S,M,L,XL

by Rem Koolhaas and Bruce Mau

Koolhaas is just the most brilliant architectural thinker and doer operating today and so I had to include him (this is the only ‘pure’ architecture book on my list, in fact). Although I question his recent political ambivalence, there are more ideas in this book, or even in one page of it, than there are in countless of those boring coffee-table monographs. The book assumes the status of an architectural project, crossing scales and modes of communication. He also writes amazingly beautifully.