Designers & Books Blog

 

856 blog entries
Architecture
By Steve Kroeter February 12, 2013

Architecture school dean Alan Balfour: College of Architecture, Georgia Institute of Technology (Atlanta)
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Dean of Georgia Tech’s College of Architecture Alan Balfour divides his book list for Designers & Books in a way that reflects his distinguished career as a scholar, author, and educator. The list contains, he states in his introduction, “first, books that have touched me in the last year or so, most related to supporting and stimulating my own writing; second, writers whose imaginations I can enter, whose books I can get lost within; and third, books that I often return to and continue to value.” More...

Architecture
By Steve Kroeter February 5, 2013

Architect Victoria Meyers: Hanrahan Meyers Architects (New York)
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“I selected my books for many reasons,” Victoria Meyers writes in the introduction to her list for Designers & Books. “Some books have followed me around for a very long time (I started reading Frank Lloyd Wright’s writings when I was seven or eight). Some books on the list were given to me by relatives whom I was close to (The Poetry of Robert Frost, given to me by my aunt). Complete Poems and Selected Letters of Michelangelo catalogues a life that I can relate to—suffering because of the design process! More...

Book List of the Week
By Steve Kroeter January 29, 2013

Graphic designer Massimo Pitis: Studio Pitis (Milan)
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“My selection of books reflects my interests in history, sociology, design, and education,” Italian graphic designer and art director Massimo Pitis explains in the introduction to his Designers & Books book list. “What I propose here is a dive into the depths of design thinking—a sea where letters and ornaments, thoughts and words, passions and theories fluctuate constantly, producing new ideas and new words.” More...

Book List of the Week
By Steve Kroeter January 22, 2013

Product/Industrial and Interaction Designer Carola Zwick: Studio 7.5 (Berlin)
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“As a designer you are concerned with observing and understanding change and solving emerging needs and problems. In addition, your concepts and ideas as well as the change you hope to trigger with your design intervention need to be communicated clearly,” says Carola Zwick, who along with Burkhard Schmitz and Claudia Plikat co-founded the Berlin-based industrial design firm Studio 7.5. More...

Architecture
By Steve Kroeter January 15, 2013

Architect Florian Idenburg: Solid Objectives – Idenburg Liu (Brooklyn, New York)
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In a comment he makes for Designers & Books about Nassim Taleb’s The Black Swan, a book he calls “pretty essential for anyone who ‘designs’ for the future,” architect Florian Idenburg notes that it “tells us we cannot predict, thus depict, what the future will be—all we can do is anticipate.” More...

Book List of the Week
By Steve Kroeter January 8, 2013

Product/industrial designer Jeffrey Bernett: CDS/Consultants for Design Strategy (New York)
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“School only teaches you so much,” says Jeffrey Bernett in his book list introduction for Designers & Books. The designer of acclaimed residential and office furniture, household products, lighting, packaging, and interior architecture for companies such as B&B Italia, Design Within Reach, and Herman Miller recommends reading broadly as not only “a quest to gain knowledge” but also “a thought-provoking journey in its own right.” More...

Book List of the Week
By Steve Kroeter January 3, 2013

Landscape designer Margie Ruddick: Margie Ruddick Landscape (Philadelphia)
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“Novels and poetry have more power than textbooks to convey landscape ideas,” asserts landscape designer Margie Ruddick, whose work includes New York’s Queens Plaza; which has won awards for promoting a new idea of nature in the city, and the Living Water Park in Chengdu, the first ecological park in China, which cleans polluted river water biologically. More...

Notable Design Books: Reviews
By Steve Kroeter December 20, 2012

To end the year in design book publishing, Designers & Books is posting its updated second annual list of Notable Design Books—now with additional titles. We invited a group of esteemed design community members—our Book Board—to select titles published in 2012 that they think are particularly worth noting. More...

Book List of the Week
By Steve Kroeter December 18, 2012

Product/industrial designer Jonathan Olivares: Jonathan Olivares Design Research (New York)
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Jonathan Olivares generated quite a bit of notice last year with the publication of A Taxonomy of Office Chairs (Phaidon Press), one of the more unusual design books of 2011. More...

Book List of the Week
By Steve Kroeter December 13, 2012

Product/industrial designer Stefano Giovanni: Giovannoni Design (Milan)
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On industrial designer Stefano Giovannoni’s book list for Designers & Books are five titles by the French philosopher and sociologist Jean Baudrillard. Why? Giovannoni thinks it’s very important for a designer “to open one’s vision to the philosophical and sociological aspects related to the evolution of our society.” “I’ve never found a design book deep enough for a broad vision of our profession,” he says in the introduction to his book list. More...