Guest blogger Alissa Walker—design and urbanism journalist, critic, and author—sent four notable design titles published in 2012 to kick off summer reading. — SK
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| Alissa Walker |
Guest blogger: Alissa Walker (Los Angeles)
Summer reading should be light but not fluffy. You don’t want to feel overly tethered to the demands of reality as you pack your bag for the beach, yet you don't want your brain to grow soft like an ice cream cone in the sun. These four books I’ve selected will make you smarter but are still enjoyable enough to be read poolside. And they all pair well with a hammock and a cold glass of rosé.
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Writing About ArchitectureAlexandra Lange If I could hand-pick someone to write the handbook for my profession, it would be the passionate, provocative, prolific Brooklyn-based architectural critic Alexandra Lange. In her singular voice, Lange essentially allows us to sit in on her lectures for the graduate classes she teaches at New York University and School of Visual Arts, including entire pieces by famous critics—like Herbert Muschamp's legendary review of the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao—followed by comprehension questions. But even those of us who don’t aspire to make a living off our writing will benefit from reading Lange's book. While her intent is to educate the next generation of architectural critics, she is also focused on expanding the profession—building an army of citizen critics. Those of us who live in buildings should not only decide how we feel about a particular building, she explains, we should actively aspire to make the building, the block, the neighborhood, better. Writing About Architecture purports to be a textbook, but it’s really Lange's highly personal guide for any urban dweller on how to experience, explain, and improve our cities. |
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Tubes: A Journey to the Center of the InternetAndrew Blum When I told people I was reading a book on the physicality of the Internet—the colocation centers, undersea cables, and yes, tubes that carry our emails, Facebook statuses, and YouTube videos to our desktops—I usually got a smirk. Under anyone else's guise, Tubes would have been a really dull read. But the witty and engaging Andrew Blum turns this topic into a global adventure, a Verne-esque Journey to the Center of the Internet, if you will, filling the pages not with boring treatises about “packets” and “rack units,” but the plucky personalities who move our data. Plus, in a book that's so much about place, he’s meticulous about setting each scene, noting temperatures, colors and scents—yes, the Internet smells!—with graphic detail, which makes these locations catapult off the page and into your subconscious. Since I’ve read the book, I think about Tubes every day, as I try to look for signs of the Internet as I move through our busy world. I can’t think of another book which has changed my worldview like that. And this book does it in a truly delightful way. |
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Design Is a JobMike Monteiro In my Notable Books of 2011 list, I mentioned A Book Apart, a new publishing company focused on creating short, useful books on designing websites. The latest volume is by Mike Monteiro, the San Francisco-based designer-slash-Twitter personality, which actually goes far beyond the web-design realm, and serves as an excellent primer for running a design business, or, I'd argue, any type of creative business. Easily devoured in an afternoon, the book is made even more enjoyable by Monteiro's refreshingly honest tough-love approach (not surprising from a man who gives lectures with his lawyer and is known for creating a painting that reads “Fuck You, Pay Me”). So many books like this are written by accounting types who want to “help” creatives, so Monteiro's work is long overdue: he's translated business basics back into the language of designers. And he does it with such a skillful sense of humor that it proves his other point: Running a business, like reading this book, can and should be fun. |
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The Shape of DesignFrank Chimero I first wrote about Frank Chimero's book over a year ago, when he mounted an incredible Kickstarter campaign to fund it. Chimero raised over $112,000, funding his project in four hours, then going on to almost triple his goal. The book gets so many things right before you even get to the words: it's a beautifully designed, hardback, self-published (in the U.S.!) entrepreneurial success, which made me want to buy it just so I could see the result. But the actual writing is also fantastic. Chimero offers intelligent meditations on the motivation for designing, and looks far outside of the design world for examples, drawing anecdotes from musicians and chefs, and illustrating theories with references ranging from 18th-century haiku masters to Wall-E. Chimero writes a lot about the connections between design and jazz, and that's what his writing reminds me of most: it’s lyrical, rhythmic, soulful. It was a book that I didn't want to end. Incidentally, Chimero has launched a new Kickstarter campaign for his next book, Scratch. |
Featured Book Fair Title
Announcements
Design Books to Win, December 18, 2014: Winners of Five Books by Pentagram Designers Announced
The winners of five books designed by Pentagram have been announced. The three winners are Joy Weeeng, Tyler Wilson, and Tim Zissou — congratulations!
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Our new giveaways begin again in 2015.
New Book Release, December 31, 2014: What If...?: The Architecture and Design of David Rockwell
Widely admired for his sophistication, creativity and exuberance, David Rockwell is one of the leading architects, interiors architects, and set designers working today. For over 30 years, he has explored his desire to imagine new worlds, to tell stories and to engage with others. This interest is rooted in his sense of play and possibility—an endless curiosity that continually drives him to ask, “What if?”
Edited by Chee Pearlman; texts by David Rockwell, et al.
Published by Metropolis Books
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New Book Release, February 3, 2015: The Modern Architecture Symposia, 1962–1966: A Critical Edition
In a series of three symposia at Columbia University in the 1960s, leading scholars and critics gathered to re-examine the architecture of the 1910s, 1920s, and 1930s and assess its scope and significance anew. Chaired by Henry-Russell Hitchcock with the support of Philip Johnson, the Modern Architecture Symposia marked a pivotal moment in the reappraisal of early modern architecture and its historiography during the late modern period.
Edited by Rosemarie Haag Bletter and Joan Ockman, with Nancy Ecklund Later
Published by The Temple Hoyne Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture; distributed by Yale University Press
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New Book Release, February 9, 2015: Reproducing Scholten & Baijings
The first book on the work of the Amsterdam-based studio Scholten & Baijings, which has become renowned for its sensitive and subtle yet functional products—from ceramics and silverware to textiles and even a concept car.
By Louise Schouwenberg
Published by Phaidon Press
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New Book Release, February 17, 2014: B is for Bauhaus, Y is for YouTube: Designing the Modern World from A to Z
A tool kit, done in A–Z form, for understanding the world around us through the way we design and use things. Covering subjects that range from authenticity to Grand Theft Auto to Dieter Rams, Deyan Sudjic’s latest book has been called “a master class in musing on modern design.”
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By Deyan Sudjic
Published by Rizzoli
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New Book Release, September 16, 2014: Designing Here/Now
An ambitious global compendium of the most thoughtful and innovative design objects (over 500) invented or produced in the past five years, compiled by experts at the online industrial design magazine Core 77.
Edited by Allan Chochinov and Eric Ludlum
Published by Thames & Hudson
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