Craig Hodgetts

Architect; Graphic Designer / United States / Hodgetts + Fung Architecture and Design

Craig Hodgetts’s Book List

I look to writers, especially those who deal with the form of writing itself, to open doors to the infinite number of ways to structure and assess the world, and particularly the processes and concepts that animate and motivate us as humans. I don’t look at them as “source books” but rather as indicators of how one might think about and relate to the incredibly diverse surroundings with which we interact on a daily basis. I am at heart an eclectic individual, with an appetite for nearly everything I encounter, so this list is likewise eclectic and unstructured.

5 books
Yoko Ono

Yoko’s short, Haiku-like recipes for gentle, revealing ways in which to communicate with one another are poignant and intensely personal, but also universal in the way they tap into our common desire for simple, meaningful, and fulfilling relations with the world and those around us.

Arthur Koestler

The first and most insightful analysis of what has now become a common theme: the industrialization of Asia, and the driving principles behind its worldview. Swaggering and not a little overweaning, the central idea still rings true, and provides an alternative scenario to that we Westerners are culturally destined to follow.

Karl Popper

Popper’s thinking directed me toward an inclusive philosophy in which the values of unrestricted access, transparency, and non-hierarchical structures became embedded in my consciousness and still serve as a moral and intellectual framework for my decisions, both architectural and personal.

Lester Bangs

The freewheeling, free-associative bacchanal that takes over the minute you open this book is like a tidal wave of insights, fevered imaginings, and half-baked truths that position Bangs's writing, like my mentor James Stirling’s architecture, at the forbidden intersection of the animal and the spiritual.

Robert M. Pirsig

Pirsig is the ultimate do-it-yourself-pragmatist. I was inspired by the affirmation that personal attention, discipline, and daring in equal portions could fuel a whole self-sufficient, satisfying lifestyle. It’s easy to see where Samuel Mockbee’s “Rural Studio” fits in, and I hope that some of our work can also be traced to Pirsig’s inspiration.

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