El Croquis 139: Sanaa Sejima Nishizawa 2004-2008 (English and Spanish Edition) Hardcover – April 1, 2008

El Croquis continues to be one of the best architectural monographs out there, especially for architects. Not only the large print format affords the readers high quality photos of projects (which btw were mostly all shot by El Croquis's own photographer), more importantly, it has some of the most detailed drawing, from SD floor plans to detailed wall sections. Most of the drawings are not available in any other publication, professional or otherwise. That makes El Croquis one of the most valuable reference for architects, if you can afford its relatively high cost.

I feel kind of guilty for leaving one star out, but I have my reason. First of all, SANAA (Ryue Nishizawa and Kazuyo Sejima) is one of the most active and sought out architects in Japan today (from mid-2000's to the present) and their projects throughout the world prove that. However, after seeing so much of this extreme minimalism that is prevalent in other modern Japanese architects, it sometimes becomes difficult to tell who did what unless their name is mentioned.I came across one of SANAA's recent work for a children's clothing shop (Carina Carina)in Tokyo and assumed it was just done by some other trendy Japanese architect until I came across it on a design blog. Nothing was wrong with the shop, in fact I stopped for a while to look at the details of it's expanded metal facade painted white, but that is a pretty common detail in Japan.I think the awe and genius of their work lies in the fact that when it is placed in a western land where such light-construction and extreme minimalism is unheard of, it has a shock value and appeal because its host country doesn't have that in their culture. Japan has always had a minimalist value in their culture before it was a style.With that being said, this monograph is a great compilation of this firm's work from 2004-2008. El Croquis is the creme de la creme of architectural publications and although it may technically be a magazine, it features quality content with no advertisements whatsoever. The only negative aspect of this publication is its price tag, but now that it can be downloaded digitally in the same format through [...], it should be more appealing.amassingdesign.blogspot