Beautiful in the eye of this beholder

I want this book. I stumbled across a display copy in Waterstones yesterday and spent a few brief minutes pouring over it. Alas, I had to be elsewhere, otherwise I would have spent much longer. It's a lovely, glossy book containing some 7000 photographs and diagrams detailing contemporary architecture throughout all the continents. It's typical of the coffee table genre, except in this case, nail a few wooden legs into it and you'd arrive at a fairly good approximation of a coffee table. It's an enormous volume - the fact that it comes inside it's own plastic suitcase should tell you something - with an equally enormous price. But it's also exceptionally beautiful.

Like the Earth From The Air exhibition it presents a series of photos that make me appreciate how much beauty there is in the world. The fact that the subjects in these are man-made does nothing to lessen their impact. Whilst I'm familiar with a goodly portion those found in London, I'm almost embarassed at just how many of them have escaped me - including some I'm almost certain I've passed by without noticing. I'll need to go and hunt them down.

And once I'm done with London, I'm sorely tempted to start on the rest of the world...