Designers & Books Blog

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Book List of the Week

Libraries Could Be Beyond Architecture: Sou Fujimoto’s Book List

By Steve Kroeter October 4, 2011

Architect Sou Fujimoto: Sou Fujimoto Architects (Tokyo)
book list
Designers & Books is likely to take immediate notice of architects who have particular ties to books—for example, those who have designed libraries, as Sou Fujimoto has. About the Musashino Art University Museum and Library (Tokyo), designed by Fujimoto and completed in 2010, Architectural Record remarked: “Sou Fujimoto’s library champions books—an especially noble achievement at a time when the printed word is facing an uncertain future.” The architect himself is quoted in that article as saying: “Enjoying, concentrating, and relaxing in a library surrounded by books is a special experience.” More...

Book List of the Week

Unquestionably Addicted to Paris: Penny Drue Baird’s Book List

By Steve Kroeter September 27, 2011

Interior designer Penny Drue Baird: Dessins LLC (New York and Paris)
book list
“I made my first trip to Paris when I was 18,” says Penny Drue Baird. “Unlike what all my friends and clients believe, it most certainly did not result in a coup de foudre. It was when I was there about three years later, when I was crazily ‘in love,’ that I became unquestionably addicted to Paris—and, truth be told, especially to those sauces! That was the true beginning of how the City of Light got to be an ongoing part of who I am and what I value.” More...

Book List of the Week

Objects Are Words: Jean-Marie Massaud’s Book List

By Steve Kroeter September 20, 2011

Product designer and architect Jean-Marie Massaud: Studio Massaud (Paris)
book list
Describing himself as “first of all a man with a vision,” Jean-Marie Massaud dreamed of becoming an inventor when he was growing up. His design vision extends from unconventional furniture and bathroom fixtures for major international brands such as Poltrona Frau, Axor Hansgrohe, and Viccarbe, to interiors and architecture. His work includes chairs with names like “Holy Day”; a triangular-topped table for seating seven; a cascade-like bathtub; and a mirror that is both reflective and transparent, in addition to a volcano-shaped sports stadium for Guadalajara, Mexico, and utopian architectural projects such as “Manned Cloud”—a flying hotel/dirigible that has had input from ONERA, the French aerospace agency. He sees design as a process, an “evolution” More...

Architecture

Every Carefully Selected Word and Each Elegantly Constructed Sentence: Deborah Berke’s Book List

By Steve Kroeter September 13, 2011

Architect Deborah Berke: Deborah Berke & Partners Architects (New York)
book list
In an essay called “Here and Now,” written for a monograph on her work published by Yale University Press, Deborah Berke discusses the evolution in her thinking about architects and architecture over the course of her more than 25-year career. Focused in the late 1990s on what she at the time called “the everyday in architecture”—for which she earned renown—her approach to building was about “embracing and learning from that which is not expressly constructed through high culture or self-conscious design.” Looking back on that time, she feels that “what I was trying to do through my buildings was see if it were possible to make an architecture of exceptional everydayness.” More...

Book List of the Week

True Companions After Others Have Faded into Oblivion: Diana Balmori’s Book List

By Steve Kroeter September 6, 2011

Landscape architect and urban designer Diana Balmori: Balmori Associates (New York)
book list
Diana Balmori sees landscape architecture as an art that balances formal precision with what she calls the “unfixity” of nature, saying that “there is an element of wildness that needs to enter into our lives.” In her recent book A Landscape Manifesto, she lays out her ideas—which include the philosophical and the poetic—in 25 precisely numbered points. (Three of our favorites, by the way, are #1, “Nostalgia for the past and utopian dreams for the future prevent us from looking at our present”; #23, “The edge between architecture and landscape can be porous”; and #24, “Landscape can be like poetry, highly suggestive and open to multiple interpretations.”) More...

Architecture

A Tool for Understanding Our Relationship with the World Around Us: Books Every Product Designer Should Read—Zoë Ryan

By Steve Kroeter August 23, 2011

Architecture and design curator Zoë Ryan: Art Institute of Chicago (Chicago)
book list
When Zoë Ryan—as of this July, the John H. Bryan Curator of Architecture and Design and Chair of the Department of Architecture and Design at the Art Institute of Chicago—gave us her list of books for product designers, she emphasized that she found it hard to be limited by disciplines or categories and that her view of design was an expansive one. More...

Book List of the Week

Right from the Beginning—and Still True Today: Wim Crouwel’s Book List

By Steve Kroeter August 16, 2011

Graphic designer Wim Crouwel (Amsterdam)
book list
When Wim Crouwel was interviewed a few years ago by AIGA/NY using the Proust Questionnaire, his reply to the question “What is your most treasured possession?” was “My library.” That answer caught our attention. More...

Book List of the Week

Imagining, Understanding, and Interpreting: Philip Freelon's Book List

By Steve Kroeter August 9, 2011

Architect Philip Freelon: The Freelon Group (Durham, NC)
book list
One look at Philip Freelon's varied portfolio of architectural work—his most recent high-profile commission is the Smithsonian's new National Museum of African American History and Culture (with David Adjaye and Davis Brody Bond Aedas), planned for the Mall in Washington, D.C.—and it becomes clear that this decidedly public work is as much about stimulating insights and constructing cultural bridges as it is about the skillful interweaving of artful forms and technology. More...

Architecture

Amazing Ideas into the Future: Winka Dubbeldam’s Book List

By Steve Kroeter August 2, 2011

Architect Winka Dubbeldam: Archi-Tectonics (New York)
book list
In an interview earlier this year, Winka Dubbeldam recalled that her parents enjoyed buying and building new homes—an obsession that resulted in her moving 15 times in the 17 years she lived with them. It isn’t really a surprise, then, that she ended up as an architect with a particular interest in progressive residential work. Her worldwide reputation now also extends to office tower, commercial, hospitality, and interior design work. More...

Book List of the Week

Books With Less Transient Values: Books Every Interior Designer Should Read—Stanley Abercrombie

By Steve Kroeter July 26, 2011

Interior design editor and author Stanley Abercrombie: Interior Design magazine (Sonoma, CA)

book list
For someone whose long career has been devoted in large part to words, Stanley Abercrombie has some impressive numbers: In his more than 50 years at the forefront of reading and writing on architecture and interiors, he has been editor in chief of three eminent design magazines (Interiors, Abitare in America, and Interior Design—which he ran for 14 years, beginning in 1983); authored 11 books; written over 1,500 articles for 46 different magazines; and has roughly 12,000 books in his personal library. In addition, he currently serves as books editor at Interior Design magazine, reviewing a steady stream of books each year. 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.

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