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A Visual Inventory by John Pawson
Pawson House, London, England, November 2009

New York, USA, August 2004
Renowned minimalist architect John Pawson has travelled the globe, using his sense of detail, light, space and texture to design Calvin Klein stores, a Cathay Pacific lounge in Hong Kong, private apartments, galleries and even a Cistercian monastery in the Czech Republic among many other wonderful things.
Never without his digital camera, he takes photographs each day to document ideas and moments which inform his work. Now Phaidon have published a collection of over 270 of those photos in A Visual Inventory. The monumental task of editing down from over 200,000 images has been well worth it and the book itself becomes an aesthetic pleasure. The images span the personal and professional, nature and artifice and show recurring themes in colour, form and texture.
In keeping with a minimalist approach, all the images are left uncropped and unaltered. With one photo and accompanying annotation on each page, the book is a document of the thoughtfulness and distinct world view of one of the most esteemed architects practising today.
Text by Thanh Ma








