Responding to Particular Needs at a Precise Moment is the visual interpretation of a research by Jonas von Lenthe into the architectural landscape of Tirana. With rudimentary photos which Lenthe personally took, archive material and interviews with local architects this book shows how architecture developed in the outskirts of Tirana to reflect people’s own ways in adapting to particular moments. Moments such as when the government"s housing support shrunk, which led to the appearance of features like integrating balconies into the internal space of houses, or making “unplanned” additions of entire floors! These represent spontaneous individual building extensions, open-ended projects, in divergence from the systematic urban planning of the socialist state. Buy

New Wave Clay exhibits the exemplary work of 55 active creatives from around the globe who are leading a revival movement of the ceramic industry. Flitting between conversations and essays, it also comprises four thematic sections: Joy, which is about the ceramics that excite the eye with their vibrant colours and vitreous textures, Simplicity, which sets out an awesome collection of ‘austere, no-frills shapes and a pared-back palettes, ceramics that share the uncomplicated wabi-sabi in form, function or both, Structure, where pottery intersects with architecture, to reveal the engineering capabilities of some ceramists, and finally, in Nostalgia we are introduced to contemporary use of old-school techniques and aesthetic tropes from the past! Buy

Jonas Mekas is a champion of the poetic, experimental cinema of the post-WWII era. His impact on the development of American, and international cinema in general is notable through and through ever since he left his natal country, Lithuania and established in 1954 the publication Film Culture, and then in 1970 the Film Makers Cooperative. His mission was to ‘take a sword and become a self-appointed minister of defense and propaganda of the New Cinema.’ Something he pretty much accomplished with his detailed documentation and critical writings about the industry. The crux of his observations are recorded in a lengthy journal from which Conversations with Film-Makers is extracted. 60 conversations are transcribed into this book along with photos and stills from Mekas films, letters and passages from scripts, all of which capture the throbbing pulse of the New Cinema’s best of days. Buy

Massive, Expressive, Sculptural - Brutalism: Now and Then, is a conveniently thick volume, wrapped in a clear-cut hard-back cover, in accordance with what we’re going to be dealing with inside. The rise and quick fall of brutalist architecture within the span of two decades (1960s - 1970s) was thought of as the end of it. But apparently, the powerful impressions left thereafter by the raw-looking variations and imposing greatness of béton brut have triggered a new surge of interest. In 300 pages, Brutalism: Now and Then offers a comparative outlook on the differences and similarities between some of the undervalued brutalist buildings of the past and some of the most successful brutalist architecture and design of the moment. Buy

Emerged in Russia before the Bolshevik Revolution and developed during the 1920s and 1930s principally by philosopher Nikolai Fedorov, Russian Cosmism concerned itself with transforming lives by proposing a radically new worldview. One that sees obligations toward humanity extending beyond curing the sick and protecting the weak, to promoting free movement in cosmic space, resuscitating the dead, and putting an end to mortality through science and technology. This book by MIT press recollects some of the key texts on cosmism which outlined the movement’s main ideas and influenced the works of filmmakers, visual artists, poets, theater directors and novelists (including Dostoevsky and Tolstoy), some of which are translated to English for the first time. Buy

‘To the rebel girls of the world, you are the promise, you are the force. Don’t step back and everyone will move forward!’ This is the underlying message of the decidedly anti-princess book, Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls. The second volume juxtaposes a new mosaic of female profiles, from watchmakers and writers to chancellors and freedom fighters, treating girls -and boys indeed- with a set of formidable tales about the outstanding women who dared to brake with gender roles through unrelenting courage and hard work. Volume 2 for now only comes in its original english form, while Volume 1 is available in both, german and english. Buy

