Book List of the Week

The Book List of the Week highlights the list of books provided by invited designers (including architects, fashion designers, graphic designers, interior designers, landscape architects, product designers, urban designers, and other design professionals) who have chosen books that inspire them and that have shaped their worldview or their ideas about design.

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189 blog entries

Architecture

Rigorous and Touching: Peter Bohlin’s Book List

By Steve Kroeter June 5, 2012

Architect Peter Bohlin: Bohlin Cywinski Jackson (Wilkes-Barre, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Seattle, San Francisco)
Profile Book List
Architect Peter Bohlin has given us the elegant glass cubes and steel spirals that have defined Apple stores from New York City to Shanghai. At the same time, he and his firm, Bohlin Cywinski Jackson, are known for public commissions such as the visitor center in Grand Teton, Wyoming; civic and academic projects including Seattle City Hall and buildings for Williams College and Carnegie Mellon’s Engineering Institute; and many private residences in wood and stone across the United States that are sensitively integrated into the landscape they occupy. More...

Book List of the Week

Ultimately for People: Sam Hecht’s Book List

By Steve Kroeter May 29, 2012

Product designer Sam Hecht: Industrial Facility (London)
Profile Book List
“I believe that too many designers have lost the ability to realize that projects are ultimately for people—not the company,” states London-based product designer Sam Hecht in a comment on The World as Design, which is on the book list he recently sent Designers & Books. Hecht’s own work, covering kitchenware for Whirlpool, furniture for Herman Miller and Yamaha, and numerous products like appliances and tableware for Muji, is known for its clarity and is definitely “for people” and the lives they live. Design is important, Hecht says, “as a means of simplifying our lives in an inspirational way.” More...

Book List of the Week

Beyond the Normal Limits: Jasper Morrison’s Book List

By Steve Kroeter May 22, 2012

Product designer Jasper Morrison: Jasper Morrison Ltd. (London)
Profile Book List
For British product designer Jasper Morrison design is a tool that should be used to improve the quality of “atmosphere.” He ruminates on this idea of atmosphere in his book Super Normal: Sensations of the Ordinary (co-authored with Naoto Fukasawa)—“a manifesto calling for an appreciation of the well-designed objects we use every day that often go overlooked or get taken for granted” More...

Architecture

Compelling Collisions: The Book Lists of Ada Tolla and Giuseppe Lignano

By Steve Kroeter May 15, 2012

Architects Ada Tolla and Giuseppe Lignano: LOT-EK (New York and Naples)
Profile Book List
Profile Book List

LOT-EK (read “low-tech”) founding partners Ada Tolla and Giuseppe Lignano have gained high visibility for their groundbreaking approach to construction, materials, and space and through the adaptive reuse (“upcycling”) of existing industrial objects and systems not originally intended for architecture. More...

Architecture

The Rational, the Passionate, and the Fantastical: The Book Lists of David Piscuskas and Juergen Riehm

By Steve Kroeter May 8, 2012

Architects David Piscuskas and Juergen Riehm: 1100 Architect (New York and Frankfurt)

David Piscuskas
Profile Book List

Juergen Riehm
Profile Book List
David Piscuskas and Juergen Riehm have been partners in the firm 1100 Architect for almost 30 years. Together they have completed work on three continents and across a vast array of building typologies—including educational and arts institutions, libraries, offices, single and multi-family residences, retail spaces, and community facilities. More...

Book List of the Week

The Scientific, the Metaphysical, and the Spiritual: Lisa Jenks’s Book List

By Steve Kroeter May 1, 2012

Jewelry designer Lisa Jenks: Lisa Jenks (New York)
Profile Book List
The work of jewelry designer Lisa Jenks is prized for its originality, drama, and tactility. She is known especially for being finely attuned to the materials she works with, particularly sterling silver, in a way that allows physical characteristics to communicate cultural allusions. Her aesthetic influences range from angular forms in urban architecture to glyphs on the Mayan pyramids in Uxmal. More...

Book List of the Week

Not Directly About Design: Jonathan Barnbrook’s Book List

By Steve Kroeter April 24, 2012

Graphic designer Jonathan Barnbrook: Barnbrook (London)
Profile Book List
Whether it’s through his work with musician David Bowie, artist Damien Hirst, author-philosopher-linguist Noam Chomsky, or with controversial publications like Adbusters and the “First Things First 2000” design manifesto—Jonathan Barnbrook is unmistakably about activism. In fact, “activism” is one of the areas included in the description of his multifaceted design consultancy, along with graphic design, industrial design, motion graphics, and typeface design. All of these interests and passions come together in his 2007 book, Barnbook Bible (on Rick Poynor’s list of “Books Every Graphic Designer Should Read”). More...

Book List of the Week

Required Reading If You Really Want To Be a Designer: Bruce Hannah’s Book List

By Steve Kroeter April 10, 2012

Product Designer and Design Educator Bruce Hannah: Hannah Design and Pratt Institute (Brooklyn, NY)
Profile Book List
The books that Bruce Hannah chose for his Designers & Books list make up an eclectic selection reflecting the curiosity and far-reaching interests of an eminent product designer and also the breadth and conceptual perspective of a lifelong teacher. More...

Book List of the Week

The Shared Space of Architecture and Art: David Adjaye’s Book List

By Steve Kroeter April 3, 2012

Architect David Adjaye: Adjaye Associates (London)
Profile Book List
Shortly after his largest high-profile project to date—the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture—broke ground several weeks ago on the Mall in Washington D.C., David Adjaye stopped to send along his book list to Designers & Books. More...

Book List of the Week

An Intellectual Affiliation: Mohsen Mostafavi’s Book List—Interview by Nicolai Ouroussoff

By Steve Kroeter March 27, 2012

Architecture school dean and architect Mohsen Mostafavi: Harvard Graduate School of Design (Cambridge, MA) Profile Book List
Architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff (New York)
(New York) Profile
The venerable Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD) celebrates its 75th anniversary during the 2011–2012 academic year. Earlier in the year, critic and author Nicolai Ouroussoff had the opportunity to meet GSD Dean Mohsen Mostafavi in his office to talk about books. The specific books in question were those on a list that Dean Mostafavi compiled for Designers & Books—books that have particular resonance for him not only because of their intellectual content but also through their very personal connection to him. More...

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.

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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.

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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.”

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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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