Architectural Book Recommendations

The Conversation about Architectural Books, and why we should read them.

Our 4th conversation on club house on Architectural Book Recommendations, was an intense discussions of books that we thought were required reading. Moderated by Anirudh Muralidhar and Raunak Sudhakar, we were joined by students, architects and faculty. Many of these books were recommended by more than one person, and we thought that most of these changed the way we thought about architecture, and about life.

The Architectural Book Recommendations:

A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction

Christopher Alexander, Sara Ishikawa and Murray Silverstein, Max Jacobson, Ingrid Fiksdahl-King and Shlomo Angel

The book creates a new language, what the authors call a pattern language derived from timeless entities called patterns. As they write on page xxxv of the introduction, “All 253 patterns together form a language.” Patterns describe a problem and then offer a solution. In doing so the authors intend to give ordinary people, not only professionals, a way to work with their neighbors to improve a town or neighborhood, design a house for themselves or work with colleagues to design an office, workshop, or public building such as a school.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Pattern_Language

The truth in Architecture

Laurie Baker

Laurie Baker was an eminent architect originally from England who made India his home on Mahtma Gandhi’s advice. In his style we find the confluence of Gandhiji’s thoughts and Baker’s own artistic view.

His art pieces are beyond the time and space. They provide us with a power to think to deep inside our mind. It has a potential to create a curiosity about every micro and macro events in the nature. It also offers an inner strength for contemplation. In a chaotic environment of information and technology surrounding us, it is Baker’s masterpieces that are the classic art forever.

“Laurie Baker was truly a green architect, with considerable concern for harmony with nature as well as low maintenance cost. He was an “architect’s architect” and he has left his footprints on the sands of time in relation to architecture with a human face.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30525945-laurie-baker

Architecture for the Poor

Hasan Fathy

Architecture for the Poor describes Hassan Fathy’s plan for building the village of New Gourna, near Luxor, Egypt, without the use of more modern and expensive materials such as steel and concrete. Using mud bricks, the native technique that Fathy learned in Nubia, and such traditional Egyptian architectural designs as enclosed courtyards and vaulted roofing, Fathy worked with the villagers to tailor his designs to their needs. He taught them how to work with the bricks, supervised the erection of the buildings, and encouraged the revival of such ancient crafts as claustra (lattice designs in the mudwork) to adorn the buildings.
https://www.architectural-review.com/essays/reputations/hassan-fathy-1900-1989

Eyes of the Skin

Juhanni Pallasmma

First published in 1996, The Eyes of the Skin has become a classic of architectural theory. It asks the far-reaching question why, when there are five senses, has one single sense – sight – become so predominant in architectural culture and design? With the ascendancy of the digital and the all-pervasive use of the image electronically, it is a subject that has become all the more pressing and topical since the first edition’s publication in the mid-1990s. Juhani Pallasmaa argues that the suppression of the other four sensory realms has led to the overall impoverishment of our built environment, often diminishing the emphasis on the spatial experience of a building and architecture’s ability to inspire, engage and be wholly life enhancing.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/398621.The_Eyes_of_the_Skin

10 Books of Architecture

Vitruvius

De architectura (On architecture, published as Ten Books on Architecture) is a treatise on architecture written by the Roman architect and military engineer Marcus Vitruvius Pollio and dedicated to his patron, the emperor Caesar Augustus, as a guide for building projects. As the only treatise on architecture to survive from antiquity, it has been regarded since the Renaissance as the first book on architectural theory, as well as a major source on the canon of classical architecture.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_architectura

Thinking Architecture

Peter Zumthor

In order to design a building with a sensuous connection to life, one must think in a way that goes far beyond form and construction. In these essays Peter Zumthor expresses his motivation in designing buildings, which speak to our emotions and understanding in so many ways, and possess a powerful and unmistakable presence and personality.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/223929.Thinking_Architecture

The Visual Display Of Quantitative Information

Edward Tufte

The classic book on statistical graphics, charts, tables. Theory and practice in the design of data graphics, 250 illustrations of the best (and a few of the worst) statistical graphics, with detailed analysis of how to display data for precise, effective, quick analysis.
https://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/books_vdqi

Lessons for students in Architecture

Herman Hertzberger

 It presents a broad spectrum of subjects and designs, with practical experience and evaluation of the use of these buildings serving as a leitmotif. 

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1486916.Lessons_for_Students_in_Architecture

Why Buildings Fall Down: Why Structures Fail

Matthys Levy, Mario Salvadori

Once upon a time, seven wonders of the world stood tall and brilliant and, it must have seemed, would stand forever, impervious to time and gravity. Now only one remains–the pyramid at Khufu, in the Egyptian desert near Cairo. All of the others have fallen down. Modern technologies, computerized designs, and new materials have minimized structural failures nearly to the vanishing point. Even so, we can learn from ancient as well as recent history. Why Buildings Fall Down chronicles the how and why of the most important and interesting structural failures in history and especially in the twentieth century. Not even all of the pyramids are still with us. The Pyramid of Meidum has shed 2,500,000 tons of limestone and continues to disintegrate. Beginning there our authors, both world-renowned structural engineers, take us on a guided tour of enlightening structural failures–buildings of all kinds, from ancient domes like Istanbul’s Hagia Sophia to the state of the art Hartford Civic Arena, from the man-caused destruction of the Parthenon to the earthquake damage of 1989 in Armenia and San Francisco, the Connecticut Thruway bridge collapse at Mianus, and one of the most fatal structural disasters in American history: the fall of the Hyatt Regency ballroom walkways in Kansas City. Buildings have fallen throughout history whether made of wood, steel, reinforced concrete, or stone. But these failures do respect the laws of physics. All are the result of static load or dynamic forces, earthquakes, temperature changes, uneven settlements of the soil, or other unforeseen forces. A few are even due to natural phenomena that engineers and scientists are still unable to explain or predict. The stories that make up Why Buildings Fall Down are, finally, very human ones, tales of the interaction of people and nature, of architects, engineers, builders, materials, and natural forces, all coming together in sometimes dramatic and always instructive ways in the places where we live and work and have our lives.
https://openlibrary.org/works/OL3350803W/Why_buildings_fall_down?edition=whybuildingsfall00levy
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/586996.Why_Buildings_Fall_Down

