Van Alen Books

Note: Van Alen Institute’s storefront space is currently closed for construction. We look forward to welcoming the public into the Institute’s new street-level workspace and public venue in late 2014.

Van Alen Books is an architecture and design bookstore, event space and public reading room located at Van Alen Institute’s headquarters in Manhattan’s Flatiron District. Opened in April 2011, this highly visible storefront space is New York City’s only book emporium and gathering place devoted singularly to architecture and design publications.

www.vanalenbooks.org

30 West 22nd Street, ground floor
New York, NY 10010
212.924.7000
@van_alen

Best-Selling Design Books (January)

Irma Boom: The Architecture of the Book Add to My Reading List

Irma Boom
Introduction by Rem Koolhaas
Text by Mathieu Lommen

A revised and updated reprint of the Irma Boom miniature monograph Biography in Books (2010) in two formats: a miniature book and an XXL edition.

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CLOG: Unpublished Add to My Reading List

Clog

At a moment when new forms of publication are emerging and disrupting traditional models it is time to analyze what is being published, why it's being published, and to examine what is being left out of the conversation.

EP Volume 1 Add to My Reading List

Alex Coles Editor

This book emphasizes the multiple correspondences between well-known radical design groups like Arte Povera, Archizoom, and Superstudio, and figures such as Ettore Sottsass and Alessandro Mendini, and previously overlooked spaces, works, and performances generated by Zoo, Gruppo 9999, and Cavart.

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Formless: Storefront for Art and Architecture Manifesto Series, Vol. 1 Add to My Reading List

Garrett Ricciardi Editor

Struggles to escape form as a manifestation of various norms and constraints are as old as architecture itself. But the formless is also increasingly in the air today and implicitly in talk of atmospheric buildings, randomized structures, and the dematerialization of architecture.

Building Together: Chipperfield Dudler, Gigon/Guyer Add to My Reading List

J. Christopher Bürkle Editor
Alexander Bonte Editor

In the center of Zürich, three renowned architecture firms have designed four individual commercial buildings that form an ensemble, rather than a megacomplex. This publication documents this extraordinary collaboration, with photographs, sketches and essays.

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Announcements

Now is Better by Stefan Sagmeister

Now is Better

By Stefan Sagmeister
Publisher: Phaidon Press
Published: October 2023

Combining art, design, history, and quantitative analysis, transforms data sets into stunning artworks that underscore his positive view of human progress, inspiring us to think about the future with much-needed hope.

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Design Emergency: Building a Better Future by Alice Rawsthorn and Paola Antonelli

Design Emergency: Building a Better Future

By Alice Rawsthorn and Paola Antonelli
Publisher: Phaidon Press
Published: May 2022

Rawsthorn and Antonelli tell the stories of the remarkable designers, architects, engineers, artists, scientists, and activists who are at the forefront of positive change worldwide. Focusing on four themes—Technology, Society, Communication, and Ecology—the authors present a unique portrait of how our great creative minds are developing new design solutions to the major challenges of our time, while helping us to benefit from advances in science and technology.

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Why Design Matters: Conversations with the World’s Most Creative People by Debbie Millman

Why Design Matters: Conversations with the World's Most Creative People

By Debbie Millman
Publisher: Harper Design
Published: February 22, 2022

Debbie Millman—author, educator, brand consultant, and host of the widely successful and award-winning podcast “Design Matters”—showcases dozens of her most exciting interviews, bringing together insights and reflections from today’s leading creative minds from across diverse fields.

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Milton Glaser: POP by Steven Heller, Mirko Ilić, and Beth Kleber

Milton Glaser: POP

By Steven Heller, Mirko Ilić, and Beth Kleber
Publisher: The Monacelli Press
Published: March 2023

This collection of work from graphci design legend Milton Glaser’s Pop period features hundreds of examples of the designer’s work that have not been seen since their original publication, demonstrating the graphic revolution that transformed design and popular culture.

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Meet Me by the Fountain: An Inside History of the Mall by Alexandra Lange

Meet Me by the Fountain: An Inside History of the Mall

By Alexandra Lange
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Published: June 2022

Chronicles postwar architects’ and merchants’ invention of the shopping mall, revealing how the design of these marketplaces played an integral role in their cultural ascent. Publishers Weekly writes, “Contending that malls answer ‘the basic human need’ of bringing people together, influential design critic Lange advocates for retrofitting abandoned shopping centers into college campuses, senior housing, and ‘ethnocentric marketplaces’ catering to immigrant communities. Lucid and well researched, this is an insightful study of an overlooked and undervalued architectural form.”

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Die Fläche: Design and Lettering of the Vienna Secession, 1902–1911 (Facsimile Edition) by Diane V. Silverthorne, Dan Reynolds, and Megan Brandow-Faller

Die Fläche: Design and Lettering of the Vienna Secession, 1902–1911 (Facsimile Edition)

By Diane V. Silverthorne, Dan Reynolds, and Megan Brandow-Faller
Publisher: Letterform Archives Books
Published: October 2023

This facsimile edition of Die Fläche, recreates every page of the formative design periodical in full color and at original size, accompanied by essays that contextualize the work, highlighting contributions by pathbreaking women, innovative lettering artists, and key practitioners of the new “surface art,” including Rudolf von Larisch, Alfred Roller, and Wiener Werkstätte founders Koloman Moser and Josef Hoffmann.

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