Ada Tolla’s Book List
The founding partners of LOT-EK, Ada Tolla and Giuseppe Lignano, have provided a joint list of books that have influenced their work as architects, educators, thinkers, and people of the world. It should come as no surprise to anyone who knows Tolla and Lignano that there were two distinct reactions as they were deciding on which books to include: passionate accord or sharp disagreement. There is no middle ground about what resonates with LOT-EK. As with the work they produce, or the projects they decide to pursue, things either resonate, or they simply do not.
The following titles reflect the attitudes, desires, and subject matter that inform the minds of LOT-EK.
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How could we not list this great and detailed account of the origin, history, and reasons of the shipping container?
A building as a city, a city as a building. Ad hoc, spontaneous. The hyper-incarnation (in hyper Hong Kong, of all places) of a human, social, physical, and architectural common condition.
Pure ‘70s genius. Almost Japanese in its attempt to systematize the impossible.
One more piece of Italian intelligence. A methodology for writing based on productive and compelling collisions—very parallel to our own work in architecture.
The fantastic tension between the perfection of imperfection and the imperfection of perfection is probably the greatest contribution of Japanese culture to modern/contemporary aesthetic culture. This tension is what LOT-EK’s pathos is all about.
This book vividly reveals how to conceive and manifest visionary spatial concepts by pushing geometries to obsessively abstract extremes. It has significantly influenced our work—especially as of late, as we strive to generate skewed geometries with very elementary objects.
Our most beloved Napoli…
To discover, experiment, and invent. This is all we (LOT-EK) do and it really is the only way to evolve. And it is full of unpredictable risk and actual failure—no matter how “scientifically” we try to anticipate the outcomes (as this book argues). Our evolution accelerates in leaps where so much risk is involved and we simply love it.
Our absolute favorite book—since we first saw it—and, even more, since we managed to get our hands on this used 1961 edition. We wanted this edition specifically: it's the last one using color tables, illustrations, and drawings. We love that it’s clear, systematic, illustrated, physically present, big, heavy, and indented. It’s a seemingly infinite compendium of answers.
Announcements
If Walls Could Speak: My Life in Architecture by Moshe Safdie
If Walls Could Speak: My Life in Architecture
By Moshe Safdie
Publisher: Grove/Atlantic
Published: September 2022
One of the world’s greatest and most thoughtful architects recounts his extraordinary career and the iconic structures he has built—from Habitat in Montreal to Marina Bay Sands in Singapore—and offers a manifesto for the role architecture should play in society.
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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.
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.”
Women Holding Things by Maira Kalman
Women Holding Things
By Maira Kalman
Publisher: Harper Design
Published: October 2022
In the spring of 2021, Maira and Alex Kalman created a small, limited-edition booklet, “Women Holding Things,” which featured select recent paintings by Maira, accompanied by her insightful and deeply personal commentary. The booklet quickly sold out. Now, the Kalmans have expanded that original publication into an extraordinary visual compendium. We see a woman hold a book, hold shears, hold children, hold a grudge, hold up, hold her own. In visually telling their stories, Kalman lays bare the essence of women’s lives—their tenacity, courage, vulnerability, hope, and pain.
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