Daniel Libeskind
Daniel Libeskind’s Book List
The Prey of Unknown Zones —
The Pillage of the Sea
The Tabernacles of the Minds
That told the Truth to me —
— Emily Dickinson
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The Renaissance comes to life even in the rhetorical tropes of the Leoni translation—with incredible art by a man who was also a family lawyer!
A must for all designers! When I first read it I thought it was boring. Now it is eternal again . . .
My favorite book about the “inner” reality of places, by perhaps the best theoretician of the last century.
An amazing book of master drawings of architecture—truly an eternal inspiration!
A must for anyone seeking a reflection on both the seen and unseen.
The clearest and most rational of all philosophy books. Very useful in the era of fuzzy cloud logic.
The sheer beauty of geometry brought to light. A treatise that shows more geometic wonders than any computer can.
The only manifestos that are still relevant for design—because the future is always just ahead. The most forward-thinking and relevant design manifestos. Includes Marinetti’s “The Founding and Manifesto of Futurism” (1909).
This was my first, and still favorite, art book—I bought it with all my savings. My favorite Cubist by far.
To design is to struggle. This collection of van Gogh’s letters are a lesson in loneliness in art. Truly relevant in this economy-obsessed era!
You can’t do urban planning without this book because it is a labyrinth that you can never leave.
Dreams and beauty of mystery with Early Renaissance woodcut illustrations. Eroticism and Constructivism combine in an Early Renaissance myth.
My favorite book about time, clients, cash, persistence, and competition in architecture. A practical manual for work!
Written by my former teacher, this is one of my absolute favorite books on the city. No nonsense or pseudo-facts. A true classic.
A fantastic description of what a city means to a citizen, a revolutionary, and a terrorist. In my opinion, even better on the city than Joyce’s Ulysses.
Poetry, wilderness, and madness become one’s own in a psychotropic trip of dancing letters and hallucinating colors.
A book that can never be exhausted—showing that someone from Mauritius can be more cosmopolitan than someone from New York or Paris.
This book opened my imagination and freed me from oppressive spaces.
A new language developed as a consequence of the Holocaust. Intellectually penetrable because of its opacity.
A book that is so fantastic that it even inspired Borges to see that the world is only a myth.
Unsurpassed analysis of contemporary dilemmas. More relevant now than in the late 19th century when it was written. Flaubert knew who the idiots were. Really important for our new era.
The wonders of red-white-black and fantastic composition with two squares! And meaning! You can become as smart a designer as a child of the revolution.
Mystical, intellectual, and ecstatic—for anyone interested in truly understanding architecture and thought that is not “philosophical”!
Written by my mentor, a deep investigation into what it means to build through drawings and texts. Amazing how a book of drawings and ideas is much more inspiring than a book of techniques and buildings!
The best insight into the soul of an artist. My favorite book by a poet who writes prose. A book that is imaginatively, aesthetically, and fetishistically Number One.
“The best books have pictures,” says Alice, and this is the best—and most scary!
Einstein wrote the introduction to this mind-distorting fantasy on the fourth dimension. Should suffice as cosmology for mere mortals.
A view into Corbusier’s mind and how utterly crazy modernism actually is! You will find out the danger of the right angle.
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.
Growing Up Underground: A Memoir of Counterculture New York by Steven Heller
Growing Up Underground: A Memoir of Counterculture New York
By Steven Heller
Publisher: Princeton Architectural Press
Published: October 2022
An entertaining coming-of-age memoir from Steven Heller, award-winning designer, writer, and former senior art director at the New York Times, that takes readers on a visually inspired look back at being at the center of New York’s youth culture in the 1960s and ’70s.
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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