Herbert Muschamp.

It's fashionable now to insist that there is no such thing as an architectural avant-garde. Anthony Vidler's Warped Space: Art, Architecture, and Anxiety in Modem Culture (MIT Press) should convince you otherwise. It helps explain why many of us watch every move made by a group of architects and designers that includes Frank Gehry, Rem Koolhaas, Philippe Starck, Ettore Sottsass, Eric Owen Moss, Thom Mayne, Elizabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio, and Wolf Prix. Only a few of these figures are dealt with here in depth. Vidler has analyzed projects by others in a previous volume, The Architectural Uncanny. Both books lay down a foundation for understanding the work of contemporary designers who are remapping the boundaries between subjective perception and objective reality, brilliantly illustrating the idea that creativity creates its own history.

Herbert Muschamp is chief architecture critic for the New York Times and a contributing editor of Artforum.