Emilio Ambasz
Emilio Ambasz’s Book List
The books on my list have all influenced me profoundly. How can I extricate them from my memory? They are now substantially part of me. And I could go on and on.
In addition to individual titles on my list, I must mention the following:
The dramas of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. The world had to wait thousands of years until equal dramatic greatness found their likes in Cervantes and Shakespeare. These are plays I read and reread; they are always illuminating and moving.
Aristophanes’s The Clouds, The Wasps, The Birds, Lysistrata, and The Frogs are those I cherish the most among his eleven surviving plays. His powers of ridicule were feared and acknowledged by influential contemporaries; a debunker extraordinaire.
Jorge Luis Borges: his essays and stories (not his poetry). J. M. Coetzee said of Borges: “He, more than anyone, renovated the language of fiction and thus opened the way to a remarkable generation of Spanish American novelists.” A stylist of great fabulist imagination, superb elegance, and economy of means.
The poetry of Jorge Guillen and Wallace Stevens: one Spanish, the other American. They are for me the poets of pure poetry; theirs are poems of a rarely surpassed lyrical elegance and exquisite imagery.
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Le Corbusier was an extraordinary artist with a great a talent for transforming his Ars Poetica into a doctrine and a movement. I never prayed in his church, but I greatly admired his genius.
I taught myself English trying to read this book. So many times did I check out this book that the Lincoln Library of the U. S. Embassy in Buenos Aires gave me that copy when they received its replacement. Barr’s was the unerring eye that formed the extraordinary collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York. This book describes the holdings of the collection he formed and the spirit that animated it based on the concept that architecture and design were as valid and inspiring arts as painting and sculpture.
This book is one of several Wright wrote to proselytize for his notion of organic architecture. I read it when I was 14 years old. Stylistically abominable, it is nevertheless a very influential text. Organic architecture is a philosophy of architecture that promotes harmony between human habitation and the natural world through design approaches so sympathetic and well integrated with the site that buildings, furnishings, and surroundings become part of a unified, interrelated composition.
On the Nature of Things (De Rerum Natura) is a first-century B.C. epic poem by the Roman poet and philosopher Lucretius. It deals with the principles of atomism; the nature of the mind; explanations of sensation and thought; the development of the world and its phenomena; and explains a variety of celestial and terrestrial phenomena. The poem grandly proclaims the reality of our role in a universe that is ruled by chance, with no interference from gods. It is a statement of personal responsibility in a world in which everyone is driven by hungers and passions with which they were born and do not understand.
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.
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.
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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