James Biber’s Book List
There are those books that, like record covers of old, one can spend a lot of time poring over. For me, these tend to be visual feasts, though some literary works are equally involving. The self-taught lessons learned in these compulsive bouts are not easily forgotten (and neither are those lyrics and liner notes), and drugs have nothing to do with it.
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A study of precision, clarity, and control. A house built by a philosopher acting as an architect (as opposed to the other way around) that competes with John Pawson for ascetic luxury. And it was for his sister!
I attended college intending to be a biologist. That turned out to be a bad idea, but it wasn’t until I borrowed this massive volume from my father that I had the courage to try architecture. Winters are bleak in Ithaca and so were freshman dorms. I spent an entire semester of short, dark days studying every single page of this book, the first of the now ubiquitous gargantuan design books. It was very convincing.
The conception, design, and construction of an enormous, completely demountable, glass, wood, and cast-iron building in nine months would be a miracle today; in 1851 it was a feat of divine intervention. This book, published in facsimile by the V&A from the original and bought during my first trip to Europe, contains the entire set of gorgeous hand-drawn, ink-on-vellum working drawings. From it I learned more about how buildings are put together (and in this case, taken apart and put back together again) than from any other single book. The Crystal Palace was 1,851 feet long (get it?), a trope Daniel Libeskind’s Freedom Tower (1,776 feet high, get it?) seems to have kept alive. Maybe he has a copy of it too…
Just like the 24-hour movie collage, there are still images from movies featuring clocks counting nearly every minute of an entire day. Just as insane as the film and just as captivating. If you have seen the installation, you know that while it sounds like a neat idea taken to an extreme, it is actually a new form of narrative. People would stay for hours because it was so interesting, not because the doors were locked.
When I knew nothing about gardens and landscape I learned everything I needed to know from this book. I finally own a copy after using it decades ago.
You could pick practically any of the Bechers’ volumes, but this and Typologies (also on my Book List) cover the field for me. Photographed under the gray, soft light of clouded skies, these collected images of industrial artifacts approach the subject from the typological organization (essentially a genus and species of industry) and from the sweeping landscape of modern ruin. Their photographs are always beautiful, but the books allow a comparative study that most gallery shows can’t.
Hindsight has a way of creating an amnesia about what you once didn't know. The view of the worst genocidal maniac and his psychopathic Reich, all documented by verbatim dialogue (mostly from private contemporary written accounts), is an exercise in the famous “boiling frog” theorem. It was, at nearly every point, inconceivable that Hitler, Göring, Himmler, Goebbels, Hess (and dozens of other less well-known and more complex figures) along with the entire nation could be led to the end we now know. This account is a remarkable and excruciating—and instructive.
A beautiful tale of all cities and one city. I feel as though I live in one of them though (spoiler alert) Venice is a wonderful punch line.
MoMA has produced a huge number of significant books (Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture, 1966, was not unique) but this one appeared at precisely the right time for me. The corresponding exhibition put Italy at the very forefront of design at a time of relative architectural poverty in the United States. The vellum cover, filled with colorful cutouts of iconic pieces, was designed by Ambasz and remains a brittle, yellowed jacket on my copy.
That it only takes eight volumes to contain the entire architectural oeuvre of this gargantuan figure is the real surprise. Owning the complete set seemed entirely out of reach when I first was introduced to the set in architecture school. I bought a single volume (52–57) for $17 in college, and eventually owned the entire set. It is so packed with intelligence (a friend called it “the idea book”) that I will never fully exhaust it as a reference.
I am new to this series, published in the 1960s and ‘70s, which, along with Module, Proportion, Symmetry, Rhythm, includes Structure in Art and Science and Arts of the Environment. They are a serious and detailed collection of design thought from people like John Cage, Rudolf Arnheim, Max Bill, Buckminster Fuller, Paolo Nervi, Fumiko Maki, Alison and Peter Smithson, and Robert Smithson. I was attracted by the cover art and titles, and the books turn out to be equally rich in content.
