Grand Designs

Towering mounds of sugar cubes at Tate Modern, an 11-ton resin pillar in London’s Trafalgar Square and a translucent 12-foot Water Tower in New York’s Soho district: These are the awe-inspiring urban interventions we have come to expect from sculptor Rachel Whiteread. One of Saatchi’s infamous YBAs, Whiteread was the first woman to win the Turner Prize, for House— her monolithic concrete cast of a full-sized Victorian terraced house in East London. Behind her grand creations, however, lie delicate drawings, each one shedding light on her extensive creative process. This month, Prestel releases a monograph of her elegant scribbles and sketches that make the bigger things happen.