10x10/3
By Phaidon editors
Phaidon, £45
FT bookshop price: £39.96

The third instalment of publisher Phaidon’s 10x10 series is a must for anyone who is interested in contemporary and new buildings. In it, 10 noted architecture critics, practitioners and curators – including Shuman Basar, Kengo Kuma and Ai Weiwar – each nominate 10 of their peers whom they consider are the most exciting and innovative currently working.

Schemes by each of the selected 100 individuals and practices, all of whom have come to prominence in the past five years, are featured in four pages of the 444-page book, with recent projects being illustrated through photographs, drawings and plans. These are accompanied by the 10 selectors’ accounts – long enough to offer interest but sufficiently concise to prevent them from becoming paeans – of why they have made their choices. Together they amount to an insightful commentary on contemporary building design and a forecast of how it will develop.

There are also biographies of all 110 practitioners and practices (both selectors and their nominees) and a brief essay by each of the contributors focusing on a building or designer they believe to have had a profound impact on architecture as a discipline.