David Piscuskas

Architect / United States / 1100 Architect

David Piscuskas’s Book List

In selecting items for this list, I focused on books that were formative in creating a foundation of design thinking and that have continued to be relevant to my work.

15 books
William H. Jordy

William Jordy was a professor of mine at Brown University. I respected his way of looking at things with an extraordinary mix of passion and clear-eyed rationalism.

Mary Jane Jacob

Matta Clark’s work unlocks an internal life of buildings that makes a common structure very dynamic. I have always found his work stimulating and highly anticipatory of spatial inventions to come.

Francesco Dal Co Editor
Giuseppe Mazzariol Editor

Scarpa’s work has a quality of working with materials that highly respects their inherent qualities and explores unanticipated uses and forms.

Italo Calvino

I read Invisible Cities and Ficciones as a young student. Both authors immerse themselves into fantastic and supernatural places, always of import.

Gary Garrels

There are many qualities in Brice Marden’s work that inspire. His paintings achieve a beauty, elegance, and deceptive simplicity that appear to be effortless but in reality require much hard work. Similarly, good design should never feel overly contrived or difficult.

Mary Jane Jacob

See my comment on Gordon Matta-Clark: A Retrospective.

Jean-François Lyotard
Jean-Loup Thébaud

Reading this book as a young architect, at a time when the deconstruction movement was in full swing, helped me view my work from another perspective. Rather than a formal or stylistic approach, the idea of deconstruction finds a way outside of the modernist heroic ideal.

E. M. Forster

A century old, but the premise of acceptance amidst a multicultural society is only more essential today.

John Neuhart
Marilyn Neuhart
Ray Eames

This book illustrates the Eameses’ great virtuosity, pragmatic inventiveness, and pure joy of design.

E. B. White

This love song to New York is a treasured gift that was given to me after September 11 by Angela Hederman of The Little Bookroom.

From an architect’s point of view this book opened so many vistas, liberating designers to think about architecture in a new way. A noted contemporary once said Robert Venturi makes great plans. It is ironic that one of the great strengths of this postmodern thinker is his modernist way of approaching design by starting with a plan.

Jorge Luis Borges

I read Ficciones and Invisible Cities as a young student. Both authors immerse themselves into fantastic and supernatural places, always of import.

Walter Benjamin

Every design student should read Walter Benjamin. In The Arcades Project he presents a compelling study of the condensation of public space into a controlled environment.

Pierre Cabanne

I find Duchamp significant because of the economy of his work.

Bianca Albertini
Alessandro Bagnoli

See my comment on Carlo Scarpa: The Complete Works.

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