Summer reading: Architecture

Critique of Everyday Life, by Henri Lefebvre, Verso, RRP£25/ $44.95

Lefebvre (1901-91) saw the realm of everyday life as something that needed to be seized back from the space of capitalist consumption. The quotidian demanded a revolution and, in 1968, Paris almost got it. Those events might not have happened without this book. Beautifully designed by Neil Donnelly, this new edition looks as good as it reads and remains fiercely relevant.

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Mies, by Detlef Mertins, Phaidon, RRP£100/ $150

Less is more but, occasionally, more is good too. This is the definitive book on the great architect of modernism, Mr Minimal himself, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. It’s big, it’s expensive but it is also serious, a reminder of just why the German architect and one-time head of the Bauhaus was so good.

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The Good Life: Perceptions of the Ordinary, by Jasper Morrison, Lars Müller Publishers, RRP€20

This slim book celebrates the ingenuity of the ordinary seen through the eyes of an industrial designer. Morrison, in search of what he calls the “Super Normal”, collates his snaps of occasionally beautiful, bizarre and ad hoc inventions by people unconcerned with the language of design who have, nevertheless, got it just right.

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Landmarks: The Modern House in Denmark, by Michael Sheridan, Hatje Cantz, RRP€39.80

Strange title this; in fact, the contents of the book are the opposite of landmarks. Instead, they are gorgeously simple and seductively elegant postwar houses from Denmark, where domestic architecture is almost a religion. There are some famous names here (Arne Jacobsen, Jørn Utzon) but mostly these are just unpretentious, deceptively simple houses. Almost perfect.