If beauty is defined as a quality encompassing both extraordinary sensoriality and exemplary human behavior, then possibly the most beautiful flower shop in the world is located in Vienna’s low-key-but-hip 4th District. Blumenkraft (literally, “Flower Power”) is a place of inspiration, refuge, and virtue that will inform and enlighten anyone involved in design and modern commerce. Mixing analysis, anecdote, and observation, Leonard Koren once again reveals the key principles of practical wisdom at work in the world. His concise and lucid text is illustrated by his own photographs.

Leonard Koren was trained as an architect but never built anything—except an eccentric Japanese tea house—because he found large, permanent objects too philosophically vexing to design. Instead, he created WET: The Magazine of Gourmet Bathing, one of the premier avant garde magazines of the 1970s. In the words of one reviewer: “Koren consistently brings a fresh, unjaundiced eye to design and aesthetics. Lucid and unpretentious, [he] never fails to go directly to the heart of the matter.”