2. For a new Italian home. Private home vs public home by Luca Lanini, Sara Marini, Alberto Petracchin and L. Zilia (Pisa University Press, 26 euros)

In Italy, when it comes to residential construction, public and private seem to have one thing in common: pockets of abandonment and decay. And this while in our cities both the demand for low-cost housing and the need for new private homes continue to grow.

The latter are increasingly transformed into a space that includes places of relationship with the outside, the former, however, need to be rethought in terms of planning and design.

In a historical moment of profound transition like ours, the authors, four professors of architecture and design in various Italian universities, discuss public and private construction starting from the common need to arrive at an increasingly autarchic management of resources. And without betraying the heritage that designs the heart of Italian cities and landscapes.

Who will like it Students, young architects and all creative people who try to imagine the future starting from today's most conscious and attentive choices about the way we live.

3. Ex-designer project-bar by Martì Guixé, Inga Knölke and Paul Badia (Corraini, 19.90 euros)

A fun and curious little photographic book that documents the story of the visionary project by Spanish designer Martì Guixé who, in 2015, in collaboration with architect Pau Badia, opened the Ex-Designer Project Bar in Barcelona, ​​the first bar built entirely using 3D printers.

Thanks to the images of Inga Knölke, the book tells the story of a unique design model, which combines skills from interior design, industrial design and food design, from the interior space made of polylactic acid, a material based on corn starch, to the 3D construction piece by piece of glasses, utensils, stools, counters. But also the subsequent transformation of the bar into an "object", on the occasion of an exhibition at the DHub in Barcelona.

Closed in 2020 due to Covid, the bar was subjected to a "deconstruction" process in order to preserve it as a project: the self-supporting structure, the design idea and the elements that configure it, in fact, can be used in other ways and for other places.

Who will like it Those who still look at 3D technology with a little suspicion and creatives looking for inspiration to design new low-impact public places.

4. The Edith Farnsworth House: Architecture, Preservation, Culture by Michelangelo Sabatino (Monacelli-Phaidon, 65 euros)

It is considered one of the symbols and masterpieces of twentieth-century modern architecture, a minimalist pavilion in glass and steel, with transparent walls that immerse it in the surrounding nature. It is the Edith Farnsworth House, designed by Mies van der Rohe for Dr. Farnsworth and built west of Chicago.

In this book, enriched with drawings and splendid photos, the architectural historian Michelangelo Sabatino reconstructs its complete history, from its conception and construction, between 1945 and 1951, up to today, visitable and open to the public since 2004. A building that breaks away from the canons of the time but also influenced by the taste of the client, who thus intervened on the narrative of modernism, generally dominated by men. To complete the volume, an essay by Dietrich Neumann, a scholar of Mies van der Rohe.

Who will like it Those who love the history of architecture and, in particular, that magical moment that was modernism. Well summed up by the words of Mies van der Rohe: «If you look at nature through the glass walls of the Farnsworth House, it acquires a deeper meaning than if you see it from the outside. In this way, more is said about nature, it becomes part of a larger whole».

5. You can't save the planet if you don't save the cities by Giancarlo Consonni (Quodlibet, 12 euros)

The latest essay by Giancarlo Consonni, poet, visual artist and professor emeritus of Urban Planning at the Polytechnic University of Milan, will be in bookstores from September 11. Between cities devastated by wars and others attacked by real estate income, he reflects on how urbanity and the operational knowledge of "making cities" have entered into crisis today, so that the legacy of cities is not sufficient to act as a guide in change.

The vestiges of historic cities resist, at least in part, but for most people these remain silent and, in any case, unable to fertilize the future. While a war is certainly not desirable, real estate income is not a blessing either because, with its selective action, it gradually impoverishes the most precious potential of urban contexts: their being socially complex realities, a primary laboratory of the rules of human coexistence and its valorization.

Who will like it Designers and urban planners who look at the city as a living body, made of circulation, organs and memory. A body to be cared for with great attention and a clear and attentive look to the future.