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
all genres
- filter by:
- all genres (0)
An amazing book of master drawings of architecture—truly an eternal inspiration!
This book opened my imagination and freed me from oppressive spaces.
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).
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.
A must for anyone seeking a reflection on both the seen and unseen.
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.
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.
“The best books have pictures,” says Alice, and this is the best—and most scary!
A book that can never be exhausted—showing that someone from Mauritius can be more cosmopolitan than someone from New York or Paris.
A book that is so fantastic that it even inspired Borges to see that the world is only a myth.
A view into Corbusier’s mind and how utterly crazy modernism actually is! You will find out the danger of the right angle.
The sheer beauty of geometry brought to light. A treatise that shows more geometic wonders than any computer can.
A new language developed as a consequence of the Holocaust. Intellectually penetrable because of its opacity.
This was my first, and still favorite, art book—I bought it with all my savings. My favorite Cubist by far.
The clearest and most rational of all philosophy books. Very useful in the era of fuzzy cloud logic.
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.
Written by my former teacher, this is one of my absolute favorite books on the city. No nonsense or pseudo-facts. A true classic.
Einstein wrote the introduction to this mind-distorting fantasy on the fourth dimension. Should suffice as cosmology for mere mortals.
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!
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!
My favorite book about time, clients, cash, persistence, and competition in architecture. A practical manual for work!
Poetry, wilderness, and madness become one’s own in a psychotropic trip of dancing letters and hallucinating colors.
Mystical, intellectual, and ecstatic—for anyone interested in truly understanding architecture and thought that is not “philosophical”!
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.
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.
Dreams and beauty of mystery with Early Renaissance woodcut illustrations. Eroticism and Constructivism combine in an Early Renaissance myth.
Announcements
Now is Better by Stefan Sagmeister
Now is Better
By Stefan Sagmeister
Publisher: Phaidon Press
Published: October 2023
Combining art, design, history, and quantitative analysis, transforms data sets into stunning artworks that underscore his positive view of human progress, inspiring us to think about the future with much-needed hope.
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.
.png)
Love Letter to a Garden by Debbie Millman
Love Letter to a Garden
By Debbie Millman
Contributions by Roxane Gay
Publisher: Timber Press
Published: April 15, 2025
From the award-winning artist, designer, and the host of the podcast Design Matters, Debbie Millman, this book tells the visual story of falling in love with gardening—and the philosophies that work conjures. Spread throughout are simple recipes using the garden’s ingredients from Millman’s wife, best-selling author Roxane Gay.
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.
.png)
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.”
Die Fläche: Design and Lettering of the Vienna Secession, 1902–1911 (Facsimile Edition) by Diane V. Silverthorne, Dan Reynolds, and Megan Brandow-Faller
Die Fläche: Design and Lettering of the Vienna Secession, 1902–1911 (Facsimile Edition)
By Diane V. Silverthorne, Dan Reynolds, and Megan Brandow-Faller
Publisher: Letterform Archives Books
Published: October 2023
This facsimile edition of Die Fläche, recreates every page of the formative design periodical in full color and at original size, accompanied by essays that contextualize the work, highlighting contributions by pathbreaking women, innovative lettering artists, and key practitioners of the new “surface art,” including Rudolf von Larisch, Alfred Roller, and Wiener Werkstätte founders Koloman Moser and Josef Hoffmann.
Popular NowWeekMonth
- Archigram: The Magazine
- The Book We Need Now: New from Stefan Sagmeister
- Quote of the Day: Witold Rybczynski & Paradise Planned
- Summer Reading for Design Lovers: The Story of Architecture
- One Book and Why: Design School Dean Frederick Steiner Recommends . . .
Recent Articles
