Peter Pennoyer

Architect / United States / Peter Pennoyer Architects

www.ppapc.com

Peter Pennoyer’s Book List

I may not be wired like most architects because I find words even more evocative than pictures. So my complete book list—my top 100—would be heavy on fiction and poetry. Working back, my favorite authors of the recent 100 years or so (skipping many great writers on design), would include Roberto Bolano, William Gaddis, Walker Percy, Frederick Buechner, Anthony Powell, Robert Musil, Paul Bowles, Evelyn Waugh, J. G. Farrell, Edith Wharton, and Isabelle Bolton. Instead, I am limiting my list to ten books that made a mark on me as I became an architect. Some are high, some are low, but these were books that stand out as touchstones.

Design, General

random order

1 book

Whole Earth Catalog

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Stewart Brand

As the youngest of four children growing up in the 1960s and ’70s, I was exposed early to the best and worst of the counterculture, so it was not surprising that our house had a couple of copies of this splendidly bizarre catalogue (which I filched from my sister in 1969) of everything needed to live-survive-compost-build-meditate-activate in the psychedelic era. I was smitten by the geodesic domes and stimulated to think of the kind of home that could be cobbled together from products (and ideas) in this catalogue.

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