Architecture

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29 blog entries

Architecture

Three Architects, Three Countries, Six Languages: The Book Lists of Mikko Heikkinen, Maya Lin, and Enrique Norten

By Steve Kroeter June 21, 2011

Architect Mikko Heikkinen: Heikkinen + Komonen (Helsinki) book list

Architect Maya Lin: May Lin Studio (New York) book list

Architect Enrique Norten: TEN Arquitectos (Mexico City and New York) book list

The work of architects Mikko Heikkinen, Maya Lin, and Enrique Norten is acclaimed not only in their home countries—Finland for Heikkinen, the U.S. for Lin, Mexico for Norten—but also far beyond the cities and nations where their practices originated. And it is in this wider arena that, despite their different cultural backgrounds, some connections among the three emerge. More...

Architecture

The Tip of an Iceberg: Stanley Tigerman’s Book List

By Steve Kroeter January 10, 2012

Architect Stanley Tigerman: Tigerman McCurry Architects (Chicago)
Profile Book List
Stanley Tigerman—recently the subject of a retrospective at the Yale School of Architecture Gallery honoring his long and varied career as architect, iconoclastic theorist, and educator—freely admits that he became an architect because of a book. It’s a book whose individualistic main character has elicited a wide range of reactions since its first publication in 1943 (and in the past year was included on four other Designers & Books lists): Ayn Rand’s novel The Fountainhead. More...

Architecture

The Rational, the Passionate, and the Fantastical: The Book Lists of David Piscuskas and Juergen Riehm

By Steve Kroeter May 8, 2012

Architects David Piscuskas and Juergen Riehm: 1100 Architect (New York and Frankfurt)

David Piscuskas
Profile Book List

Juergen Riehm
Profile Book List
David Piscuskas and Juergen Riehm have been partners in the firm 1100 Architect for almost 30 years. Together they have completed work on three continents and across a vast array of building typologies—including educational and arts institutions, libraries, offices, single and multi-family residences, retail spaces, and community facilities. More...

Architecture

The Library as Paradise: Books Every Architect Should Read—Barry Bergdoll

By Steve Kroeter June 7, 2011

Architecture curator and architectural historian Barry Bergdoll: The Museum of Modern Art and Columbia University (New York)
book list
A lover of books and architecture would be hard-pressed to find three finer libraries than the Helen Kate Furness Free Library in Wallingford, Pennsylvania; the Avery Library at Columbia University in New York; and the Cambridge University Library in England.

These, as it turns out, are the libraries that have been in Barry Bergdoll’s life—while growing up, while in college and graduate school, and while a Kellett Fellow abroad. In these libraries he says, “I had the luck of spending many of my days.” In fact, Bergdoll at one point imagined that “being a librarian might be the best of all possible worlds.” More...

Architecture

The Interconnectedness of Things: Michael Manfredi’s Book List

By Steve Kroeter July 31, 2012

Architect Michael Manfredi: Weiss/Manfredi (New York)
Profile Book List
Architect Michael Manfredi sent along to Designers & Books an “electic” list of books that he says “continue to be my valued friends, mentors, provocateurs, and sources of inspiration.” More...

Architecture

Seeing Things as You Have Never Seen Them Before: Books Every Architect Should Read—Paul Goldberger

By Steve Kroeter May 3, 2011

Architecture critic Paul Goldberger (New York)
book list
What is the first role of books about architecture? “To interpret and explain: to be, in effect, the label on the museum wall, or the note in the concert program.” So writes architecture critic Paul Goldberger in a new essay for Designers & Books. But that’s only the beginning. He goes on to say, “The greatest buildings, like art and music and literature, can be interpreted in multiple ways. As there is no end to what can be said about Beethoven and Mozart, there is no end to what can be said about the work of Michelangelo and Palladio and Borromini and Le Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright and Louis Kahn.” More...

Architecture

Scholarship and Imagination: Alan Balfour’s Book List

By Steve Kroeter February 12, 2013

Architecture school dean Alan Balfour: College of Architecture, Georgia Institute of Technology (Atlanta)
Profile Book List
Dean of Georgia Tech’s College of Architecture Alan Balfour divides his book list for Designers & Books in a way that reflects his distinguished career as a scholar, author, and educator. The list contains, he states in his introduction, “first, books that have touched me in the last year or so, most related to supporting and stimulating my own writing; second, writers whose imaginations I can enter, whose books I can get lost within; and third, books that I often return to and continue to value.” More...

Architecture

Rigorous and Touching: Peter Bohlin’s Book List

By Steve Kroeter June 5, 2012

Architect Peter Bohlin: Bohlin Cywinski Jackson (Wilkes-Barre, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Seattle, San Francisco)
Profile Book List
Architect Peter Bohlin has given us the elegant glass cubes and steel spirals that have defined Apple stores from New York City to Shanghai. At the same time, he and his firm, Bohlin Cywinski Jackson, are known for public commissions such as the visitor center in Grand Teton, Wyoming; civic and academic projects including Seattle City Hall and buildings for Williams College and Carnegie Mellon’s Engineering Institute; and many private residences in wood and stone across the United States that are sensitively integrated into the landscape they occupy. More...

Architecture

Read Slowly and Be Deeply Engaged: Tod Williams’s Book List

By Steve Kroeter October 4, 2012

Architect Tod Williams: Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects (New York)
Profile Book List
Architect Tod Williams savors what he reads. “I read slowly and want to be deeply engaged,” Williams says in the introduction to his book list for Designers & Books. More...

Architecture

Pureness and a Poetic Dimension: Vincent Van Duysen’s Book List

By Steve Kroeter June 11, 2013

Architect Vincent Van Duysen: Vincent Van Duysen Architects (Antwerp, Belgium)
Profile Book List
“I like to surround myself with books, not only in my library but also in the bedroom, living room, and kitchen. In most spaces in my home you will find books. This allows me to pick up a book at any moment, at any place,” remarks Belgian architect and interior designer Vincent Van Duysen. More...

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.

Order the book.

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.

Order the book.

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.

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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.”

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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.

Order the book.