Towards a New Architecture (Vers une Architecture)
From the Publisher (Frances Lincoln edition, 2008). Le Corbusier's pioneering manifesto in which he urged architects to cease thinking of architecture as a matter of historical styles and instead open their eyes to the modern world. Le Corbusier wrote simultaneously as an architect, city planner, historian, critic, discoverer, and prophet, and he illustrated Towards a New Architecture with striking images of airplanes, cars, and ocean liners, provocatively placed next to views of Classical Greece and Renaissance Rome. His slogans—such as “The house is a machine for living in”—and his “Reminders to Architects” changed how his contemporaries saw the relationship between architecture, technology, and history.
In spite of being almost 100 years old, this book retains the power of its clarity of vision and purity of ideals and intent. How can you disagree with: “beauty being the overplus necessary to the human spirit.” Or with a reference to poetry—which “not only lies in the written word. Objects which signify something and which are arranged with talent and with tact create a poetic fact.” And how could these enlightened ideals have generated such failures in modern urban planning?
What can I say? Le Corbusier is “the man.” I regard this book as a primer for the future architect. There is one part of the book that has always stood out for me. Le Corbusier advises young architects to travel to Rome, and to get a “‘letter of permission” to pass through the Vatican Gates, in order to see the back of St. Peters (“the only place where you can see Michelangelo’s handiwork”). I did so, and it blew me away. The book gives a lot of great advice that you can’t get anywhere else.
In the 1920s, Corbu broke with the Beaux-Arts tradition and helped to shape a new modernist style. He also reinvigorated the architectural treatise, once again, as a powerful manifesto that could change every aspect of the design arts.
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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.
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.
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Love Letter to a Garden by Debbie Millman
Love Letter to a Garden
By Debbie Millman
Contributions by Roxane Gay
Publisher: Timber Press
Published: April 15, 2025
From the award-winning artist, designer, and the host of the podcast Design Matters, Debbie Millman, this book tells the visual story of falling in love with gardening—and the philosophies that work conjures. Spread throughout are simple recipes using the garden’s ingredients from Millman’s wife, best-selling author Roxane Gay.
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.”
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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