10 x 10 - 10 Critics, 100 Architects - Phaidon 2000 First Edition + Rizzoli Ephemera

An ambitious survey of international contemporary architecture organized around an ingenious curatorial premise: ten prominent critics and curators each selected ten emerging architectural practices, resulting in a global survey of 100 architects and more than 250 built works, competition designs, and conceptual projects. Each critic also contributed an essay written specifically for the publication and selected ten cultural references reflecting the intellectual and visual influences shaping contemporary architecture. The roster is remarkable in hindsight, encompassing Shigeru Ban, Kengo Kuma, Kazuyo Sejima + Ryue Nishizawa/SANAA, Lacaton & Vassal, MVRDV, Eduardo Souto de Moura, UN Studio, West 8, Foreign Office Architects, Barkow Leibinger, Brad Cloepfil/Allied Works, Michael Maltzan, and many others who subsequently became major international figures. A particularly appealing feature of this copy is the survival of two pieces of period bookselling ephemera laid in at the rear: an unused Phaidon reader-response/catalogue postcard, retaining the publisher's London and Harrisburg addresses, and a folded Rizzoli Bookstores card bearing a handwritten personal message to Ricardo, signed Andrea. The card reads in English, "Don't take so seriously your emotions they come and go," followed by the Spanish message: "Ricardo: Estoy feliz de vivir con usted y poder disfrutar con usted este momento de nuestras vidas. Lo adoro. Andrea." In English: "Ricardo: I am happy to be living with you and to be able to enjoy this moment in our lives with you. I adore you. - Andrea." The inserts have been preserved with the volume for some time and will remain with the book. The Rizzoli association is particularly apt. Rizzoli Bookstore opened on New York's Fifth Avenue in 1964 and became one of America's best-known destinations for sophisticated illustrated books, especially architecture, interior design, photography, fashion, and the fine and applied arts. Rizzoli itself describes the original Fifth Avenue store as the center from which its American bookselling operation expanded and its publishing house developed; Rizzoli began publishing in New York in 1974. By the period in which this book was published, its celebrated New York flagship was at 31 West 57th Street, where it had been located since 1985. The bookstore later described that location as a literary landmark and one of America's foremost independent booksellers specializing in precisely the kinds of illustrated architecture and design volumes represented by 10 x 10. The copyright page states "First published 2000" with © 2000 Phaidon Press Limited and no indication of a subsequent edition or printing. This is therefore the original 2000 Phaidon edition rather than one of the later books that extended the 10 x 10 concept. Condition: Near Fine. Substantial large-format hardcover retaining its distinctive translucent printed exterior treatment over gray boards and vivid orange endpapers. Interior remains clean, bright, and richly illustrated, with the binding sound. Exterior shows normal handling and shelf wear, including rubbing/scuffing, light scratching and edge/corner wear. At the rear inner hinge there is visible localized paper wear/separation and a small loss near the head, as shown. What was conceived in 2000 as a survey of emerging architecture has become considerably more interesting with the passage of a quarter-century. Several architects selected for 10 x 10 subsequently received architecture's highest international honor: Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa of SANAA, 2010, Eduardo Souto de Moura, 2011, Shigeru Ban, 2014, and Anne Lacaton and Jean-Philippe Vassal, 2021 all became Pritzker Architecture Prize laureates. Rizzoli's 57th Street flagship itself became so culturally valued that, when its building faced demolition in 2014, the store publicly described the considerable outpouring of support it received from New Yorkers and book lovers.…