Words to live by
This month’s books explore the buildings we inhabit, the objects we live with and the landscapes we tend…
1 ‘Why Women
Grow’
The history of horticulture has often overlooked the contribution made by women, but this book offers a timely antidote. Alice Vincent is on a quest to unearth the stories that explain why women turn to the earth as gardeners, growers and custodians. From Brixton to the Welsh Borders, conversations about creation and loss, power, protest and identity emerge as she connects with women and discovers
what nurturing the ground has offered them. £16.99, Canongate (canongate.co.uk)
2 ‘Arranging Things’
The first book from rising star of American
interiors Colin King perfectly captures his unique sensibility and approach to design. Focusing on how to find beauty in everyday objects, he shares how to create compositions that will enrich homes. From coffee tables to windowsills and bookshelves, the stylist explains how using scale, proportion, palette and texture can help us establish new relationships between our favourite things and find joy in the familiar. £38.95, Rizzoli
(rizzoliusa.com)
3 ‘Interiors in the Era of Covid-19’
When the pandemic confined populations all over the world to their homes, people
reevaluated their relationships with these most private of spaces. This collection of essays charts the changes in how we treated our homes under Covid, as they adapted to become offices, classrooms, gyms and more. Case studies
range from the US and Europe to China and Bangladesh to examine the impact of lockdown
on every aspect of domestic life. £24.99, Bloomsbury Visual Arts
(bloomsbury.com)
4 ‘The Brutalists’
Brutalism can get a bad reputation, but it’s a movement that makes up a fundamental part of the built environment
and warrants our attention. Architectural writer and curator Owen Hopkins considers more
than 250 historic and contemporary architects
behind significant brutalist buildings and asks why they inspire such strong reactions.
With projects by Marcel Breuer, Ernö Goldfinger and Oscar Niemeyer, plus lesserknown examples, it’s an
essential guide to this polarising style. £49.95, Phaidon (phaidon.com)
5 ‘Le Corbusier: Album Punjab, 1951’
This reprint of the notebook Le Corbusier
kept during his now-famous visit to the area that would become Chandigarh gives a unique insight into the mind of one of the most influential architects of the 20th century. With a team of architects and
government officials, Le Corbusier developed
the plan for the new capital city of the state of Punjab in just a few days, and the sketches and personal reflections here vividly bring the expedition to life. £70, Lars Müller (lars-mueller
publishers.com)
6 ‘Luna Luna’
In the late 1980s, 30 of the era’s most famed artists – including Jean-Michel Basquiat, David Hockney, Roy Lichtenstein and Keith
Haring – designed fairground attractions for Luna Luna, the first-ever
art amusement park, curated in Hamburg by Austrian multimedia artist André Heller. Luna Luna relaunches in 2023, and Heller’s 1987 book is being published for the first time in English, with
images of the artists and intriguing work that hasn’t been widely seen for 35 years. £34.95, Phaidon
(phaidon.com)