Installations by Architects: Experiments in Building and Design, Sarah Bonnemaison and Ronit Eisenbach (Princeton Architectural Press)

With the book's very first theme, tectonics, one thinks of plate tectonics, the earthquake in Haiti. But in architecture tectonics refers to architects' thoughts on and uses of "construction details." These fall into "materials and assemblies." As with the book's other four sections, specific projects are considered in accessible language and design. One starts to imagine possibilities, if not solutions, for creating stronger and responsive structures following a natural disaster. That's a measure of this book's success. While Bonnemaison and Eisenbach situate work in Nova Scotia into an international context, the scope might've been broadened so that projects from, say, the Caribbean, South Asia, China or African nations were used.