A tri-lingual overview of recent contemporary architecture taking examples from all over the world and trying to distill them into some semblance of trends and evolution. Lavish, often full-page, color photographs, plans, diagrams, and drawings provide focus for the minimal text. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
True Taschen: big, colorful pictures; short, crafted text. Overall, I enjoyed the broad selection, even more so since I've seen many of these in person.
Wonderful: Berger + Parkkinen, the Nordic Embassies; Santiago Calatrava, all; Alberto Campo Baeza, the plaza at the upper floor of the Center for Innovative Technologies BIT; Gehry's EMP; Jose Rafael Moneo, all; Neutelings Riedijk's building at the Utrecht University; and Williams and Tsien's Rifkind House.
On the negatives, the selection for the Netherlands could have been better; I could have lived without the selection purely on interior design and transient architecture (hint: temporary expos); and the idea of virtual architectures seems to defeat the purpose of this collection.