10X10.

Commissioning editor: Vivian Constantinopoulos.

London: Phaidon, 2000. [pound]35

Any substantial, beautifully illustrated collection of work by emerging architects -- in this case, a hundred practices selected by 10 critics -- will always have some value. The question is: what are Phaidon trying to achieve? Several hundred projects without any common theme can't be digested without a clear framework, and the book can therefore really only be about the 10 critics: their choices, their ability to describe a single work clearly, their 10 individual essays and their choices of 10 sources. I assume that some contributors are accepting that there's no prevailing order when they describe their choice of subjects as 'catholic'. Neil Spiller, for example, generously promotes ex-students. There's no kind of ordered language or way of thinking about architecture special to the book as a whole.

Phaidon are evidently primarily interested in the book's appearance: this is a heavy, glamorous volume which scarcely anyone will buy, a classy 'life-style' product not designed for convenience. Minute captions are printed vertically, and the critics' final references to their chosen works are perhaps 400 pages away from the material referred to, so that only book reviewers and real groupies will bother flicking between the two.