Released earlier this week: Italian style bible Abitare gets the coffee-table-book treatment with Abitare: 50 Years of Design: The Best of Architecture, Interiors, Photography, Travel, and Trends 1961-2011, featuring writing by Paola Antonelli, Alessandro Mendini and others.
Launched in 1961, Abitare is considered by some to be the Wallpaper* magazine of its day: the source of all things hip, important, and avant-garde, as well as must-know information and must-have objects, many of which have become design classics fifty years later. This important compilation brings together the very best of the Abitare universe: the most noteworthy design developments of the last fifty years, with emphasis on the 1960s and 1970s. Abitare was founded to cover the growing influence of Italian design but also to gather the most interesting trends worldwide, from the mod fashion in London, and the rise of alternative lifestyles in New York and San Francisco, to the development of industrial design in Milan.
The selected articles are reproduced in full in both Italian and English, and the tome rings in at a surprising $53 bucks; we'da thought it would cost way more. If you're looking for last-minute Xmas shopping for that design lover, Amazon U.S. is currently claiming they can still get it to you by tomorrow, Friday the 24th, if you order it today.