Architecture

Books Every Architect Should Read: Kent Kleinman’s Book List

By Steve Kroeter August 28, 2012

Kent Kleinman

Dean and architect Kent Kleinman: Cornell University, College of Architecture, Art, and Planning (Ithaca, New York)

In time for a new academic year for design and architecture schools, our newest “dean’s list” of books comes from Kent Kleinman, the Gale and Ira Drukier Dean of Cornell University’s College of Architecture, Art, and Planning. Although he enjoys “access to one of the finest collections of art and architecture books in the country at Cornell University. . . there are books with which one forges a special bond, books that are not necessarily greatest hits but ones that become intellectual companions,” Kleinman says in the introduction to his book list for Designers & Books. These are “books I admire greatly, durable accomplishments in and around the subject of architecture, books that have informed my thinking and to which I return often.” He considers each book “in its specificity—its binding, font, layout, and weight, the post-its and marginalia—as a gift of thought and a form of physical connection to the author.”

Kent Kleinman and Leslie Van Duzer, Mies van der Rohe: The Krefeld Villas, 2005 (Princeton Architectural Press)

Among the titles that make the list are John Hejduk’s Education of an Architect: A Point of View, which Kleinman calls “an extraordinary publication . . a manifesto, a declaration of intent, a collective effort by faculty and students forged into a powerful vision of an architectural pedagogy, a landmark, and a beautifully crafted book.” He cites Spiro Kostof’s A History of Architecture: Settings and Rituals for its “special qualities that at the time [1985] were groundbreaking,” including Kostof’s insistence on showing a building’s context. “Architecture, in the end,” Kostof writes in this book, “is nothing less than the gift of making places for some human purpose.”

Kleinman challenges would-be readers of Clifford Geerz’s witty study The Interpretation of Culture to “read the first chapter called ‘Thick Description,’ and see if you ever experience a wink as you once did….” He also advises members of the architectural profession to translate the entirety of Adolf Loos’s essays, collected in Trotzdem (“Nevertheless”), which is on Kleinman’s book list: “As a discipline, we should get organized and get the entire opus translated and published.”

Kent Kleinman, Joanna Merwood-Salisbury, and Lois Weinthal. eds., After Taste: Expanded Practice in Interior Design, 2011 (Princeton Architectural Press)

And about Walter Pichler: Drawings, Sculpture, Buildings, which features the work of the visionary Austrian architect and artist who became known in the early 1960s and passed away this July. Kleinman states: “Anyone not familiar with his major projects should get this book. The inventiveness produced by self-imposed constraints of site, materials, and processes is astonishing. It is a great loss that Walter passed away recently.”

A scholar of 20th-century European modernism, Kleinman is the author or editor of five books, including analyses of the work of Mies van der Rohe and Adolf Loos, and most recently After Taste: Expanded Practice in Interior Design (2011, Princeton Architectural Press), which explores the role of taste in the evolution of interior design as a discipline from the 18th to the 20th century.

View Kent Kleinman’s Profile View Kent Kleinman’s Book List

See more lists of Books Every Architect Should Read

comments powered by Disqus

Announcements

Now is Better by Stefan Sagmeister

Now is Better

By Stefan Sagmeister
Publisher: Phaidon Press
Published: October 2023

Combining art, design, history, and quantitative analysis, transforms data sets into stunning artworks that underscore his positive view of human progress, inspiring us to think about the future with much-needed hope.

Order the book.

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.

Order the book.

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.

Order the book.

Milton Glaser: POP by Steven Heller, Mirko Ilić, and Beth Kleber

Milton Glaser: POP

By Steven Heller, Mirko Ilić, and Beth Kleber
Publisher: The Monacelli Press
Published: March 2023

This collection of work from graphci design legend Milton Glaser’s Pop period features hundreds of examples of the designer’s work that have not been seen since their original publication, demonstrating the graphic revolution that transformed design and popular culture.

Order the book.

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.”

Order the book.

Die Fläche: Design and Lettering of the Vienna Secession, 1902–1911 (Facsimile Edition) by Diane V. Silverthorne, Dan Reynolds, and Megan Brandow-Faller

Die Fläche: Design and Lettering of the Vienna Secession, 1902–1911 (Facsimile Edition)

By Diane V. Silverthorne, Dan Reynolds, and Megan Brandow-Faller
Publisher: Letterform Archives Books
Published: October 2023

This facsimile edition of Die Fläche, recreates every page of the formative design periodical in full color and at original size, accompanied by essays that contextualize the work, highlighting contributions by pathbreaking women, innovative lettering artists, and key practitioners of the new “surface art,” including Rudolf von Larisch, Alfred Roller, and Wiener Werkstätte founders Koloman Moser and Josef Hoffmann.

Order the book.