Deborah Berke’s Book List
I have always loved books—books of all kinds. I like reading books, I like being in rooms where there are books, I get inspiration from books, I like giving books as gifts, I like having a book with me.
My list is an eclectic one of books I have enjoyed and books I have learned from. I always have a large pile of books—fiction and nonfiction, books with images and books without, poetry, plays, collections and surveys, essays—on my nightstand, and always a book in my bag.
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This book includes some of Susan Sontag’s best-known essays. My favorite, “Against Interpretation,” has this to say: “Our task is not to find the maximum amount of content in a work of art, much less to squeeze more content out of the work than is already there. Our task is to cut back content so that we can see the thing at all.”
The original version of this indispensable guidebook, by Norval White and Elliot Willensky, was the first architecture-related book I received as a gift. That copy was much used and is now really beat-up. Fran Leadon did a great job with Norval White in creating this carefully updated version, still full of opinions as well as useful information. A must-own book for all New Yorkers.
This is a very serious collection of essays that had a huge impact on the way I think about the world and about art and architecture. Ken Frampton’s essay “Towards a Critical Regionalism: Six Points for an Architecture of Resistance” is one every architect should be familiar with, but the value of this volume is also in the essays of Rosalind Krauss and Fredric Jameson, among others.
I have enjoyed her stories and her essays, but connect best to Grace Paley’s poetry. Read anything by her.
This is a great book about a New York that doesn’t really exist anymore. Mitchell’s observations and descriptions of it are perfect. Very few of us write as well as Joseph Mitchell did, but this book should be an encouragement to go out and carefully observe your city, wherever it may be.
Amy Hempel writes with such exquisite precision that one savors every carefully selected word and each elegantly constructed sentence.
I first discovered Banham through his incredible book on Los Angeles. As a New Yorker I appreciated the way he parsed and explained that city. However, as a way to connect with Banham’s broader architectural thinking and insights, this book of collected essays is the one to dip into.
This wonderful book examines all types of infrastructure. As a child my favorite part of trips headed out of New York was the industrial and infrastructural detritus along the New Jersey Turnpike. Perhaps because of this, this book really appeals to me. It’s a field manual for all that—old and new. The author is a scientist or maybe a scientific writer—I don’t know for sure—but he gets this stuff and he photographs it with real care and affection. Great images and descriptions.
Alan Colquhoun is one of the great architectural writers and critics around. Too little known in the United States, in my opinion, this collection is a great way to experience his writing and thinking.
This is a riff on, a tribute to, the word “blue.” It is really beautifully written. Reading it makes you focus on what you know, what you see, and how you think about it.
Walk away from your desk, go outside, keep your eyes open and remember what you see and ask why it is that way. A great exhortation to all of us to be questioning observers.
I always enjoy reading Hertzberg’s column in The New Yorker and find this collection of essays to contain some of his best.
Beautiful as an object and impossible to put down as a read. And while I love my library, it made me wish I also could spend a few days in Richard Prince’s library from time to time.
This book is fun to read and covers a broad range of design-related subjects in some very brief essays—perfect for those with short attention spans or limited time to read. There are pieces in the collection that make you laugh. Can’t say that about very many design books.
The subtitle tells all: “On the relationship between where art is made and where art is displayed.” A beautiful object and a compelling little book.
In everything she does A.M. Homes shows us the dark and the weird in late 20th- and early 21st-century America. Her writing is brilliantly funny.
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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