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.
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This compilation of plans of buildings in New York held a deep fascination for me and would lead me to write a paper on artists’ studio buildings. I would gaze at the plans and summon interiors, furnishings, and characters to inhabit these places.
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.
These three mammoth volumes document the work of the great British architect who was an inspiration when I was in Bob Stern’s office in the early 1980s. There were deft moves in plans, especially in houses, that seemed enticingly sensual compared to the prudish minimalism of many of the modernists practicing then. This work showed that classical and vernacular influences could be synthesized to create an architecture that was an inventive reinterpretation of precedent.
This reprint of etchings by Paul Letarouilly of many of the greatest buildings of Renaissance Rome was invaluable as I tried to understand the complexities of iconic buildings that stretched my concept of classically inspired architecture.
I had a copy of The Ten Books on Architecture by Vitruvius (a 1960 Dover edition that I came across in 1975 in my family library) and was fascinated by the illustration of the orders. Later, I was fortunate to make friends with Lucien Goldschmidt, a book dealer on Madison Avenue in New York, who kept an eye out for architectural treatises. In 1979 I was able to acquire from him this beautiful edition by the polymath Claude Perrault, who designed the west facade of the Louvre. I love the large format, the rag paper, and the fine lines in the plates.
Written by a brilliant scholar and architect, this book is a feast of photographs and drawings of Baroque Rome.
One of the great architectural monographs of an American practice, this book was a great source for helping me better understand the buildings that I thought I knew well from New York to Boston. Though thin on the earliest work of the firm, many of the greatest civic buildings in America are documented here. I spent many hours poring over the plates.
This is my favorite volume in the ten-million-plus-word series of books on New York architectural history, which includes New York 1880, New York 1900, New York 1960, and New York 2000, written by Robert A. M. Stern, et al. Architecture and urbanism between the two world wars are illuminated by this exhaustive study based on contemporary articles and penetrating research. Many lesser-known gems are brought to life, and what was built is understood in the context of the age and the intentions of the designers. Extensive footnotes make for extremely useful fuel for further research into some of my favorite buildings in New York City.
A fascinating and insightful book on the postmodern era.
Just passing 30 years after its first publication, Tom Wolfe’s acerbic attack on modernism remains relevant.
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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.
Growing Up Underground: A Memoir of Counterculture New York by Steven Heller
Growing Up Underground: A Memoir of Counterculture New York
By Steven Heller
Publisher: Princeton Architectural Press
Published: October 2022
An entertaining coming-of-age memoir from Steven Heller, award-winning designer, writer, and former senior art director at the New York Times, that takes readers on a visually inspired look back at being at the center of New York’s youth culture in the 1960s and ’70s.
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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