Architect Wiel Arets is already the subject of at least twenty published monographs, and new ones are in preparation. Arets himself has always been something of a reader, and his life is not all about form and space: there is room in it for books and other texts too. Stills is a book that has been created to point up this other side of him: in short, it is a Wiel Arets reader.

Covering a period of twenty-nine years, it collects in chronological order some forty texts written by him and a further fifty or so written about him – dark pages set in a single column for his own texts, light pages in two columns for the rest. To these, in the same chronological order, have been added photographs of his output as an architect. Because the entire book is in black and silver-grey the pictures slip easily into the supportive role appropriate to them in a reader. Years of sowing alternate with years of reaping, years of writing with years of building. In this book it is the life itself that sees to the variety.

An open spine guarantees good handling and triple-thickness front and back covers give it the required stiffness. All in all, this is a fine example of how the right choices can deliver a lively result – with tough silver-grey thread in the centre spreads.