Main | In the Bubble: Designing in a complex world »
September 14, 2004
Barcelona
| Title | Barcelona | |
| Author | Ajuntament de Barcelona (editor) | |
| Publisher | Published by Actar, Barcelona, Spain | |
| Date | 2001 | |
| ISBN | 84-95273-66-7 | |
| Reviewed by | Jane Szita | |
| You know the saying, "Don’t judge a book by its cover?" Well, this is one case where it would probably be safe to do just that. In dayglo-orange, puffy plastic, the cover hints heavily at the playful, exuberant design treats photographed inside — all hailing from Barcelona, naturally, home to the quirky and eccentric: think Antoni Gaudi and (a contemporary example whose work is well represented here), Marti Guixe, one of the stars of Doors 6. A wide variety of creative energy has been compressed into these pages, from large-scale architectural projects - like Enric Ruiz-Geli’s Cloud 9, a vast, shell-like aviary for Barcelona Zoo, enclosing a 40-metre high tree, with walkways for visitors at different levels among the branches — to small-scale domestic items, such as Curro Claret’s Caixes de Pissarra, storage boxes with a blackboard on one side of the lid for describing the contents in chalk. There are pages of inventive graphic art, including luminous collages by Ximena Labra and sly, offbeat takes on Barcelona’s tourist image by Marti Abril, and photography, not least the Flemish master-inspired portraits of Biel Capllonch, plus fashion, furniture and much more — plenty of it defying categorisation. A certain flavour of Catalan surrealism runs through the whole, making the book a fitting monument to civic (and regional) pride. | ||
Posted by Books Editor at September 14, 2004 09:33 PM