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.

chronological

189 blog entries

Architecture

An Appetite for Nearly Everything I Encounter: Craig Hodgetts’s Book List

By Steve Kroeter February 28, 2012

Architect Craig Hodgetts: Hodgetts + Fung Design and Architecture (Los Angeles)
Profile Book List
Since the 1970s, when he collaborated with Robert Mangurian in the cutting-edge firm Studio Works, to his talked-about recent installation with partner Hsinming Fung for the “Pacific Standard Time” exhibition California Design, 1930–1965 (on view through June 3, 2012, at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art), Craig Hodgetts has pursued a remarkable range of interests. In his architecture, writing, and teaching, he has drawn on automotive and lighting design, information technology, and theater and film, among many other areas. He has, as he says in the introduction to the list he created for Designers & Books, “an appetite for nearly everything I encounter.” More...

Book List of the Week

Embracing Opposites: Jeffrey Bilhuber’s Book List

By Steve Kroeter February 21, 2012

Interior designer Jeffrey Bilhuber: Bilhuber & Associates (New York)
Profile Book List
In addition to being an acclaimed interior designer, Jeffrey Bilhuber is an engaging and entertaining storyteller. Designers & Books had the chance to find out firsthand just how engaging and entertaining a storyteller at a recent face-to-face with him in his office on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. The conversation ranged from an unusual fiction choice on the book list he sent us to why he is getting his preschool son a subscription to National Geographic magazine to what his own library looks like and the thinking behind his latest book. More...

Architecture

Agents of Change: Galia Solomonoff’s Book List

By Steve Kroeter February 14, 2012

Architect Galia Solomonoff: Solomonoff Architecture Studio (SAS) (New York)
Profile Book List
The architect Galia Solomonoff, a native of Argentina, traces her attachment to books to a memorable incident: “In 1975, my parents burned a significant and dear part of our library as Isabel Perón signed a number of decrees empowering the military to ‘annihilate’ the Argentine left. It was a Sunday morning in winter. We were at our suburban house on the Paraná River and I was seven. I passed books to my father in silence; we did a barbecue to cover up the burning of the books.” More...

Architecture

A Most Exciting Vision: Cesar Pelli’s Book List

By Steve Kroeter February 7, 2012

Architect Cesar Pelli: Pelli Clarke Pelli Architects (New Haven, Connecticut)
Profile Book List
Recognized for a lifetime of distinguished achievement in architecture—he is the recipient of more than 200 awards and prizes for his contributions to the field—Cesar Pelli has designed some of the contemporary world’s most famous buildings. More...

Book List of the Week

The Confluence of Conflicting Views and Constructs: Shashi Caan’s Book List

By Steve Kroeter January 31, 2012

Architect, interior designer, and product designer Shashi Caan: Shashi Caan Collective (New York and Edinburgh)
Profile Book List
Born in India, educated in Europe, and with wide experience as a design practitioner and teacher in the U.S., Shashi Caan is the consummate global citizen. “I am an embodiment of my interpretation of the confluence of sometimes conflicting cultural views and constructs,” is how she describes herself in the introduction to the book list that she sent along to Designers & Books. More...

Book List of the Week

A New Way of Looking: Alexa Hampton’s Book List

By Steve Kroeter January 24, 2012

Interior and product designer Alexa Hampton: Mark Hampton LLC (New York)
Profile Book List
As head of the interiors firm founded by her legendary father, Mark Hampton, Alexa Hampton carries the lessons of her Brown University education (class of 1993) into her life as a highly sought-after interior designer and a lifelong student and reader. More...

Book List of the Week

Daydreams and Memories: Ernest de la Torre’s Book List

By Steve Kroeter January 17, 2012

Interior Designer Ernest de le Torre: de la Torre Design Studio (New York)
Profile Book List
It’s been said that one of the most valuable traits of a gifted interior designer is perfection of the power of absorption. If there is truth to this, then Ernest de le Torre is certainly exemplary. He grew up in the Midwest, but from his Cuban parents retained a Latin sensibility. His design influences from his Chicago area upbringing include both the formal traditionalism of David Adler and the spare, modern geometry of Mies van der Rohe. More...

Architecture

The Tip of an Iceberg: Stanley Tigerman’s Book List

By Steve Kroeter January 10, 2012

Architect Stanley Tigerman: Tigerman McCurry Architects (Chicago)
Profile Book List
Stanley Tigerman—recently the subject of a retrospective at the Yale School of Architecture Gallery honoring his long and varied career as architect, iconoclastic theorist, and educator—freely admits that he became an architect because of a book. It’s a book whose individualistic main character has elicited a wide range of reactions since its first publication in 1943 (and in the past year was included on four other Designers & Books lists): Ayn Rand’s novel The Fountainhead. More...

Book List of the Week

Fun and Playful and Joyful: Jonathan Adler’s Book List

By Steve Kroeter December 20, 2011

Product and interior designer Jonathan Adler: Jonathan Adler Enterprises (New York)
Book List

Designers & Books is always intrigued by designers’ manifestos. Not only do they offer a window onto a designer’s work, but they also often provide insights into the choices included on the designer’s book list. Those familiar with Jonathan Adler’s work—products and accessories for the home, interior design, and international retailing—will recognize right away the ideas stated in his manifesto. What does he believe about color? “We believe that colors can’t clash.” Is he more in the camp of “less is more” or “less is a bore”? “We believe minimalism is a bummer.” What does he believe is the feeling that residential interior design should conjure up? “We believe that your home should make you happy.” More...

Architecture

Exploring, Through Design, the Big Ideas and Issues of Our Time: Susan S. Szenasy

By Steve Kroeter December 13, 2011

Editor Susan S. Szenasy: Metropolis (New York)
Book List Essay

This year marks the 30th anniversary of the launch of the magazine Metropolis, whose mission is to “examine contemporary life through design.” At the helm for the past 25 years has been editor in chief Susan S. Szenasy. Her role in the design world as it has evolved since 1981 prompted Designers & Books to ask Susan for her thoughts on the most notable design books published during the magazine’s three decades—as a sort of capsule summary of the important ideas dominating design from the late 20th century into the early 21st. Susan came back to us with a slightly different idea. 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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