![]() ![]() Nas’s “Illmatic” is one of the genre’s signature documents, a sterling and emotionally potent album. She insisted we make the garlic-laden pesto together, and now it’s her favorite recipe. And the illustrations and cheery graphics in “Chop, Sizzle, Wow: The Silver Spoon Comic Cookbook” drew my daughter into this volume of classic Italian recipes. Cakes, frosting, ice cream, food color and lots of sour candy belts are fashioned into giant hamburgers, wheels of cheese and even pencils in “Sweet: Our Best Cupcakes, Cookies, Candy, and More.” My daughter has marked off a dozen recipes for us to try. It’s a lovely and beautifully illustrated book with recipes for all ages. For budding gourmets, Alice Waters’s ode to her daughter, “Fanny at Chez Panisse,” tells the story of life at the restaurant Chez Panisse, through the eyes of the precocious Franny. She loves the Seussian-themed “Green Eggs and Ham Cookbook” even more than the books they riff off of the Yink’s juice-spiked “Pink Ink” is magenta-bright and tasty to boot. These days, my daughter is really into child-friendly cookbooks with lots of pictures. As the text explains, “They are works of art to be contemplated.” – Julie Lasky ![]() Visitors can enjoy the gardens from a distance but are barred from entering all but one of them. But there are also less recognizable creations, like the five “viewing” gardens with azalea mounds and stands of black pine surrounding the Adachi Museum of Art in Yasugi City, Japan. The gardens in between include familiar patches, like Sisinghurst Castle Garden in England and Giverny in Normandy, France. The sequence, which is organized by continent, begins in Oceania, with the Alice Springs Desert Park in the Northern Territory of Australia (think red dirt paths and woolly oat grass) and ends in South America, with the architect Juan Grimm’s Jardín Los Vilos in Coquimbo, Chile (bare rocks, cactuses and bromeliads). Relying on a team of uncredited experts, its editors selected 250 public and private gardens from 45 countries each is laid out neatly on single or double pages. Phaidon departed from its trademark 10-curators-times-10-projects approach in showcasing contemporary gardens from around the world. Thanks to the inclusion of Miles Kemp, an interactive designer, as one of the 10 curators, there’s also a sampling of glowing installations, including E/B Office’s swooping fiber-optic sculpture at the Jackson Hole, Wyo., public library it lights up in response to patrons’ catalog searches. Commercial projects include the world’s most stunning orthodontist’s clinic, in Tokyo (designed by Contemporary Architecture Practice, it’s biomorphic white on white, with rhythmic lozenges of lawn), and an unimaginably inventive Starbucks, also in Tokyo (the work of Kengo Kuma & Associates, it’s like a nest built by a Brobdingnagian O.C.D. You’ll find more stores, restaurants and offices than residences (it’s easier to drop in on cutting-edge design than to live with it). Apart from the fact that the projects were completed in the last five years, there appear to be no criteria for their selection. The latest expression of Phaidon’s formula (ask 10 art or design specialists to pick 10 examples in a particular genre and present the 100 selections in a generous, well-produced format) is this fascinating compendium of interior designs. Ultimately this book is not just a collection of game-changers but a guide to what design is: a crazily diverse world of objects created because someone, somewhere, had a burning need to try something new. It’s an excellent way to approach works that are fun but frivolous, like Harry Allen’s piggy-bank cast with surprising fidelity from an actual pig (“it had already died of natural causes,” we are told), as well as those that have made a serious cultural impact, like the iPhone. Roberts, a collector of contemporary product design, is stressing the engaging nature of these objects, and there’s nothing bombastic in her claims for them. ![]() “Or a new typology that alters our expectations about what something should look like.” In an earlier age, one may have used the word “revolutionary,” but Ms. “It could be a product that pioneers the use of new materials or a new production process,” Lisa S. ![]() “DesignPop,” which, in the spirit of its title, has a hot-magenta cover with a blast of chartreuse, seeks to identify “game-changing” designs from the last couple of decades. ![]()
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