Artist Batia Suter puts together what seems like an infinite collection of photographs into one comprehensive Parallel Encyclopedia, #2. Taken out of their original context the photos function in thematic clusters with occasional break of the black and white pattern with coloured photos. People, nature, people in nature, microscopic organisms, sculptures and artifacts intercommunicate as their narrative unfolds from one page to the next. Sometimes there is a common logic underlying the image clusters, for instance when they are visibly about anatomical parts of the human body or about sculptures, but it isn’t that evident, since there’s always an image that is a bit of an outcast to the grouping. With some common traits, it looks like it can somehow belong to it, but there’s something about it that pleads for difference. Buy

Typography, colour preferences, photography, symbols and information graphics are essentially the products of specific political and social contexts. And that’s what the Politics of Design examines. In other words, it"s about the different cultural fabrics of human interaction which produce the ideas, shapes and colors of design activities. By showing how design is attached to politics and societies of different world regions, the book aptly demonstrates why we grow to be culturally biased, and occasionally fail to communicate with each other despite our belief in the universality of our aesthetics. Organised according to the formal elements of graphic design: language and typography, colour and contrast, image and photography, symbols and icons, and information graphics, it"s is an ideal manual for the enthusiast of visual culture. Buy

In her book ‘Aveux Non Avenus, 1930, transgender artist Claude Cahun famously said ‘under this mask, another mask. I will never finish removing all these faces.’ Hers, are the deliberately shaped fragments of an identity, that of the writer, the artist and the transgender. But so are we all like Cahun striving on the power of our masks? How many of these one can, and needs to wear? And do masks hide or reveal us? In the Power of the Mask, Belgian designer Walter van Beirendonck makes a generous exposure to an avalanche of masks, beautifully pointing at their meanings and purposes throughout different cultures. Whether we like to wear masks for ritualistic, fetishistic or theatrical reasons, Beirendonck shows us that there are more to the mask than simply, hiding games. Buy

Entkunstung is an independent journal with a bold reflective attitude on the contemporary art scene. It was launched online exactly one year ago, and since then four issues were published before being compiled into this book. With 34 contributions in English and German, it is more of an artists’ intellectual forum in the form of a yearbook. The first of the four issues puts “art” as a notion into perspective and brings up the non-self-evidentiality of the power of artworks. Art, cannot thrive in isolation from the work of the philosopher, the academic or the theoretician. The second issue ponders on the relevance of knowledge and intelligence to the aesthetics of an art creation. The third issue basically tries to figure the extent to which artists should stay engaged in political matters pertinent to human rights and climate change. Whereas the last issue digs even deeper and explores the different meanings of power through analysis of everyday “power-ful” moments.

This fruitful collaboration between theorist Louise Schouwenberg and designer Hella Jongerius follows an invitation by Die Neue Sammlung in Munich for the set up of an exhibition reflecting the museum’s rich, and world’s oldest archive of design. This book which accompanies the exhibition explores the underworld of the museum, pointing at the variety of meanings underlying the words “object” and “thing”. It also examines the relationships between “the new” which reflects the market’s obsessions with novelty for the sake of novelty and between “true innovations.” In striking high quality images, crisp colours and a round of hypothetical conversations and critical comments, Beyond the New ponders on the profound influences the things in our surroundings have on the quality of our lives and on shaping our very identity. Buy

Berlin Living Rooms concludes Dominique Nabokov’s living rooms photo series, which started in New York, then moved to Paris and finally settles in the German capital. Different people including writer and opera director Jenny Erpenbeck, director of the Berlin Biennale Dieter Kosslig, and former editor-in-chief of German Vogue Angelica Blechschmidt, have agreed to open their doors and share some of what is usually part of a safely private world. We note that some of these chambers are unmistakably tidy and minimal, others, -through the suggestive power of their decorative items- recall a different era; be it the DDR, or the Weimar Republic, they are guaranteed to take you into wide-ranging departments of aesthetic preferences. It goes without saying that this book doesn"t really pretend to disclose all sorts of adopted styles of the Berlin dwellers as much as it offers an eclectic view on the taste of a city. Buy