Stanley Tigerman

Architect / United States / Tigerman McCurry Architects

Stanley Tigerman’s Book List

I stopped buying architecture books in 1980, which coincided with my being the architect in residence at the American Academy in Rome where it became clear to me that ideas were the source of a flame that I wished to be near. Since that time my personal library, both at home and at the office, has grown willy-nilly with tomes on religion, philosophy, critical theory, et al. These ten books are the tip of an iceberg that helps to define who I am in the autumn of my life.

10 books
Fritz Neumeyer

This brilliant probing of the mind underpinning the work of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe is the only book on that outstanding architect that isn’t sycophantic.

Karen Armstrong

I have read all of Karen Armstrong’s books. My citing of The Case for God is at some level arbitrary. Her other books, such as The Battle for God, are equally invigorating. She’s one of the best living writers in theology, with a passionate point of view.

Ayn Rand

I read The Fountainhead when I was 13 years old in 1943, put it down and decided to become an architect. One may question Rand’s politics, even the ideology of the self, but her gripping tale of an architect unapologetically motivated my prepubescent psyche.

Moses Maimonides
Shlomo Pines Translator

In The Guide for the Perplexed, Maimonides lays out a way of thinking, particularly about God that I find useful, especially in the case of my continuing search for ineffability in the context of the Western pantheon of ideality.

American Bible Society

The Bible is an invaluable resource for most things that I think and write about.

Ibn Tufayl
Lenn Evan Goodman Trans.

Hayy Ibn Yaqzan was one of the most well-read books in the Middle Ages and moved me fourscore years down the pike. 

Martin Buber
Walter Arnold Kaufmann Translator

Ich und Du represents my belief in the importance of another—any other—human being. Buber’s influence on Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Derrida and thereby the rest of us as well is a not very well-concealed secret.

Iris Murdoch

Iris Murdoch uses metaphysics brilliantly as she ambles through the history of morality.

Joseph Rykwert

I have read and reread this book several times. Not many books have been written about architecture with a small “a,” but Rykwert does it brilliantly.

St. Thomas Aquinas

For me, St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Augustine are the yin-yang of theo-philosophy. My fascination with matter bounces back and forth between faith and interpretation—ergo, I read both theologians continuously.

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