegg

A mighty book for a massive subject, Furniture and Interiors is a catalogue raisonné of all of Le Corbusier's non-architectural design work, ranging from the well-known to the extremely obscure, from the neo-classical work of his early years through to the machine age influences of the 1920s and 30s and the more personal, artistic works of his later years. Extensively illustrated throughout, with archive photography showing many of the pieces in situ, this is a must for all Corb obsessives.

Published by Scheidegger & Spiess, £140; www.scheidegger-spiess.ch

Writer: Jonathan Bell

Balthazar Korab: Architect of Photography
By John Comazzi

One of the giants of mid-century modernist imagery, Balthazar Korab's black and white imagery of American architecture helped propel the careers of Eero Saarinen into the corporate stratosphere. Included within this new monograph - the first on Korab's work - are detailed portfolios of the construction and completion of the TWA Terminal at JFK and numerous little known classics from around the States.

Published by Princeton Architectural Press, £25; www.papress.com

Writer: Jonathan Bell

Architecture: From Commission to Construction
By Jennifer Hudson

One for the true building buff, this is a fascinating look at the long drawn out process of building. If you've ever wanted to go behind the scenes and see how sketches are fleshed out into fully-fledged buildings, Jennifer Hudson's densely packed new book is for you.

Published by Laurence King, £28; www.laurenceking.com

Writer: Jonathan Bell

Museum without Walls
By Jonathan Meades

Few people can do architecture on the small screen like Jonathan Meades. Inventive, surreal, bilious but always erudite and insightful, Meades has spent three decades creating irreverent and unique television documentaries. Museum without Walls brings together some of the best of these film scripts with a wide selection of Meades' other writings about the perversities of the built environment, our relationship with buildings and the personalities that shape them.

Published by Unbound, £18.99; www.unbound.co.uk

Writer: Jonathan Bell