100 Designers/100 Books
By Steve Kroeter April 5, 2012![]() |
Steve Kroeter |
To celebrate the publication of our 100th designer on Designers & Books this past Tuesday, April 3—we now have double the number of designers we started with a year ago—we bring you a new milestone list.
We’ve paired each of our 100 architects, fashion designers, graphic designers, interior designers, landscape architects, product designers, and urban designers together with one book each, chosen from the book lists they’ve submitted. Click on a book title or cover image and you’ll get detailed information on the book along with all its Designers & Books recommenders. Click on a designer’s photo or name and you’ll get the designer’s full book list and links to biographical and other information.
We hope you’ll find the book we've chosen from each designer's list to be interesting. And we also hope that you’ll have the chance to explore each list in full—from the shortest (the late Eva Zeisel’s: one book) to the longest (Alexa Hampton’s: 70 books) We think each of the almost 1,300 books on the 100 lists can be looked at as an important and inspired source of creativity, innovation, and invention. — SK
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Making Things Public: Atmospheres of Democracy
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David Hicks: A Life of Design
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The Natural House
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Make It Bigger
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Paris Was Ours
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Gardens: An Essay on the Human Condition
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Saka no ue no kumo (Clouds on the Slope)
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The Nude: A Study in Ideal Form
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A Critic Writes: Essays by Reyner Banham
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Fragments d’un discours amoureux (A Lover’s Discourse: Fragments)
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The Shape of Things: A Philosophy of Design
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Learning from Las Vegas
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Authentic Décor: The Domestic Interior 1620–1920
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The Design of Everyday Things
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So Far So Goude
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Theory of Colours
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Thoughts on Design
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Printed Ephemera: The Changing Uses of Type and Letterforms in English and American Printing
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Bertram Goodhue: His Life and Residential Architecture
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The Production of Space
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Pioneers of Modern Typography
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The Emigrants
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Billy Baldwin Remembers
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Designing for People
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Snow Crash
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The Death and Life of Great American Cities
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Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems and the Economic World
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The Decoration of Houses
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Remembrance of Things Past
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In the Light of Italy: Corot and Early Open-Air Painting
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Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth
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Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art
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Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things
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How Buildings Learn
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One Two Three . . . Infinity
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On Growth and Form
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Letter and Image
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L’Architecture
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The Art of Looking Sideways
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Visual Thinking
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Lo Studio Boggeri 1933–1981
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The Four Books on Architecture
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By Design: Why There Are No Locks on the Bathroom Doors in the Hotel Louis XIV and Other Object Lessons
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Mark Hampton on Decorating
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Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
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The Invention of Solitude
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Nox
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Meditations on a Hobby Horse and Other Essays on the Theory of Art
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ABZ
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The Visual Display of Quantitative Information
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Space Calculated in Seconds
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The Dictionary of Visual Language
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Pride and Prejudice
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Charlotte’s Web
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In Praise of Shadows
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Against Architecture: The Writings of Georges Bataille
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Avedon: Photographs, 1947–1977
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The Prisons
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Experiencing Architecture
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World Champion Openings
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Here Comes Everybody
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Space, Time and Architecture
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The Aleph
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Moby Dick
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Architecture Without Architects
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As I Was Saying: Recollections and Miscellaneous Essays
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(un)Fashion
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Portraits: Talking with Artists at the Met, the Modern, the Louvre and Elsewhere
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The Earth, the Temple, and the Gods
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Man and Camel: Poems
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The Labyrinth of Solitude
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Invisible Cities
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The Unknown Craftsman
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Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture
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From Bauhaus to Our House
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Silence: Lectures and Writings
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The Order of Things
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Informal
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The Power Broker
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Minimalism and Fashion: Reduction in the Postmodern Era
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Allure
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Edward de Bono’s Thinking Course
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The Russian Avant-Garde Book 1910–1934
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The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction
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Popular Culture and High Culture
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A Little History of the World
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Delirious New York
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The City in History
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Shapes for Sounds
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The Principles of Uncertainty
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The Fountainhead
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The Language of Things
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Why Architecture Matters
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The Decisive Moment
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The Soul of a Tree: A Woodworker’s Reflections
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The Beer Can by the Highway
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Shaping Things
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The Graphic Artist and His Design Problems
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The Notebooks of Paul Klee, vol. 1: The Thinking Eye
So, back to number 1, which was an epiphanic embrace and personal journey of understanding that came not from big words and handbooks, but awakened, codified, and induced a journey of explaining things to myself, within myself, and in a manner that was myself. Perhaps my only strong suit is the unfiltered conversation between my eyes and the three pounds of jelly above them—my brain. It is my home for patterns, threads of connections, maps, memory, and wit. |
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Line and Form
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Announcements
Louis Kahn: The Importance of a Drawing
Louis Kahn: The Importance of a Drawing
Edited by Michael Merrill
Publisher: Lars Müller Publishers
Published: October 2021
The first in-depth study of drawings as primary sources of insight into architect Louis Kahn’s architecture and creative imagination. Based on unprecedented archival research, with over 900 illustrations and written contributions by Michael Benedikt, Michael Cadwell, David Leatherbarrow, Louis Kahn, Nathaniel Kahn, Sue Ann Kahn, Michael J. Lewis, Robert McCarter, Michael Merrill, Marshall Meyers, Jane Murphy, Gina Pollara, Harriet Pattison, Colin Rowe, David Van Zanten, Richard Wesley, and William Whitaker.
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.
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 25, 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.
Our Days Are Like Full Years: A Memoir with Letters from Louis Kahn by Harriet Pattison
Our Days Are Like Full Years: A Memoir with Letters from Louis Kahn
By Harriet Pattison
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: October 2020
An intimate glimpse into the professional and romantic relationship between Harriet Pattison and the renowned architect Louis Kahn. Harriet Pattison, FASLA, is a distinguished landscape architect. She was Louis Kahn’s romantic partner from 1959 to 1974, and his collaborator on the landscapes of the Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, and the F.D.R. Memorial/Four Freedoms Park, New York. She is the mother of their son, Oscar-nominated filmmaker Nathaniel Kahn.
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.”
David King: Designer, Activist, Visual Historian by Rick Poynor
David King: Designer, Activist, Visual Historian
By Rick Poynor
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: September 2020
A comprehensive overview of the work and legacy of David King (1943–2016), whose fascinating career bridged journalism, graphic design, photography, and collecting. King launched his career at Britain’s Sunday Times Magazine in the 1960s, starting as a designer and later branching out into image-led journalism, blending political activism with his design work.
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