By Clare Jacobson. Princeton Architectural Press, November 2013, 256 pages, $50. Cultural Revolution For the past decade, China has been on a museum-constructing binge, tossing out new buildings for art and culture the way a sailor on leave tosses back beers. From 2000 to the end of 2011, the People's Republic of China added 1,198 museums, nearly doubling the number it had at the start of the millennium. Some were commissioned by ambitious politicians hoping to advance their careers. Some were put up by developers as ill-conceived amenities for enormous housing projects. Many remain empty much of the time, their

Edited by Michael Juul Holm and Mette Marie Kallehauge, with essays by Mette Marie Kallehauge, Poul Erik T'jner, William J.R. Curtis, and Kaelen Wilson-Goldie. Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, September 2014, 245 pages, (in Danish and English), $40. It isn't much of a surprise that a book on Arab contemporary architecture is written by non-Arabs. Due to cultural and social norms that persuade Arabs to be modest about their creativity, natives to the region are more apt to accept ideas and designs created by foreigners. Sometimes, Arabs need outsiders to tell them how inviting their lives and buildings really are. Arab

By Camilo José Vergara. University of Chicago Press, December 2013, 364 pages, $55. The City Observed The sociologist, photographer, and MacArthur Fellow Camilo José Vergara, known for his website Invincible Cities and his heartfelt documentation of devastated urban neighborhoods, says in this, his ninth, book that there are many Harlems he has been photographing since 1970. While that could mean the various populations he mentions—the early Jewish and Italian immigrant Harlemites, the big wave of African-Americans, the nearly as big influx of Latin Americans, the recent Senegalese and Malians—the pictures are primarily of built Harlem, its street life (concentrating on

By Russell Fortmeyer and Charles D. Linn. Images Publishing, April 2014, 224 pages, $78. Smart Skins Despite its title, Kinetic Architecture is not a book about buildings with components that literally move. Instead, its authors, Russell Fortmeyer and Charles D. Linn (both former editors at Architectural Record), investigate projects with envelopes that dynamically respond—in ways both visible and invisible—to their surroundings in order to modulate the interior environment, conserve energy, and enhance the comfort of occupants. Linn, an architect and director of communications for the University of Kansas School of Architecture, and Fortmeyer, an electrical engineer and sustainable-technology specialist at

By Detlef Mertins. Phaidon Press, March 2014, 542 pages, $150. The Enduring Legacy of a Modern Master The newest and—according to its publisher, Phaidon—“most definitive” monograph on Ludwig Mies van der Rohe weighs 6½ pounds, has 542 pages, and 600 illustrations, and, at a size of 12 by 9 3/8 inches, will fit only horizontally into most bookshelves. It is a monument to the architect's enduring legacy and appeal, but also a fitting tribute to its author Detlef Mertins, eminent Mies scholar, former chair and professor at the Department of Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania, who sadly passed away

By A+T Research Group (Aurora Fern'ndez Per, Javier Mozas, and Alex S. Ollero). A+T Architecture Publishers, June 2013, 496 pages, $53. European Lessons for Living This handsome and valuable compendium of social housing projects in Europe is actually three books: a chronological presentation of 10 projects tracing the development of architectural concepts for collective housing from 1919 to about 1970; a superlative example of how well-organized and stunning graphics can allow for comparisons between projects; and a manifesto for promoting humane high-density living. The authors, who are also the publishers, are members of a group formed in Spain in 1992

Edited by Peggy Deamer. Routledge, August 2013, 264 pages, $45 . Money Talks At the top of the list of topics architects like to talk about as little as possible is money. Dirty, complicated money. Which means that Yale University Professor Peggy Deamer’s new book is a necessary—though highly theoretical and historical—addition to the global architectural conversation. And while the book doesn’t delve into the particularities of the professional economy, it opens up essential avenues of inquiry, as well as expressing some inspiring examples of historical and architectural scholarship at its finest. The best (and best-written) essay is Robin Schuldenfrei’s

Edited by Kevin Bone. Monacelli Press, May 2014, 224 pages, $40. When Less is More Earth-friendly By reducing green design to a set of checklists that are then used as shopping lists, LEED and similar environmental rating systems may actually increase consumption. And by turning sustainability into the province of consultants, such systems take the responsibility for making buildings ecologically sound out of the hands of architects. It didn’t have to be that way, Kevin Bone makes clear in this important new book. The outgrowth of a 2013 exhibition at New York’s Cooper Union, where Bone is the director of

By George H. Marcus and William Whitaker. Yale University Press, 2013, 269 pages, $65. A Prism for Viewing a Master While reading this outstanding book, I kept remembering the Bill Clinton 1992 election campaign that was defined by the phrase “It's the economy, stupid.” I had to keep myself from shouting, “It's the houses, stupid!” Marcus and Whitaker have not only directed superb scholarship to the study of Kahn's houses—both built and unbuilt—but have shown that the houses can be a lens on a broader understanding of Kahn's philosophy, his interpretation of Modernism, and his appreciation of the vernacular. They

By Alexander Gorlin. Pointed Leaf Press, 2013, 192 pages, $60. Mystical Thinking This informative and heavily illustrated book is not so much about places where artists have applied principles of Kabbalah—the Jewish mystical interpretation of the universe—but where Alexander Gorlin takes readers to find them. Gorlin, a New York architect and author, uses Kabbalah as a lens for “re-reading . . . art and architecture,” much as critics might interpret art through the filters of class, race, gender, or the Holocaust. The book stems from his fascination with the Kabbalistic idea of genesis expressed as light, space, and geometry, which