Austere Gardens: Thoughts on Landscape, Restraint, & Attending by Marc Treib
ORO Editions, 2016
Paperback, 108 pages

Treacherous Transparencies by Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron
Actar/IITAC Press, 2016
Hardcover, 96 pages

Does architectural theory ? the definition of principles that can be applied toward architectural projects ? still exist" Or has it been replaced by longform articles that expound on an author's take on something: history, current events, technology, practice, whatever they fancy" One could argue that architectural theory, in the 1990s sense of the term, died with the shuttering of Assemblage in 2000, which also coincided with the last ANY conference (during the conference Peter Eisenman stated "Theory is dead"). Of course, the esoteric, post-structuralist strand of theory isn't the only one out there, so proclaiming theory as dead is a bit like saying TV is dead because everybody is streaming online. There's still theory, it's just...different. Nevertheless, writing and talking about architecture ? and in the case of one of these books, landscape ? is not as popular as producing something: buildings, landscapes, renderings, diagrams ? anything else besides words. So it's refreshing to come across these two books that exist somewhere between theory and longform, or whatever else prevails today.
Both of these books clock in around 100 pages. That each has plenty of photographs means the number of pages that requir...