The Irish Times

Irish architects are firmly on the international design map: with 20 buildings in Ireland featured in the 812-page Phaidon Atlas of Contemporary World Architecture. This huge undertaking involved a committee seeking out new buildings of note across the world. The original list of 4,000 buildings was then whittled down to 1,052, each one depicted through drawings, photographs and a description. When deciding to have the word 'world' in the title, it does follow that the book needs to display a cross section of international architecture, so you wonder whether the whittling down from 4,000 was purely based on aesthetics or whether there was a sense of making sure that a good spread of countries was featured.