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 May 1, 2012

Jewelry designer Lisa Jenks: Lisa Jenks (New York)
Profile   Book List
The work of jewelry designer Lisa Jenks is prized for its originality, drama, and tactility. She is known especially for being finely attuned to the materials she works with, particularly sterling silver, in a way that allows physical characteristics to communicate cultural allusions. Her aesthetic influences range from angular forms in urban architecture to glyphs on the Mayan pyramids in Uxmal. More...

Book List of the Week
By Steve Kroeter August 12, 2013

“Product design may not have as erudite or provocative a critical culture as graphics or architecture, but it is so rich and complex a subject that it has inspired some wonderful books,” the International Herald Tribune’s design critic, Alice Rawsthorn, declares in the introduction to her book list.

  More...

Book List of the Week
By Steve Kroeter May 31, 2011

Graphic designer Pierre Bernard: L’Atelier de Création Graphique (Paris)
book list
Who in the design community doesn’t believe that good design makes life better? Even the cynics among us must admit to at least occasionally hoping it’s true. French graphic designer Pierre Bernard’s take on this central of all design issues might be described as optimistic, yet also realistic. “Graphic design will not turn the world into a paradise, but it may contribute to a more humane world," he says. More...

Book List of the Week
By Steve Kroeter July 19, 2011

Graphic designer Harry Pearce: Pentagram (London)
book list

Describing the talk that he’s frequently asked to deliver—which he does from one corner of the earth to the other: in the U.K., Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia, and the U.S.—Harry Pearce says: “It’s about being a Pentagram partner
, an eternal optimist, a 
failed vegetarian
, a human rights activist, a 
dream diary keeper
, an occasional nudist
, a graphic designer
, and an accidentalist.”  More...

Book List of the Week
By Steve Kroeter September 25, 2012

Product designer Ronan Bouroullec: Atelier Bouroullec, Ronan & Erwan Bouroullec (Paris)
Profile     Book List
Partners for over a decade, Ronan Bouroullec together with his brother, Erwan, have created innovative designs for products ranging from furniture, lamps, tableware, and textiles to architectural projects, exhibition catalogues and, recently, an iPad application. More...

Architecture
By Steve Kroeter February 7, 2012

Architect Cesar Pelli: Pelli Clarke Pelli Architects (New Haven, Connecticut)
Profile   Book List
Recognized for a lifetime of distinguished achievement in architecture—he is the recipient of more than 200 awards and prizes for his contributions to the field—Cesar Pelli has designed some of the contemporary world’s most famous buildings. More...

Book List of the Week
By Steve Kroeter January 24, 2012

Interior and product designer Alexa Hampton: Mark Hampton LLC (New York)
Profile   Book List
As head of the interiors firm founded by her legendary father, Mark Hampton, Alexa Hampton carries the lessons of her Brown University education (class of 1993) into her life as a highly sought-after interior designer and a lifelong student and reader. More...

Architecture
By Steve Kroeter August 23, 2011

Architecture and design curator Zoë Ryan: Art Institute of Chicago (Chicago)
book list
When Zoë Ryan—as of this July, the John H. Bryan Curator of Architecture and Design and Chair of the Department of Architecture and Design at the Art Institute of Chicago—gave us her list of books for product designers, she emphasized that she found it hard to be limited by disciplines or categories and that her view of design was an expansive one. More...

Book List of the Week
By Steve Kroeter January 3, 2013

Landscape designer Margie Ruddick: Margie Ruddick Landscape (Philadelphia)
Profile     Book List
“Novels and poetry have more power than textbooks to convey landscape ideas,” asserts landscape designer Margie Ruddick, whose work includes New York’s Queens Plaza; which has won awards for promoting a new idea of nature in the city, and the Living Water Park in Chengdu, the first ecological park in China, which cleans polluted river water biologically. More...

Architecture
By Steve Kroeter February 14, 2012

Architect Galia Solomonoff: Solomonoff Architecture Studio (SAS) (New York)
Profile    Book List
The architect Galia Solomonoff, a native of Argentina, traces her attachment to books to a memorable incident: “In 1975, my parents burned a significant and dear part of our library as Isabel Perón signed a number of decrees empowering the military to ‘annihilate’ the Argentine left. It was a Sunday morning in winter. We were at our suburban house on the Paraná River and I was seven. I passed books to my father in silence; we did a barbecue to cover up the burning of the books.” More...