Diana Balmori
Diana Balmori’s Book List
This list of books is not at all homogeneous. But it isn’t random, either. These books have remained true companions of mine after others (although they produced immediate pleasure) have faded into oblivion.
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A classic. It is the only book I have found about an art form (in this case, garden stones) that is not by a scholar but by an artist in a similar discipline. I could mention a few others, but none are as perceptive as this. After reading it just as I was starting work in China, I felt that the only way to read about an art form was to read something by an artist in an allied field. It is my vade mecum (reference manual) and in my eyes the ideal book about an art form.
I’ve used this book in undergraduate architecture seminars. I’ve presented the rules it gives for designing teahouse paths (rojis) as an example of guidelines for designing that do not promote imitation or a particular (in this case, Japanese) aesthetic. It is a brilliant way of establishing rules without dictating a particular style.
The Spanish writer Azorín is the closest parallel to Tacitus (see my comments on Agricola and Germania by Tacitus) and is the reason El Libro de Levante, a collection of essays describing eastern Spain, became an equally golden standard for me. Azorín is a hero to me because, like Tacitus, he is terse, despite the fact that Spanish is a wordy language. He adopted the short essay form, which he delivered with great mastery. He is the 20th-century Spanish Joseph Addison or William Hazlitt.
Robert Pogue Harrison provides a conceptual frame for the work of making a garden, pointing to the importance—and at times, the necessity—of creating and caring for it. Gardens are fundamental, he says, in giving order to our relation to nature, rather than bringing an order to nature. That is the idea that made this book a favorite of mine.
Mysteries interest me as a genre, not as individual books. I think their appeal for me is the fascination of following a clue, having it lead nowhere, and then finding another, which leads to the solution—a process that is much like conducting research in history or science. Within the genre, I have strong favorites. When I was a child I loved Arthur Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie. Now, Dorothy Sayers, Rex Stout, Emma Lathen, Sarah Caudwell, and Sara Paretsky are the mystery writers I like best.
This appears to be a strictly technical book—but do you know how different the roots of trees are from one another? Curiously, that is not at all common knowledge. This Japanese treasure, given to me by my colleague Masahiro Soma, is a chunky book with illustration after illustration of tree roots, shown with a scale indicating their actual dimensions. It is a rare gem—but alas, it is only in Japanese, undoubtedly a tool for those in the field of landscape design and probably not of interest to those outside of it.
I’ve read everything Virginia Woolf wrote, beginning with her earliest works. Of all prose, hers is the most probing of inner inexpressible states, and on top of that, it is beautiful. Her very abstract and experimental writing keeps the narrative line clear, unlike Joyce’s. To the Lighthouse, Mrs. Dalloway, and A Room of One’s Own are her masterpieces.
The Mustard Seed Garden of Painting is the most widely used handbook of painting in China. It is the most thorough and delightful work ever written on the discipline of an art form (in this case, Chinese painting), presented in a very clear and orderly manner. Landscape as a discipline has for a long time lacked discipline. This book, though at first glance about Chinese painting, is really about landscape and its portrayal. As in Europe in the 1600s, painting and landscape in China were intertwined, and the word “landscape” referred first to a painting of a landscape and later to the thing painted. So The Mustard Seed Garden of Painting is a rare and valuable dictionary of landscape forms as well as a detailed portrayal of the discipline dealing with those forms. A priceless observation is: “To be without method is deplorable, but to depend entirely on method is worse. The end of all method is to seem to have no method.”
This is a favorite of mine because of my love of bridges. Perhaps I love them because from the time I was five until I was seven, an architect uncle took me for walks in London to look at them. Also, this book was the first prize for an architecture school competition that I won in my first year at college, and it is a treasured possession.
I got onto this book through my friend the artist Siah Armajani. It has something in common with The Mustard Seed Book of Painting, in that it studies patterns that can be obtained through the use of rigorous geometric rules but that achieve variety and playfulness within that framework.
Announcements
Now is Better by Stefan Sagmeister
Now is Better
By Stefan Sagmeister
Publisher: Phaidon Press
Published: October 2023
Combining art, design, history, and quantitative analysis, transforms data sets into stunning artworks that underscore his positive view of human progress, inspiring us to think about the future with much-needed hope.
Design Emergency: Building a Better Future by Alice Rawsthorn and Paola Antonelli
Design Emergency: Building a Better Future
By Alice Rawsthorn and Paola Antonelli
Publisher: Phaidon Press
Published: May 2022
Rawsthorn and Antonelli tell the stories of the remarkable designers, architects, engineers, artists, scientists, and activists who are at the forefront of positive change worldwide. Focusing on four themes—Technology, Society, Communication, and Ecology—the authors present a unique portrait of how our great creative minds are developing new design solutions to the major challenges of our time, while helping us to benefit from advances in science and technology.
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Love Letter to a Garden by Debbie Millman
Love Letter to a Garden
By Debbie Millman
Contributions by Roxane Gay
Publisher: Timber Press
Published: April 15, 2025
From the award-winning artist, designer, and the host of the podcast Design Matters, Debbie Millman, this book tells the visual story of falling in love with gardening—and the philosophies that work conjures. Spread throughout are simple recipes using the garden’s ingredients from Millman’s wife, best-selling author Roxane Gay.
Milton Glaser: POP by Steven Heller, Mirko Ilić, and Beth Kleber
Milton Glaser: POP
By Steven Heller, Mirko Ilić, and Beth Kleber
Publisher: The Monacelli Press
Published: March 2023
This collection of work from graphci design legend Milton Glaser’s Pop period features hundreds of examples of the designer’s work that have not been seen since their original publication, demonstrating the graphic revolution that transformed design and popular culture.
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Meet Me by the Fountain: An Inside History of the Mall by Alexandra Lange
Meet Me by the Fountain: An Inside History of the Mall
By Alexandra Lange
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Published: June 2022
Chronicles postwar architects’ and merchants’ invention of the shopping mall, revealing how the design of these marketplaces played an integral role in their cultural ascent. Publishers Weekly writes, “Contending that malls answer ‘the basic human need’ of bringing people together, influential design critic Lange advocates for retrofitting abandoned shopping centers into college campuses, senior housing, and ‘ethnocentric marketplaces’ catering to immigrant communities. Lucid and well researched, this is an insightful study of an overlooked and undervalued architectural form.”
Die Fläche: Design and Lettering of the Vienna Secession, 1902–1911 (Facsimile Edition) by Diane V. Silverthorne, Dan Reynolds, and Megan Brandow-Faller
Die Fläche: Design and Lettering of the Vienna Secession, 1902–1911 (Facsimile Edition)
By Diane V. Silverthorne, Dan Reynolds, and Megan Brandow-Faller
Publisher: Letterform Archives Books
Published: October 2023
This facsimile edition of Die Fläche, recreates every page of the formative design periodical in full color and at original size, accompanied by essays that contextualize the work, highlighting contributions by pathbreaking women, innovative lettering artists, and key practitioners of the new “surface art,” including Rudolf von Larisch, Alfred Roller, and Wiener Werkstätte founders Koloman Moser and Josef Hoffmann.
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