advent calendar 2021

Gift of the Day: A Book on Boring Architecture

Photo-Illustration: Curbed; Photo: Retailer

Welcome to Curbed’s Advent-calendar gift guide. For each of the 25 days before Christmas, we will be doling out, one by one, the gifts recommended by dozens of design bigwigs with extremely good taste. So keep checking in daily for new drops.

“Architecture is always in search of what’s new, original, exceptional, innovative, and eccentric,” says Juan Garcia Mosqueda: founder of Buenos Aires-based design collective Chamber Projects. “Which is why I’m eying Kind of Boring — it’s a whole book exploring work that’s the complete opposite.”

Written by Chicago-based architect Paul Preissner, the book has chapters on various mundane structures, among them Afghanistan’s Bamiyan Cultural Center and Denmark’s Aarhus School of Architecture. Mosqueda stumbled on the title on Instagram and said its premise stood out — “precisely because it’s about things that don’t stand out.”

Generally, he says, he likes giving coffee books as gifts. “It promotes hapticity,” he says. “Something that we all need.”

Gift of the Day: A Book on Boring Architecture