Photographs and other “evidence” from Frances Glessner Lee’s forensic dollhouses, used to teach crime detection in the 1940s. Lee, who grew up in H.H. Richardson’s famed Glessner House in Chicago, built these highly accurate and evidence-laden crime scenes at 1” = 1’-0 and used each as a lesson. They are beautiful and strange, photographed exquisitely and copiously explained. They are also insane.
Another link between my biology studies and architecture is this mathematical study of form in nature. All the famous examples, plus many, many more and a deep mathematical analysis of every one of them.
The first complete study of the Maison de Verre by Pierre Chareau, written by Kenneth Frampton. Plus Alan Colquhoun on typology, Allan Greenberg on Lutyens, Walter Benjamin on Paris, Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, and Emilio Ambasz, all wrapped in a black debossed Pirelli Tile pattern. Need I say more?
Based on a culture of using every part of a slaughtered animal, this book traces every part of Pig 05049 to hundreds of end products. Beautiful, weird, and fascinating.
Language as a key for unlocking design. Every essay is too much to absorb.
See my comments on Industrial Landscapes by Bernd and Hilla Becher.
A study, with beautiful hand-drawn plans, sections, and elevations, of Venice’s multiple housing. Timely postwar study of what is actually remarkably modern architecture in the less-touristed portions of Venice.
Announcements
Louis Kahn: Architecture as Philosophy by John Lobell
Louis Kahn: Architecture as Philosophy
By John Lobell
Publisher: The Monacelli Press
Published: June 2020
Noted Louis I.Kahn expert John Lobell explores how Kahn’s focus on structure, respect for materials, clarity of program, and reverence for details come together to manifest an overall philosophy.
Our Days Are Like Full Years: A Memoir with Letters from Louis Kahn by Harriet Pattison
Our Days Are Like Full Years: A Memoir with Letters from Louis Kahn
By Harriet Pattison
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: October 2020
An intimate glimpse into the professional and romantic relationship between Harriet Pattison and the renowned architect Louis Kahn. Harriet Pattison, FASLA, is a distinguished landscape architect. She was Louis Kahn’s romantic partner from 1959 to 1974, and his collaborator on the landscapes of the Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, and the F.D.R. Memorial/Four Freedoms Park, New York. She is the mother of their son, Oscar-nominated filmmaker Nathaniel Kahn.
Louis I. Kahn: The Nordic Latitudes
Louis I. Kahn: The Nordic Latitudes
By Per Olaf Fjeld and Emily Randall Fjeld
Publisher: University of Arkansas Press
Published: October 4, 2019
A new and personal reading of the architecture, teachings, and legacy of Louis I. Kahn from Per Olaf Fjeld’s perspective as a former student. The book explores Kahn’s life and work, offering a unique take on one of the twentieth century’s most important architects. Kahn’s Nordic and European ties are emphasized in this study that also covers his early childhood in Estonia, his travels, and his relationships with other architects, including the Norwegian architect Arne Korsmo.
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Reading Graphic Design History: Image, Text, and Context by David Raizman
Reading Graphic Design History: Image, Text, and Context
By David Raizman
Publisher: Bloomsbury Visual Arts
Published: December 2020
An innovative approach to graphic design that uses a series of key artifacts from the history of print culture in light of their specific historical contexts. It encourages the reader to look carefully and critically at print advertising, illustration, posters, magazine art direction, and typography, often addressing issues of class, race, and gender.
David King: Designer, Activist, Visual Historian by Rick Poynor
David King: Designer, Activist, Visual Historian
By Rick Poynor
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: September 2020
A comprehensive overview of the work and legacy of David King (1943–2016), whose fascinating career bridged journalism, graphic design, photography, and collecting. King launched his career at Britain’s Sunday Times Magazine in the 1960s, starting as a designer and later branching out into image-led journalism, blending political activism with his design work.
Teaching Graphic Design History by Steven Heller
Teaching Graphic Design History
By Steven Heller
Publisher: Allworth Press
Published: June 2019
An examination of the concerted efforts, happy accidents, and key influences of the practice throughout the years, Teaching Graphic Design History is an illuminating resource for students, practitioners, and future teachers of the subject.
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