20 Recommended Reads on Design and Architecture

MUST READ: 20 RECOMMENDATIONS ON ARCHITECTURE & DESIGN 1. BOOKWORK: MEDIUM TO OBJECT TO CONCEPT TO ART -GARRETT STEWART BOOKWORK An inventive and sophisticated study of the book form as sculptural medium. These "bibliobjects," as the author calls them, reside at the nexus of artists' books and conceptual art and point to new modes of literacy. Good Dada-fun: Duchamp meets Buzz Spector! - Martin Antonetti, curator of rare books and director of the book studies concentration, Smith College Libraries RADICAL 2. CITIES RADICAL CITIES: ACROSS LATIN AMERICA IN SEARCH OF A NEW ARCHITECTURE -JUSTIN MCGUIRK Some cities in Latin America have become paradigms of urban renewal, with design, architecture, and politics at the core of positive transformation. McGuirk renders a portrait of a complex continent that is so hard to get to know, but that we can learn a lot from. - Paola Antonelli, senior curator, Architecture and Design, The Museum of Modern Art HOUSE 3." HOUSE -TRACY KIDDER TRACY KIDDER Published 30 years ago, House remains an outstanding narrative about the design and construction process, and about the birth of an architecture firm. - Stephen Schreiber FAIA, program director in Architecture + Design, University of Massachusetts/Amherst MATTER: MATERIAL PROCESSES IN ARCHITECTURAL PRODUCTION 4.MATTER EDITED BY GAIL PETER BORDEN AND MICHAEL MEREDITH. MATERIAL PROCESSES IN ARCHINECTORAL Offers an expanded architectural design practice and education-one that tests spatial and material ideas through fabrication at multiple scales, in new time frames, to re-imagine architecture and our experiences. - Karen Nelson, head of the School of Architecture, Boston Architectural College EDTED BY GAL PETER BORDEN R 5.5 SIR BANISTER FLETCHER'S A HISTORY SIR BANISTER FLETCHER'S A HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE TWENTIETHEDITION Edited by : Da Cuickshank • OF ARCHITECTURE The foremost history of Western architecture, extensively illustrated. A PATTERN LANGUAGE: TOWNS, BUILDINGS, 6. A Pattern Language CONSTRUCTION Towm Buildings Costructioen -CHRISTOPHER ALEXANDER, SARA ISHIKAWA & MURRAY SILVERSTEIN A compendium of pieces that, when linked through examination of the natural world, create wholes, to the delight of the people who use buildings. Christopher Akeander Sara lshikawa Murray Silverstein Mas Jacbson Ingrid Fiksdahl-King Angd 7. THE ARCHITECTURE OF HAPPINESS -ALAIN DE BOTTON THE ARCHITECTURE OF HAPPINESS A small and personal analysis of the features of architecture that bring joy into our lives. Alain de Botton THE RSVP CYCLES: CREATIVE PROCESSES 8. IN THE HUMAN ENVIRONMENT -LAWRENCE HALPRIN Architecture as the choreography of people in the built landscape. - Diane Georgopulos FAIA, MassHousing THE SHINGLE STYLE AND THE „STICK STYLE -VINCENT J. SCULLY, JR. & the Stick Sovle Changed how we see 19th-century architecture and how we design in the 20th and 21st centuries. 10. THE HIGHWAY AND THE CITY THE HIGHWAY and the CITY -LEWIS MUMFORD LEWIS MUMPORD Passionate and eloquent essays; why don't we write and argue about architecture like this today? 11. Winnerof the Pulitrer rire THE POWER BROKER THE POWER BROKER -ROBERT A. CARO Nbert sad thelalle Newkirk The best book ever written on how the American city is built and unbuilt. ROBERTA.CARO ¥12. HAV - JAN MORRIS A tantalizing travel guide to a city you never heard of. 13.0 NATIONAL BESTSELLER UP IN THE OLD HOTEL W UP IN THE OLD HOTEL -JOSEPH MITCHELL Nobody looks more closely, listens more carefully, or writes better about New York. - Jay Wickersham FAIA, Noble & Wickersham JOSEPH MITCHELL 14. CHICAGOISMS:THE CITY AS CATALYST FOR ARCHITECTURAL SPECULATION -ALEXANDER EISENSCHMIDT & JONATHAN MEKINDA CHICAGOISMS "Chicagoisms" is a catalog of smart, readable essays and illustrated interludes uncovering the city's appetite for the spectacular (Ferris' wheel, Burnham's Plan, Kapoor's Cloud Gate), balanced with fascinating new scholarship on, among other things, Chicago's surprisingly large influence on European urban theory. FOR ARCHITECTURAL SPECILATION 15. deiricis new DELIRIOUS NEW YORK: A RETROACTIVE . MANIFESTO FOR MANHATTAN -REM KOOLHAAS Before S, M, L, XL, there was Delirious, the book that made Rem's name. In his hands, New York becomes remythologized as a gridiron palimpsest of architectural capitalism. TOM WOLFE BAUHAUS 16. FROM BAUHAUS TO OUR HOUSE -TOM WOLFE TO OUR HOUSE Wolfe's retelling of the Modern Movement is acerbic, hilarious, and often wrong, but a useful reminder to architects of the suspicion Modernism still arouses in America. 17. ARCHITECTURE IN THE UNITED STATES -DELL UPTON Less a comprehensive history than a project to reclaim architecture from architects, Upton's wry prose casts a gimlet eye onto the pretensions of "art-architecture" from the colonial era to the present. Dell Upton Architecture in the United States 18. THE DETAILS OF MODERN. ARCHITECTURE, VOLUMES 1 AND 2 -EDWARD R. FORD The Details of Modern Architecture As the pioneeering Modernists were inventing new forms, so were they inventing new constructional methods. Ford's astonishingly researched study, illustrated with invaluable drawings, reveals the ingenuity of this ad hoc tectonic, as well as its misalignment with Modernist rhetoric. - lan Baldwin, lecturer at Rhode Island School of Design |19. ARCE GRA A GUIDE TO ARCHIGRAM .1961-74 A GUIDE TO ARCHIGRAN 1961-74 -DENNIS CROMPTON In 1994, when the first edition of this monograph was released, students were still wrestling with Deconstruction and the fallout of Postmodernism. Archigram filled a void that many of us felt in attempting to engage architecture at a more human, visceral level-one where the human/user was EN ARCHIGRATI-PROGRAN 61-74 integral to a larger system of factors and networks. 20. INCORPORATIONS (ZONE 6) Incorporations -JONATHAN CRARY AND SANFORD KWINTER te tan Couryand at K This edited collection of "dossiers" spoke directly to the idea that the body was not necessarily becoming a site of architecture, but that organism of the body, in all its complexity, was precisely the site of architecture. At a deeper level, the book planted the idea that a failure to think this way was quickly becoming a failure to think architecturally at alI. - Lee Moreau, principal at Continuum Nestopia Read more articles on Design and Architecture at www.nestopia.com/blog This list is part of the responses received by Arhitecture Boston on a reader's poll of favourite Architecture and Design Titles