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.

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Louis Kahn: The Importance of a Drawing

Louis Kahn: The Importance of a Drawing

Edited by Michael Merrill
Publisher: Lars Müller Publishers
Published: October 2021

The first in-depth study of drawings as primary sources of insight into architect Louis Kahn’s architecture and creative imagination. Based on unprecedented archival research, with over 900 illustrations and written contributions by Michael Benedikt, Michael Cadwell, David Leatherbarrow, Louis Kahn, Nathaniel Kahn, Sue Ann Kahn, Michael J. Lewis, Robert McCarter, Michael Merrill, Marshall Meyers, Jane Murphy, Gina Pollara, Harriet Pattison, Colin Rowe, David Van Zanten, Richard Wesley, and William Whitaker.

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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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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 25, 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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Our Days Are Like Full Years: A Memoir with Letters from Louis Kahn by Harriet Pattison

Our Days Are Like Full Years: A Memoir with Letters from Louis Kahn

By Harriet Pattison
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: October 2020

An intimate glimpse into the professional and romantic relationship between Harriet Pattison and the renowned architect Louis Kahn. Harriet Pattison, FASLA, is a distinguished landscape architect. She was Louis Kahn’s romantic partner from 1959 to 1974, and his collaborator on the landscapes of the Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, and the F.D.R. Memorial/Four Freedoms Park, New York. She is the mother of their son, Oscar-nominated filmmaker Nathaniel Kahn.

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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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David King: Designer, Activist, Visual Historian by Rick Poynor

David King: Designer, Activist, Visual Historian

By Rick Poynor
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: September 2020

A comprehensive overview of the work and legacy of David King (1943–2016), whose fascinating career bridged journalism, graphic design, photography, and collecting. King launched his career at Britain’s Sunday Times Magazine in the 1960s, starting as a designer and later branching out into image-led journalism, blending political activism with his design work.

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