Ian Ritchie

Having visited the Whitechapel Art Gallery not long ago to listen to an archive recording of John Hoyland talking about his art, he mentioned Rothko, whom he knew. I found this book of his writings in the gallery’s bookshop. It has been a revelation and convinced me of Rothko’s strength and breadth of mind.

This short story is a wonderfully satirical view of the unreality of America’s media culture. It captured the emergence and domination of TV upon individuals and mass culture. I just about managed to read it all out loud in one go despite crying with laughter throughout. It was published in 1970, when I was writing about “leisure” and that society (families) seemed to be retreating to the living room—the TV—rather than engaging in social spaces beyond.

I was asked by Herb Girardet if I would like to chair the book’s launch at the Ecology Centre in London. It was a major wake-up call, in the vein of North-South.

I read this book in 1969 and it gave me my first insight into how an anthropologist recorded and interpreted observations of a very different culture, one which I was about to visit and engage with in 1970.

An extraordinary exhibition touching on all the great artists involved with “dynamic and kinetic” art, and beautifully captured in this catalogue—a jewel.

A book that captures how aesthetic ideas are not the sole domain of the artist, but also of the scientist, and how these two giants of the 20th century, Einstein and Picasso, were essentially working on the same problem: how to better describe the universe’s geometry once it was clear that the classical view was no longer sufficient, Einstein through relativity and Picasso through Cubism.

I can recall meeting Juhani Pallasmaa accidentally for the first time near Imperial College, London. He was with Peter Buchanan, architecture critic and writer, who wanted to show Juhani a building there. We spoke and we agreed to exchange a few writings. The Eyes of the Skin is a shining example of how prose can clarify the essentials of architecture by referring to its secrets, the need to investigate to find the mystery of why architecture touches our emotions and soul. It reminded me of my own investigations in the early 1990s to define and to reveal the haptic qualities in our built work when I began by writing a text for a conference on “touch” at the Kunst- und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Bonn.

One of a number of books I read in the early 1970s as I investigated commentators, critics, and writers on the emerging youth culture (in the U.S. and Europe) that challenged the conventional “paths to success,” and sought a more collective, shared approach, which in parallel was questioning the power of technology to support yet also control our lives.

As light had always been the material of architecture for me, and about which I was increasingly passionate, this book appealed because it presented the subtlety of light’s absence.

A remarkable research over many years, and an analysis of the Democratic Republic of Congo capital city, into the nature of physical urban reality but also that invisible city of the mind and the imagination and how cultural strategies help overcome the breakdown in the city’s infrastructures.

This masterpiece of understanding how society evolved through shared values between those whose interests differ fundamentally from the values of others (employee/employer) and how society changes. The book was seminal in giving me a historical background to my own world in England, and showing how identity and passion to make one’s own life was a fundamental aspect of creating society, and changing it.

A “stand-up” for global justice book that appealed because of the caliber of those who helped inform and shape it as a manifesto for equality.

I read this more or less at the same time as I did The Making of the English Working Class. I sensed the relationship between a society that had evolved but I knew not, and a society being challenged by the one I was living in. Technology was the dominant theme of the time (and still is), and passivity seemed to be the consequence. As my friend Cedric Price once said, “Technology is the answer. What was the question?”

I discovered the writings of Sorley MacLean during a short working holiday in Raasay, a finger of an island lying between the Isle of Skye and the mainland. MacLean was a poet who wrote in Gaelic about his home and the struggles of the islanders during the 18th- and 19th-century clearings, but in this volume he wrote about his inner conflict and angst during the Spanish Civil war and World War II—whether to go and fight or to stay home and alive with his loves. His moral dilemma set in a historic and social context is so beautifully expressed in this book of love lyrics.

Juhani Pallasmaa sent me this book, and with it, his commentary on a couple of my draft chapters of Being: An Architect and how well he had appreciated the sincerity and literary quality of Barack Obama’s first book, Dreams from My Father. Juhani mentions his growing appreciation of other writings and how thought is shared and layered over time. He mentions Frank R. Wilson’s book The Hand: How its Use Shapes the Brain, Language, and Human Culture (1999); and Richard Sennett’s book The Crafsman (2008).

I just wanted to discover an utterly different way of writing. Years later, Dublin became a very significant city in my life, and I still derive huge pleasure from its writers and from Dubliners’ wit.

I saw a couple of the BBC programs that were delivered by John Berger and was astonished at his insights and lucidity. I have since read many of his books, the latest being Railtracks—a wonderful poetic conversation and photographic adventure.