Women in Architecture - Past, Present, and Future by Ursula Schwitalla. 216 pp. In color and B&W.

The Ideal City - Exploring Urban Futures by SPACE10. 256pp. SPACE10 visits 53 cities in 30 different countries, detailing the specifics different firms have enacted to envision a more ideal city.

Up we go, up it must go, slender, slim, tiny and tall, the new urban housing design and its most complicated task. 48 projects, all over the urban landscape, solving and celebrating the details of vertical design in compact space. Done well, it is the thrill of intent and a true bow to design. Done well, it is the city as great hope.

18 houses for AIR, 12 for EARTH, 10 for FIRE and 14 for WATER, from all over this land and world. From Vietnam to Finland, from Olson Kundig in Kona to a Tulum treehouse, all in lovely color photos. And in each case, nature is not the backdrop, it is the houses that are showing respect. 256 pp.

When asked to design the capital of a young African republic, Rodrigo Tomás sees the opportunity of a lifetime. Eager to outshine his famous father he accepts, but he soon discovers that not all is what it seems. Chronicling the trajectory of an architect craving recognition, The Masterplan delivers a fictional reconstruction of an architectural dream blown to dust by bigger forces. A personal story comes to reveal a larger story – of an emerging nation’s struggle with colonial residue, the growing Chinese influence in Africa and the fraught workings of a global real estate market. Publisher Archis. paperback. 328 pp. April 2021

A fine study of Naples, from the research forces of LAN, who had presented the brilliant review of Paris urban plan and Hausmann three years ago. Now, Napoli, the Italian character, the city of port and labor, of noise and sound and bustle.this a study of its squares and buildings, of its mad, operatic character. They create an atlas of Naples, eighteen significant buildings 1930-1960, and extrapolate to make sense and pattern and order. The Mediterranean of Naples, crossing the bold and brassy modernism of new Napoli, make a wonderful and mad urban opera. The French photographer Cyrille Weiner adds 50 color photos of Naples, now, and it all begins to make some sense. The lovely book concludes with exceptional new illustrations, in beautiful black line drawings, detailing the very architecture of this lavish seaport. Edited by LAN, Jalon and Napolitano, 2021, Zurich, 262pp. cloth

Urban Bremerton, 2020, paper, ed. David Albright, $25 It is the smallest matters, of course, that matter. A photo book of Bremerton, of its urban details, its stairs and theater, its storefronts and logos and alleys, its corners and sidewalk and signage, its cedars and lamp posts. Full color single photos of the very fabric of Bremerton, lonely in a way, until you see them.

paperback, 288pp, Lars Muller/Yale School of Architecture, publ 12/28/2020, Tatiana Bilbao, Ayesha Ghosh, photos Iwan Baan 13 Architecture studios, under the directions of Tatiana Bilbao, studying, diagramming, researching, imagining the US/Mexico border - industry, production, migration, housing, tradition, and territory. It is the power of architecture, in the hands and minds of these studios, to analize and to see and to propose and to believe.

288pp, large cloth ed, Die Gestalten, editors Openhouse published 12/1/20 Includes many of the best new residential designers - Pawson Vervoordt, Caruncho, Silvestrin - but also Lautner, Neutra, Mies, Mallet-Stevens. A very fine collection, time and time.

224 pp, cloth ed, full color, William Morgan, PAP Press, surveys the newest relation of design and architecture and the mountains and the snow. Projects in Finland, Austria, Norway, Scotland Connecticut, Vermont, Utah, Chile, Jaoan, Noa Scotia

From Barcelona, the first issue of Archives, that has sold out several times now - the wonderful work of Flores & Prats, color fotos of ten projects, incl the Morning Chapel at the Biennale, and the Sala Beckett.

It is a brilliantly unromantic book of five places - London, Lagos, Guangzhou, Houston and Dubai - that opens with the author growing up in the London 1990s. Then off she goes, to some of the most difficult cities in modern history. She was born from the Dutch complex of water and harbor and culture - and she is drawn to the hardest such versions. Full color photos are the trees to the book, and she writes a path through them.

People speak of their cat - but in Europe, they may even develop details of architecture, involving the life of the cat. Here, the lengths and speicifics of cat culture in Bern, Switzerland, and the small specific highways of their cats. $56.00 + 4 shipping

The very careful, elegant and favored study of the Teahouse, from 15th Century Japanese origin to present day. Folded pages, full color photography and plan details From Verlag Niggli, authored by Wolfgang Fehrer

Explores the history and significance of rammed earth construction in Central Europe, particularly in Switzerland, using historical examples to investigate the potential of the technique for contemporary construction. Cyril Veillon.

Casa Wabi, a nonprofit arts center located in Puerto Escondido, Oaxaca, Mexico, is a stage for world-renowned contemporary artists and architects to engage with the local community, designed by Tadao Ando, and with structures by Alberto Kalach, Alvaro Siza, Kengo Kuma, Gloria Cabral, Solano Benitez, Jorge Ambrosi, and Gabriela Etchegaray. Founded in 2013 by renowned Mexican artist Bosco Sodi, it combines artist residencies, a gallery, and living quarters with classrooms, gardens, and public space. 162 pp.