James Biber

Michael Bierut

Architect James Biber: Biber Architects (New York)
Book List    Video
Graphic designer Michael Bierut: Pentagram (New York)
Profile

Graphic designer and Pentagram partner Michael Bierut and one-time aspiring biologist turned architect James Biber have been friends, business associates, or both for over 20 years. They also share a major interest in books. Between the two of them they cover just about all the important ways that books can intersect your life: reading them, writing them, designing them, collecting them, being inspired by them—and in one case, fighting over them with a parent.

In this conversation, Bierut asks about the books on the list that Biber submitted to Designers & Books—from those that helped Biber decide to become an architect to the guidebooks he takes with him when visiting Rome. The setting for the conversation is the “book cube” of Biber’s architectural office, located on the 20th floor of Cass Gilbert’s Woolworth Building in downtown Manhattan.
 

In the Cube: James Biber Interviewed by Michael Bierut (abridged 5:22)

In the Cube: James Biber Interviewed by Michael Bierut (unabridged 30:08)