Book List of the Week

The Book List of the Week highlights the list of books provided by invited designers (including architects, fashion designers, graphic designers, interior designers, landscape architects, product designers, urban designers, and other design professionals) who have chosen books that inspire them and that have shaped their worldview or their ideas about design.
189 blog entries
Book List of the Week
September 8, 2014

Happy Year of the Pig! Revisit these four designers from China and Hong—each from a different area of design. They include product and graphic designer Freeman Lau, interior designer Ed Ng, fashion designer Guo Pei, and architect Rocco Yim. Also see our list of 15 Books on China and Design. More...

Book List of the Week
November 10, 2014

Among the many prominent architects and designers who have collaborated on products with the American design firm Knoll are four who have sent us the books that have had an impact on their lives and careers. This week we spotlight the book lists of architects David Adjaye and Maya Lin, architect and industrial designer Emanuela Frattini Magnusson, and graphic design studio 2x4 and one of its founders, Michael Rock. More...

Book List of the Week
December 15, 2014

This week we’re highlighting the books that inspire three architects working in California and the Pacific Northwest: Neil Denari (Los Angeles), Craig Hodgetts (Los Angeles), and Tom Kundig (Seattle). More...

Book List of the Week
November 3, 2014

More than 25 different books, from Achille Castiglioni to The Edifice Complex, have made an impact on three leading design design journalists: Alice Rawsthorn (New York Times, international edition), Julie Iovine (The Wall Street Journal), and Amanda Dameron (Dwell magazine). More...

Book List of the Week
August 18, 2014

Kicking off an automobile-themed week, here are the books that inspire three distinguished names in car design—Chris Bangle (former Chief of Design for BMW), Thomas Girst (BMW’s Head of Cultural Engagement), and Phil Patton, New York Times “Wheels” blog writer and author of several books on car design. More...

Book List of the Week
By Steve Kroeter September 21, 2018

Robert Venturi (1925–September 18, 2018), along with his partner and wife, Denise Scott Brown, was the original inspiration behind the founding of Designers and Books. Venturi and Scott Brown’s long list of the books that inspired them was one of the first we published, and it is our profound honor to feature it again. More...

Book List of the Week
By Steve Kroeter January 31, 2012

Architect, interior designer, and product designer Shashi Caan: Shashi Caan Collective (New York and Edinburgh)
Profile    Book List
Born in India, educated in Europe, and with wide experience as a design practitioner and teacher in the U.S., Shashi Caan is the consummate global citizen. “I am an embodiment of my interpretation of the confluence of sometimes conflicting cultural views and constructs,” is how she describes herself in the introduction to the book list that she sent along to Designers & Books. More...

Book List of the Week
By Steve Kroeter December 18, 2012

Product/industrial designer Jonathan Olivares: Jonathan Olivares Design Research (New York)
Profile     Book List
Jonathan Olivares generated quite a bit of notice last year with the publication of A Taxonomy of Office Chairs (Phaidon Press), one of the more unusual design books of 2011. More...

Architecture
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
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...