Marco Romanelli

Critic; Curator; Writer; Editor; Lecturer / Architecture; Product Design / Italy / Laudani & Romanelli

Marco Romanelli’s Book List

I belong to a generation for which books were daily bread. In the years before university they were a secret refuge where I could learn something about the world outside, about myself, and about the future (many more things are experienced in books than in reality!). Later, books (and art) became the main tool for building my own place in the world of design. Especially during the height of postmodernism, the only relief from the madness and pastiche that was supposedly a liberation from modernism—but was in reality the application of another kind of strict formalistic dogma—came from well-chosen written words.

Now that I write books myself I always consider them as simple, humble messages in a bottle. Will someone find them? Will someone understand? If even one person finds them, it is enough, for me.

Nonfiction, Architecture

title a–z

2 books

In Praise of Architecture

Add to My Reading List

Gio Ponti

Written in 1957 in Italian under the title Amate l’architettura (“Love Architecture”), this book was dedicated “not to architects, but to people falling in love with architecture.” During his long life, Gio Ponti never wavered in his conviction that people can learn to read and love architecture. This is not a book that you have to read from first to last page—just open it and read one sentence every night before falling asleep.

Italy: The New Domestic Landscape

Add to My Reading List

Emilio Ambasz Editor

The exhibition “Italy: The New Domestic Landscape,” held at MoMA in 1972—for which this book is the catalogue—marked the beginning of prominence for Italian design worldwide, but it also signaled the beginning of a very deep unconscious change in the minds of Italian designers. In some sense the period of “il bel disegno italiano” ended then: addressing Italy’s growing social and political problems could no longer be put off. Another lesson from this exhibition is that furniture design must retain a direct relationship with interior architecture, and not become specialized and separate. It is only in this way that furniture design can be humanized (and tested) as it originates.

comments powered by Disqus

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.

Order the book.

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.

Order the book.

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.

Order the book.

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.”

Order the book.

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.

Order the book.