Michael Manfredi’s Book List 12 books and 0 comments
How to compile a list of meaningful books? Where to start? The following is a very partial list of books that have been formative to me as an architect, designer, and teacher. It’s an eclectic list. These are books that I revisit often and that, in effect, continue to be my valued friends, mentors, provocateurs, and sources of inspiration.
all genres
- filter by:
- all genres (0)
12 books
McHarg introduced the importance of ecological planning—in the late 1960s a novel and little understood imperative. Given to me as a young architecture student, this book opened up a series of lateral worlds: landscape, ecology—and with that, the promise of a more synthetic approach to design.
As an architect who likes to cook, I can think of few cookbooks that are so “architectural.” Hazan both illuminates the process of making and contextualizes the territory of a particular dish.
Schama’s book focuses on the relationships between real environments and mythical ones, arguing that together real landscapes and the landscapes of the mind constitute that elusive and subjective definition of what we call “Nature.”
I always return to this set of volumes with a mixture of humility and admiration. The work is still fresh and always inspiring.
Given to me as a young adult, this is a book I still return to. Gombrich, one of this century’s great intellectuals, brings history to life in an intelligent and conversational style. It is really a children’s book written for adults.
I studied with Colin Rowe and always suggest that my students read this book. Together, these trans-historical essays constitute a radical argument: that we consider history imaginatively as something alive and present. I can’t think of a more eloquent reminder that architecture is first and foremost about an intellectual and cultural history.
One of my first books. Growing up in Italy and reading this book inspired me with tales of surreal and fantastic places—architectures where the real and the imagined converge.
Proust’s complex and very long quasi-novel has incomparable high points. His description of the nexus of circumstance, emotion, and place—the sheer poetry of everyday existence—is sublime.
Works by Bernini, Borromini, Fontana, and da Cortona are presented against the backdrop of Rome as an emerging global city. It is a lushly illustrated and graphically compelling reminder of the fruitful interchange between great architecture and its urban setting.
Italo Calvino’s meditations on the values and attributes that make great literature: lightness, quickness, exactitude, visibility, multiplicity, and consistency. It is as relevant to architecture as it is to literature.
Nabokov’s elliptical autobiography and beautiful exposition of memory. More than a conventional autobiography, it is a set of elegantly written recollections of events, of people, of spaces and places—it is at once dreamy and precise.
An expansive, eccentric, and systemic catalogue of ideas and tools that quickly became a cultural phenomenon. It reshaped how we see the world and its ecological challenges. References to sustainable design, experimental media, and technological innovations privileged, for the first time, the interconnectedness of things.
Comments about Michael Manfredi’s Book List
0 comments