Literary Dose #44

"What defines a good (architecture/design) book for you?

Ninety-seven percent is rubbish, I wouldn't touch it with a ... [sic] The rest is woth living for. For example Max Bill's Maillart. Lovely. Perfect. Not too thick. Super proportions. Fantastic typeface. Balanced. Nice bridges of course. Something contemporary? [...] Nine Swimming Pools by Ed Ruscha. It's old too, and an artist's book, sorry. Can't think of anything else. It's dreadful. No good Zumthor book, the one by Lars M�ller just scrapes through. The book about Vals is a disaster [...] The Herzog & de Meuron book by Peter Blum, it's got something. [...] Honestly, it drives me nuts, all I can think of is rubbish. Even the Dhaka book I did for Louis Kahn, it was successful but I wouldn't say it's that good. [...] In short: Less is more. Little books, choice books, thin books, 'unpolished' books, normal books. Or an eight-pound door-stopper like the Valerio Olgiati for K�nig, of which I'm a little bit proud."

- "Interview with designer Dino Simonett" in Birkh�user's Complete Catalog 2010/2011 (PDF link), p. 13.