Phyllis Lambert
10 Books on Buildings, Cities, and Landscapes
The following books have always been with me. Every architect might well read them now, but timing was significant in the evolution of my work. The point is that young architects, architects tout court, must be deeply and widely engaged in reading—asking essential questions.
My reading is concerned with the interaction between building and landscape, and the social context writ large. This is true as well for the novels I list below, for which the quality of language also weighs strongly, as does the quality of form in the built world.
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As an adolescent I was intrigued by social conditioning described in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, without any moral judgment, as well as the technological inventions, many of which have materialized (except the “feelies”).
The avant-la-lettre postmodernism of Thomas Stearns Eliot, resurgent in the discourse of the art and discipline of architecture, continues in books I am currently reading, such as the work of Anne Carson—Grief Lessons, Eros the Bittersweet, Antigonick, Autobiography of Red: A Novel in Verse. This, in turn, connects to my readings in Greek literature—I have been studying and photographing ancient Greek sites and landscape for over 20 years in the Aegean and Mediterranean.
When Rykwert published this book in 1976, the city was still largely ignored both conceptually and holistically. Rykwert wrote that the city “had to enshrine the hopes and fears of its citizens,” so that it engaged the active role of the inhabitants and their underlying systems of belief as well as the place. Also see my comments on Palladio by James Ackerman.
Journeys (referring to both the book and the exhibition that it accompanied, produced by the CCA in 2010) questions issues raised by increased global movement. What is the cultural significance of a border today? How does the drawing of a map change the reality on the ground? How do different cultural approaches to the use of public space define a city? Do we need to preserve our regional or national landscape, or can we accept and incorporate changes brought from other parts of the world?
Various forms of literature, including poetry, have obsessed me. As a child I loved the force of ideas and language in Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. I learned about Whitman from books on the sculptor Jacob Epstein. As a child, I asked for and received books on sculptors, especially the beautiful letterpress editions produced by Phaidon Press at that time.
At university Herman Melville’s Moby Dick mesmerized me by its vast range of space and ideas coupled with a cataloguing of minutiae, the sublime antiquarian language, the smell of puritanical early American settlement, the Pequod and its crew as metaphor for the United States racially and politically, and the idea of alternative learning expressed by Ishmael for whom the adventures of the Pequod were his Yale and his Harvard.
My undergraduate thesis was based on Henry James’s Notes of a Son and Brother and the necessity James felt to live in Europe. This coincided with a time when I was searching my own discomfort with American culture. Reading James became a lifelong pursuit of mine for its subtle and not so subtle America-Europe dichotomy.
When I read Leonardo Benevolo’s The Origins of Modern Town Planning (published in English in 1967) in the 1970s, I was struck by the importance of political theory manifested in the social positions of the 19th-century Utopian reformers, and the link between the technical and the political, which had been lost or ignored. To me this connection, put forward in this slim book, was revelatory, making a strong argument that got lost in larger studies. This publication supported my nascent sense of justice in the city and in buildings—not as objects, but as part of social, economic, and political life and the refinements of the art of architecture.
James Ackerman’s Palladio, and Joseph Rykwert’s The Idea of a Town: the Anthropology of Urban Form in Rome, Italy and the Ancient World, were revolutionary when written and exciting for me, in their consideration of the contexts of buildings and city. Ackerman looks beyond buildings to the larger environment of history, society, landscape, and the city; Rykwert looks beyond the instrumental to myth and ritual that shape and even create the man-made environment. When architectural history was mostly concerned, like art history, with connoisseurship, reading Ackerman’s Palladio was a huge relief to me in 1974 when it was first published, confirming my own interest on architecture in the city.
This book and the exhibition it originally accompanied challenge the dominance of the visual in exploring perceptions of the city that have traditionally been ignored, repressed, or maligned, offering complex analyses of the comforts, communication systems, and sensory dimensions of urban life—thus advancing a new spectrum of experience and engagement.
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.
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.
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.
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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.”
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.
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