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 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...

Architecture
By Steve Kroeter December 13, 2011

Editor Susan S. Szenasy: Metropolis (New York)
Book List   Essay

This year marks the 30th anniversary of the launch of the magazine Metropolis, whose mission is to “examine contemporary life through design.” At the helm for the past 25 years has been editor in chief Susan S. Szenasy. Her role in the design world as it has evolved since 1981 prompted Designers & Books to ask Susan for her thoughts on the most notable design books published during the magazine’s three decades—as a sort of capsule summary of the important ideas dominating design from the late 20th century into the early 21st. Susan came back to us with a slightly different idea. More...

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

Product/industrial designer Carl Magnusson: CGM Design LLC (New York)
Profile     Book List
Design, believes Carl Magnusson, “must evoke an experience physically and culturally beyond its core function.” The eminent industrial designer—the winner of Contract magazine’s 2012 Legend Award for lifetime achievement—was talking about the “central message that stuck” from Steen Eiler Rasmussen’s Experiencing Architecture, on his book list for Designers and Books, but he was really talking about all of design. More...

Book List of the Week
By Steve Kroeter November 15, 2011

Product and interior designer Karim Rashid: KARIM Rashid Inc. (New York)
Book list

Prolific is a word that is frequently used to describe the designer Karim Rashid, and it’s easy to see why. His practice areas include home and office furnishings, personal accessories, furniture, lighting, interior design, packaging, fashion, graphics, exhibition design, identity programs, and various art media. Over 3,000 of his designs have been put into production for those on his client roster—a list that numbers more than 200, operating in over 35 countries on five continents. His Garbo waste can for the home accessories company Umbra has sold more than 7 million units. He has won more than 300 awards. Fourteen museums have his work in their permanent collections. More...

Architecture
By Steve Kroeter September 13, 2011

Architect Deborah Berke: Deborah Berke & Partners Architects (New York)
book list
In an essay called “Here and Now,” written for a monograph on her work published by Yale University Press, Deborah Berke discusses the evolution in her thinking about architects and architecture over the course of her more than 25-year career. Focused in the late 1990s on what she at the time called “the everyday in architecture”—for which she earned renown—her approach to building was about “embracing and learning from that which is not expressly constructed through high culture or self-conscious design.” Looking back on that time, she feels that “what I was trying to do through my buildings was see if it were possible to make an architecture of exceptional everydayness.” More...

Book List of the Week
By Steve Kroeter February 21, 2012

Interior designer Jeffrey Bilhuber: Bilhuber & Associates (New York)
Profile   Book List
In addition to being an acclaimed interior designer, Jeffrey Bilhuber is an engaging and entertaining storyteller. Designers & Books had the chance to find out firsthand just how engaging and entertaining a storyteller at a recent face-to-face with him in his office on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. The conversation ranged from an unusual fiction choice on the book list he sent us to why he is getting his preschool son a subscription to National Geographic magazine to what his own library looks like and the thinking behind his latest book. More...

Book List of the Week
By Steve Kroeter February 19, 2013

Design magazine editor Amanda Dameron: Dwell (New York)
Profile     Book List
What books does the editor of a high-profile modern home design magazine read? Designers & Books went to Amanda Dameron, editor in chief of Dwell, to find out. “Last year I moved from the West Coast to New York, and I barely brought any furniture or clothes with me. What I did bring was 50 boxes of books and vintage magazines,” says Dameron. More...

Book List of the Week
By Steve Kroeter August 19, 2013

Designers & Books talked with interior designer Ed Ng, co-founder of AB Concept, about his thinking, his book choices, and the new monograph featuring the firm’s work, The Language of Luxe, released this spring by ORO Editions. More...

Book List of the Week
By Steve Kroeter March 15, 2011

Among the books chosen by Akiko Fukai, Director and Chief Curator of the Kyoto Costume Institute (KCI) in Kyoto, is Issey Miyake: East Meets West. The title provides a symbolic link to the books selected by Claire Wilcox, Senior Curator of Fashion at the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) in London. More...

Book List of the Week
By Steve Kroeter October 15, 2013

Design thinker and writer Donald Norman—known for his work that attempts to bridge the gap between the products users want and the products designers create—talks to Designers & Books on the occasion of the newly revised and expanded edition of his book The Design of Everyday Things. More...