Kent Kleinman

Academic; Writer; Designer / Architecture / United States / Cornell University College of Architecture, Art, and Planning

www.aap.cornell.edu

Books Every Architect Should Read

I enjoy access to one of the finest collections of art and architecture books in the country at Cornell University. But there are books with which one forges a special bond, books that are not necessarily greatest hits but ones that become intellectual companions and need to be always within view and grasp. I have listed some of these: books I admire greatly, durable accomplishments in and around the subject of architecture, books that have informed my thinking and to which I return often.

I consider each book in its specificity—its binding, font, layout, and weight, the post-its and marginalia—as a gift of thought and a form of physical connection to the author. For this reason, too, it is important to me to have these volumes physically close.

Nonfiction, Art and Cultural History

title a–z

1 book

Walter Pichler

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Walter Pichler

Friedrich Achleitner Introduction

Anyone who admires Pichler’s work will already own this early anthology of his major projects; anyone not familiar with his major projects should get this book. Pichler’s complex of farm buildings in Burgenland is the subject of, and site for, almost all of the drawings and building projects featured in this volume. The inventiveness produced by self-imposed constraints of site, materials, and processes is astonishing. It is a great loss that Walter passed away recently, on July 16, 2012.

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Published: October 2023

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Die Fläche: Design and Lettering of the Vienna Secession, 1902–1911 (Facsimile Edition)

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