Farshid Moussavi
Farshid Moussavi’s Book List
I am interested in books that can be read in different ways, that offer different insights depending on the spatial position you adopt within them. This way of reading inspired my book The Function of Form, whose chapters are related through a theme but can be read independently of one another; similarly the pages can be read as double spreads or as a series of left-hand pages or right-hand pages.
The books below are not tributes to the thoughts of an author; rather they are nonlinear in their structure in order to trigger different kinds of ideas and understandings.
This book list was initiated on the occasion of Farshid Moussavi’s October 25, 2012, lecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. The lecture is available on videotape. The Frances Loeb Library at the Harvard Graduate School of Design featured Farshid Moussavi's Designers & Books book list as well as books from its collections that are by and about the architect, on display through October 26, 2012.
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Each page of this book is divided into three different parts: essays by Mr C. (a version of Coetzee) at the top, Mr C’s opinions about a woman in the middle, and her opinions about him at the bottom. The connection between these different stories is usually unclear, but the form invites you to make connections between texts that share a page.
The collection of funerary texts that form the existing Book of the Dead reveal ancient Egyptians’ belief in each person’s individual and unique journey into the afterlife. Rather than believing in a single route to the afterlife, they allowed each person to compose a book of their chosen spells and prayers to guide their particular journey.
This book’s chapters can be read either one after another or by “hopscotching” through them. Different readers’ narrative choices will produce different endings, rather than one decided by the author.
The concepts explored in each chapter (or plateau) are interlinked, but their sequence as printed in the book is just one of many possible sequences. Every time I come back to this book, I find myself going through it in a different order.
This book arranges texts, projects, and images by OMA about the contemporary city according to scale, rather than time or subject. In doing so, rather than simply representing them as they happened, it opens each to overlaps, new connections, and new readings.
Borrowing its structure from the Parisian Arcades, this book organizes fragments of Benjamin’s writings as well as citations from other authors to examine life in 19th-century Paris. The fragments of texts are presented side by side in order to present the possibility of chance connections by individual readers.
The story “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote,” contained in Fictions, explores how time, rather than space, prompts different readings. Pierre Menard is an author who rewrites parts of Cervantes’s Don Quioxte. He realizes that the only way for him to write like Cervantes is to discard his own imaginative choices, which emerged naturally during his process of writing. Borges’s story shows that an author’s version of any book will always be different from those who read it. If he had written from his own imagination and experience, Pierre Menard would have produced a different version of Don Quioxte.
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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Why Design Matters: Conversations with the World’s Most Creative People by Debbie Millman
Why Design Matters: Conversations with the World's Most Creative People
By Debbie Millman
Publisher: Harper Design
Published: February 22, 2022
Debbie Millman—author, educator, brand consultant, and host of the widely successful and award-winning podcast “Design Matters”—showcases dozens of her most exciting interviews, bringing together insights and reflections from today’s leading creative minds from across diverse fields.
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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