David Piscuskas’s Book List
In selecting items for this list, I focused on books that were formative in creating a foundation of design thinking and that have continued to be relevant to my work.
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William Jordy was a professor of mine at Brown University. I respected his way of looking at things with an extraordinary mix of passion and clear-eyed rationalism.
Every design student should read Walter Benjamin. In The Arcades Project he presents a compelling study of the condensation of public space into a controlled environment.
There are many qualities in Brice Marden’s work that inspire. His paintings achieve a beauty, elegance, and deceptive simplicity that appear to be effortless but in reality require much hard work. Similarly, good design should never feel overly contrived or difficult.
See my comment on Carlo Scarpa: The Complete Works.
Scarpa’s work has a quality of working with materials that highly respects their inherent qualities and explores unanticipated uses and forms.
From an architect’s point of view this book opened so many vistas, liberating designers to think about architecture in a new way. A noted contemporary once said Robert Venturi makes great plans. It is ironic that one of the great strengths of this postmodern thinker is his modernist way of approaching design by starting with a plan.
I find Duchamp significant because of the economy of his work.
This book illustrates the Eameses’ great virtuosity, pragmatic inventiveness, and pure joy of design.
I read Ficciones and Invisible Cities as a young student. Both authors immerse themselves into fantastic and supernatural places, always of import.
Matta Clark’s work unlocks an internal life of buildings that makes a common structure very dynamic. I have always found his work stimulating and highly anticipatory of spatial inventions to come.
See my comment on Gordon Matta-Clark: A Retrospective.
This love song to New York is a treasured gift that was given to me after September 11 by Angela Hederman of The Little Bookroom.
A century old, but the premise of acceptance amidst a multicultural society is only more essential today.
I read Invisible Cities and Ficciones as a young student. Both authors immerse themselves into fantastic and supernatural places, always of import.
Reading this book as a young architect, at a time when the deconstruction movement was in full swing, helped me view my work from another perspective. Rather than a formal or stylistic approach, the idea of deconstruction finds a way outside of the modernist heroic ideal.
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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