Craig Dykers

Architect / Norway; United States / Snøhetta

Craig Dykers’s Book List

During my university studies I read Apsley Cherry-Garrard’s The Worst Journey in the World. In this autobiography, Robert Scott’s trek to the South Pole is described by one of the explorers who accompanied the expedition. As an architecture student I felt a kinship with this hopeless, remote struggle. This led to a number of ice-bound, life-and-death books like Elizabeth Arthur’s novel Antarctic Navigation. In this book, the chapter “The Honest House” suggests that architecture connects the candor of design with the challenge of staging adventure. These are things that I still feel are closely linked.

There are dedicated architecture texts in my list, sandwiched between novels, art, and anthropology. Primarily, I have been persuaded by subjects of the senses, memory, and the realm of place. This is what gets me up in the morning, knowing that we are not what we seem to be and the places where we live are not bound by catalogues of definitions—they are so much more.

 

5 books
Hans van der Laan

The first two chapters are among the most powerful descriptions of building I know of. Sadly, the remainder can be very dry.

Ian McHarg

It is always fun to return to this text to see how we are faring since its publication.

Michael Benedikt

A longstanding text on the value of human sensory engagement with place.

Stewart Brand

I still enjoy the challenge of the practicalities of time in architecture.

Lisa Heschong

An air of feminism makes this unusual book about ventilation one of the most endearing I know.

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