"Book Briefs" are an ongoing series of posts with short first-hand descriptions of some of the numerous books that make their way into my library. These briefs are not full-blown reviews (though some might go on to get that treatment), but they are a way to share more books worthy of attention than find their way into reviews on this blog. This installment features four titles ? two from Laurence King and two from Thames & Hudson ? that are oriented to design and materials in education and practice.

The Architecture Concept Book by James Tait | Thames & Hudson | 2018 | Amazon / IndieBound
The title page of The Architecture Concept Book includes title, author, and publisher but also one important number: 565 illustrations. Yes, that's a lot of illustrations. I'd say as many of them are sketches by James Tait as they are photographs by others. In turn, the book explains architectural concepts primarily through the author's words and illustrations. Even when the images are not his own, they are composed in a way that tells a story or explains a point. This is, I think, how illustrated books should be, taking advantage of their page-format and the relationship between words and images. Although Tait's four-A (Assess, Analyze, Assemble, Augment) argument is about 30 years too late for this architect/writer, I appreciate his references and at-times opinionated writing, as well as his approach to composing a helpful book for architectu...