Deyan Sudjic is Director of the Design Museum. He was born in London, and studied architecture in Edinburgh. He has worked as a critic for the Observer and The Sunday Times, as the editor of Domus in Milan, as the director of the Venice Architecture Biennale, and as a curator in Glasgow, Istanbul and Copenhagen. He is the author of B is for Bauhaus, The Language of Things and The Edifice Complex.
A memoir and a master class in musing on modern design ... It's a collection of thoughtful, absorbing essays about many aspects of modern design, a subject nobody writes better about than Sudjic ... There are many rewarding pieces here on subjects ranging from the genius of Dieter Rams, the beauty of the Jumbo jet, the success of Ikea, the troubled concept of authenticity, and the contradictions of Leon Krier, to the development of the zip and the end of the typewriter and the analogue camera London Evening Standard The book is written with a natural fluidity, with authority, and at times an almost academic interrogation Design Week Combining Sudjic's obsessive attention to obscure detail with a pop culture-honed eye for influence and connection, 'B' is a handbook of why things are the way they are Wallpaper*