Light Tech: Towards a Light Architecture.

This is the most beautiful book that I have seen for a long time. A pleasure to handle, a delight to look at, a treasure to own.

The book illustrates Richard Horden's buildings and projects, and shows the magic of ways of building that are light in weight and which borrow much of their technology from the transport industries. To enjoy it put your reservations away; of course it is as uncritical as an office brochure; naturally it assumes that the advantages of lightweight construction are self-evident. Now you may think that lightness is less essential to buildings than it is to boats and aeroplanes, and that fire and noise pose problems, but - you should relax and go with the flow of the book - it is a rich experience.

This is a visionary architecture that is realisable today, and there are built buildings to prove it. The Queen's Stand on Epsom Downs, and the Sainsbury Wing to St Mark's Hospital at Northwick Park appear to have been realised without all the compromises that usually bedevil imaginative schemes by new practices as they proceed to realisation. But the real wonder, and the real individuality of Horden's work is in the little, transportable structures where lightness in weight is clearly a requirement - the Australian lifeguards station, for instance, and even more dramatic is the little ski-house, the air deliverable living pod photographed in the Swiss Alps as that man-made object in the natural environment; an image that had hitherto seemed unrealisable outside the Apollo programme.

Horden's designs have style. If the 1980s were a period of arguments over styles, let us hope that the 1990s can be more constructive and that style can, once again, be a word to be used with pride. This book, light on information but high on imagery, is a celebration of real style and a feast for those who use their eyes and who love our world.