Vaughan Hart

Once upon a time Phaidon put out a bunch of skinny (60 pages, typically) square books on individual buildings, most of them classics of modern architecture like Fallingwater, the Villa Mairea, and the Bauhaus. People who picked these up upon publication are the lucky ones, since they are valuable. For example, I came across the book on two Tadao Ando churches (Church of the Light and Church on the Water) at the Strand in NYC for $75.00. Likewise, that title is over $100 on Amazon and others are comparable. But for those who don't need the first edition and don't mind having information on a building they don't care about (the equivalent of those 12-pack beer samplers that always have one undesirable flavor), Phaidon's Architecture 3s collections are great, partly because they can be found cheap. I bought this one so I could have the Ando churches, but only paying a few dollars instead of 75 or 100. Thankfully, the collections are the same page size, meaning that photos and drawings are big and easy to read.… (meer)