Edited by Paul Hardin Kapp and Paul J. Armstrong. University of Illinois Press, 2012, 224 pages, $60. SynergiCity: Reinventing the Postindustrial City, edited by Paul Hardin Kapp and Paul J. Armstrong. University of Illinois Press, 2012, 224 pages, $60. Focusing mostly on Rust Belt cities in the United States, this book examines urban-revitalization strategies in places such as Pittsburgh, Milwaukee, St. Louis, Detroit, Baltimore, and Peoria, Illinois. In a lively foreword, urbanist Richard Florida argues that these cities should be wary of megaprojects like “heavily subsidized convention centers and downtown sports stadiums” and should look instead to smaller-scale, grass-roots efforts

The author, who covers architecture for Inhabitat.com, examines the need for new kinds of housing in the wake of disasters, poverty, and climate change, and shows projects from around the globe. 

The Shape of Green by Lance Hosey. Island Press, 2012, 216 pages, $30. Did you know that a clean neighborhood experiences one-fifth less crime than an untidy one, that profit margins for businesses near Rem Koolhaas's Seattle Public Library have risen 50 percent since it opened in 2004, that birdsong stimulates carbon sequestration by trees? Lance Hosey is on a mission to prove that society places value on beautiful environments, which makes them more enduring. His new book, The Shape of Green, leaves no case unturned for recognizing beauty as a valid consideration in green building. The Shape of Green

Ezra Stoller, Photographer, by Nina Rappaport and Erica Stoller. Introduction by Andy Grundberg; contributions by Akiko Busch and John Morris Dixon. Yale University Press, 2012, 288 pages, $65. Balthazar Korab, Architect of Photography, by John Comazzi. Princeton Architectural Press, 2012, 192 pages, $40. Click the image above to see more photographs from the book. Click the image above to see more photographs from the book. Photography not only helped to define Modern architecture, it also created its celebrities. It is difficult to imagine mid-20th-century American design without recollecting Ezra Stoller's iconic image of SOM's Lever House or Balthazar Korab's shots

by Naomi Pollock. Foreword by Reiko Sudo. London and New York: Merrell Publishers, 2012, 240 pages, $49.95. The latest book from architect and journalist Naomi Pollock highlights 100 objects—from kitchen gadgets to furnishings—that illustrate why products that are “made in Japan” continue to be revered in the international design community. Renowned designers featured in the book include Naoto Fukasawa, Toyo Ito, and Nendo, a multidisciplinary firm founded by Oki Sato that has become a headliner at design shows like Milan’s annual Salone del Mobile. Made in Japan: 100 New Products, by Naomi Pollock. Foreword by Reiko Sudo. London and New

by Tracy Metz and Maartje van den Heuvel. Rotterdam: NAi Publishers (distributed in the U.S. by D.A.P.), 2012, 296 pages, $45. As cleanup from Hurricane Sandy segues to rebuilding, Sweet & Salt could have been ripped from newspaper headlines. The not-sounderlying theme is of the Dutch as canaries in the global-warming coal mine. Much of Holland’s most productive land is below sea level, so the Dutch are acutely aware of subtle changes in the rivers, seas, and weather that get lost in all the background noise masking the climate-change debate in America. After all, Holland has built its culture, social

Architecture School: Three Centuries of Educating Architects in North America, edited by Joan Ockman with Rebecca Williamson. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2012, 400 pages, $50. Academic Discourse Photo courtesy Associat ion of Collegiate Schools of Architecture Architecture students hard at work at drafting tables at MIT in 1898. Photo courtesy Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture Architecture students hard at work at drafting tables at Kent State in 1967. What is the status of the “big book” today? The editors of Architecture School, along with the board of advisers of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture—which initiated the book

by Jonathan Barnett. Routledge, 2011, 248 pages, $54 (paperback). Jonathan Barnett is a believer (as am I) that architectural ideas have had a vital role in shaping cities. To bolster his assertion he lays out in City Design a rich history of the styles, movements, and ideas that have shaped cities from the Renaissance forward. He puts in context everything from “garden cities” to “megastructures” and places these movements in the broader arc of civic history. Particularly interesting is Barnett’s interweaving of landscape design and architecture, since few books have looked at the interdependence of the two fields and their

by Joseph Rosa and Robert Elwall. Edition Axel Menges, 2012, 108 pages, $68. This exquisite oversized book of Turner’s abstract black-and-white photographs spans 35 years (1974-2009), demonstrating how she has been able to expand a language developed for crisp geometric structures to a variety of modern buildings and enabling the reader to see them anew. Turner first became known for the book Judith Turner Photographs Five Architects (Rizzoli, 1980), which depicted the “white architecture” of the 1970s of Peter Eisenman, John Hejduk, Michael Graves, Richard Meier, and Charles Gwathmey. Her photographs, like the buildings of those architects at that time,

by Shashi Caan. Laurence King Publishing, 2011, 192 pages, $30 (paperback). In the arc of an architecture or interior-design student’s education, she may encounter the image of Abbé Laugier’s “primitive hut” a dozen times. Not that there’s anything wrong with it, but if you’ve ever sat in a darkened lecture hall and wondered, “Is that all there is?” then Shashi Caan’s Rethinking Design Interiors: Human Beings in the Built Environment is for you. Caan is the former chair of interior design at Parsons The New School for Design in New York and a founder and principal of the architecture, interiors,