Witold Rybczynski

Critic; Academic; Writer / Architecture / United States / School of Design, University of Pennsylvania

www.witoldrybczynski.com / www.design.upenn.edu/people/rybczynski_witold / www.witoldrybczynski.com/blog / www.twitter.com/witoldr

Books Every Architect Should Read

The first architecture book I bought was Frank Lloyd Wright’s A Testament. That was in 1961, two years after the old man had died. I was 18 and in the second year of architecture school. I don’t know that I ever read the text straight through; it was Wright’s beautiful drawings that attracted me. That was the case with most of my architecture books, which were less for reading than for examining the plans and photographs. That was certainly true of the two George Braziller series, Masters of World Architecture and Makers of Contemporary Architecture. These inexpensive monographs introduced me to the work of Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe, Alvar Aalto, Pier Luigi Nervi, Louis Kahn, and Eero Saarinen.

One of the few books that I do remember reading—it had no illustrations—was Anonymous (20th Century), by the Italian architect Leonardo Ricci. Another was New Frontiers in Architecture: CIAM ’59 in Otterlo, a chronicle of a Team Ten meeting that consisted largely of transcripts of conversations between Aldo van Eyck, Ralph Erskine, and Alison and Peter Smithson.

After I graduated, I bought the seventh volume of Le Corbusier’s Oeuvre Complète, and one volume of the Girsberger edition of Aalto’s work.

One of the books I pored over when I was a young architect designing houses was Vincent Scully’s slim volume The Shingle Style Today, which contained illustrations and drawings of houses by Charles Moore, whom I admired greatly, as well as Robert Venturi, and a very young Robert A. M. Stern. Stern’s 1988 Modern Classicism, which included the work of a variety of post-postmodern designers, ranging from canonic classicists such as John Blatteau to more pragmatic traditionalists such as Jaquelin Robertson, was another book whose contents influenced me.

Architects will always acquire books for visual inspiration, but what follows are ten books definitely to read. They are not necessarily the “best” or the most influential, but they will repay careful attention.

Shorten the text

Nonfiction, Interior Design

title a–z

1 book

Authentic Décor: The Domestic Interior 1620–1920

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Peter Thornton

Architects should know history, not only the history of buildings but also the history of interiors—not at all the same thing. Thornton, of the Victoria and Albert Museum, provides a magisterial survey, examining the architectural shell as well as the loose furnishings within, and illustrating each period with contemporaneous paintings, drawings and (for the latter part of the nineteenth century) photographs.

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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.

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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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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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