Book List of the Week

The Book List of the Week highlights the list of books provided by invited designers (including architects, fashion designers, graphic designers, interior designers, landscape architects, product designers, urban designers, and other design professionals) who have chosen books that inspire them and that have shaped their worldview or their ideas about design.
189 blog entries
Book List of the Week
By Steve Kroeter July 30, 2013

Paolo Deganello first came onto the design scene in the 1960s as a founder of the radical Italian design collective Archizoom. More...

Book List of the Week
By Steve Kroeter July 23, 2013

Fashion designer Reed Krakoff: Reed Krakoff Collection (New York)
Profile     Book List
Fashion designer Reed Krakoff—creative director of the Reed Krakoff Collection—is also a dedicated collector and patron of the arts and a noted photographer. He recently published his second book of photographs, Women in Art: Figures of Influence (Assouline), featuring the images and words of an international array of high-style gallerists and curators. Designers & Books asked him to talk about the book and posed a few questions about his reading habits. More...

Book List of the Week
By Steve Kroeter July 16, 2013

Graphic designer Coralie Bickford-Smith: Penguin Books UK (London)
Profile     Book List
“My book list contains the favorites that I find in my hands time and again when starting a project or feeling a bit lost,” says London-based graphic designer Coralie Bickford-Smith, whose book covers for Penguin Classics’ clothbound series recalling the age of Victorian bookbinding have won her recognition and fans worldwide. More...

Book List of the Week
By Steve Kroeter July 9, 2013

Branding design firm executive Alexander Haldemann: MetaDesign (San Francisco)
Profile     Book List
As head of MetaDesign, an award-winning brand-design agency that has developed brand systems for clients like Apple, Adobe, Current.TV, Nike, and Sony, Alexander Haldemann spends a lot of time thinking, writing, and speaking about the creativity needed to communicate the identities of some of the world’s most recognizable products. More...

Book List of the Week
By Steve Kroeter July 2, 2013

Architect Mels Crouwel: Benthem Crouwel Architects (Amsterdam and Aachen)
Profile     Book List
A list of a dozen books sent along by Mels Crouwel showcases the Dutch architect’s affinity for modernist classics, contemporary culture, and sprawling storytelling. Crouwel is a founding partner in Benthem Crouwel, whose high-profile portfolio of architectural and infrastructure projects in the Netherlands include the recent renovation and expansion of the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, the restoration and expansion of the Anne Frank House, and the master plan for Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport. He calls his book list “just a selection—old and new.” More...

Book List of the Week
By Steve Kroeter June 25, 2013

Furniture designer and sculptor Wendell Castle: Wendell Castle Inc. (Le Roy, New York)
Profile     Book List
Celebrated as the father of the American studio furniture movement, Wendell Castle has been designing sculptural tables and seating as well as lighting and other functional objects for more than 50 years. Examples of his signature work in stack-laminated wood and fiberglass have become part of the permanent collections of major U.S. museums. More...

Book List of the Week
By Steve Kroeter June 17, 2013

Product/industrial and lighting designer Inga Sempé: Inga Sempé (Paris)
Profile     Book List
French product designer Inga Sempé—known for her pleated paper and pendant lamps, ruched sofas, and other distinctive twists on everyday objects—credits her parents in ways both large and small when it comes to what she reads and how she looks at books. “Almost 95 percent of the books I have read were given to me by my mother,” she admits in the introduction to her list for Designers & Books. More...

Book List of the Week
By Steve Kroeter June 4, 2013

Architecture critic Julie Iovine: The Wall Street Journal (New York)
Profile     Book List
“I look to books for everything imaginable, and unimaginable. They shape my outlook, but also throw open spaces I could never have found on my own. The chance to consider an essential list is wonderfully engrossing, and also a bit of a nasty parlor trick. Must I commit?” is how Wall Street Journal architecture critic Julie Iovine begins her book list for Designers & Books. More...

Book List of the Week
By Steve Kroeter May 28, 2013

In honor of the remarkable career of architect Hugh Hardy (1932–March 17, 2017), a look back at our interview with Hardy and a list of the books that inspired him, which he describes as “a mixed bag of gifts and explanations: history, architecture, urban affairs, and theater.” We caught up with Hardy, known for his design of some of New York's most celebrated theaters—from Broadway houses to Radio City to Lincoln Center—on the occasion of the release of his book Theater of Architecture (2013, Princeton Architectural Press). More...

Book List of the Week
By Steve Kroeter May 21, 2013

Architect, interior and product/industrial designer Matteo Thun: Matteo Thun & Partners (Milan)
Profile     Book List
Matteo Thun needed something that functions like “a phone book” * to show the varied work for which he has become known over the course of his career. That work includes co-founding (with Ettore Sottsass) Memphis—the industrial design collective that defined Italian design in the 1970s and 1980s—and also the hotels, private residences, housewares, and lighting designed by his own firm, Matteo Thun & Partners. More...