Manual of Section

David J. Lewis, Marc Tsurumaki, and Paul Lewis

Along with plan and elevation, section is one of the essential representational techniques of architectural design; among architects and educators, debates about a project’s section are common and often intense. Until now, however, there has been no framework to describe or evaluate it. Manual of Section fills this void.
https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/28634049-manual-of-section

Death and Life of Great American Cities

Jane Jacobs

The Death and Life of Great American Cities is a 1961 book by writer and activist Jane Jacobs. The book is a critique of 1950s urban planning policy, which it holds responsible for the decline of many city neighborhoods in the United States.[1] The book is Jacobs’ best-known and most influential work.[2]

Jacobs was a critic of “rationalist” planners of the 1950s and 1960s, especially Robert Moses, as well as the earlier work of Le Corbusier. She argued that modernist urban planning overlooked and oversimplified the complexity of human lives in diverse communities. She opposed large-scale urban renewal programs that affected entire neighborhoods and built freeways through inner cities. She instead advocated for dense mixed-use development and walkable streets, with the “eyes on the street” of passers-by helping to maintain public order.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_and_Life_of_Great_American_Cities
https://openlibrary.org/works/OL93641W/The_death_and_life_of_great_American_cities?edition=deathlifeofgreat00jaco

Designing Places for People

C M Deasy

This practical handbook shows how to take the needs and characteristics of human behavior and apply them practically to the design of buildings and interiors. Divided into 11 chapters, the book begins with a discussion of the behavioral influences that underlie the way we use our buildings and the behavioral elements that people expect from any architectural space. These include the need for privacy and personal space; the opportunities for informal groups to form; the need to search and find cues to the nature of the space; territoriality and the concerns for personal status and personal safety. Using these elements as a base, the authors cover different types of places for people, including living spaces, work spaces, shopping spaces, learning spaces, hospitals, and public spaces. This book, with its practical drawings, photographs, and design data, is indispensable to any architect, interior designer, or facilities or personnel manager who wants to create places that really work for people.
https://openlibrary.org/books/OL3022897M/Designing_places_for_people

The social life of small urban spaces

William H. Whyte

Whyte’s book is summarized in this issue of Visitor Behavior because of its relevance to the topic of outdoor public places. Many of the findings from this project have parallels in visitor settings such as museums, botanic gardens, etc. In 1970 William Whyte formed a small research group, The Street Life Project, and began studying New York City’s urban spaces including parks, playgrounds, and city blocks.

This book summarizes Whyte’s findings from plazas, particularly those in New York City. A NOVA film was also made from this work (“City Spaces: People Places”).
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/552476.The_Social_Life_of_Small_Urban_Spaces

Happy Cities

Charles Montgomery

After decades of unchecked sprawl, more people than ever are moving back to the city. Dense urban living has been prescribed as a panacea for the environmental and resource crises of our time. But is it better or worse for our happiness? Are subways, sidewalks and tower dwelling an improvement on the car-dependence of sprawl?

Front

Architecture in India Since 1990

Rahul Mehrotra

This is an illustrated study of the architecture of post-1990 India, a period that marks the liberalization of the country’s economy and reflects the contradictions, glamour and displacement wrought by globalization and rapid economic mobility. Showcasing a complex construct of disparate adjacencies in which bizarre forms of coexistence characterize the built environment, it brings to life, with vivid illustrations, a transformation in the construction of identities, which range from the pan-national to those more fluid in their expression. Hybridity and pluralism reign over singular identities, their architecture being the mirror of the socio-economic as well as the political fabric of a nation-state. Four distinct genres of architectural expression will be presented, and the proponents of each, supported by exceptional examples of their contemporary projects, introduced. Targeted at an international readership of academics, practising architects and students, the book will interest a vast audience of readers and collectors spanning multiple design disciplines as well as those who appreciate significant works on contemporary India

From Bauhaus to our House

Tom Wolfe

From Bauhaus to Our House is a 1981 narrative of Modern architecture, written by Tom Wolfe.

In 1975 Wolfe made his first foray into art criticism with The Painted Word, in which he argued that art theory had become too pervasive because the art world was controlled by a small elitist network of wealthy collectors, dealers and critics. Art critics were, in turn, highly critical of Wolfe’s book, arguing that he was a philistine who knew nothing of what he wrote.[1]

After The Painted Word, Wolfe published a collection of his essays, Mauve Gloves & Madmen, Clutter & Vine (1976), and his history of the earliest years of the space program, The Right Stuff (1979). Undeterred by the hostile critical response to The Painted Word, and perhaps even encouraged by the stir the book made, Wolfe set about writing a critique of modern architecture. From Bauhaus to Our House was published in full in two issues of Harper’s Magazine, then issued in book form by Wolfe’s long-time publisher Farrar, Straus & Giroux in 1981.[2]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_Bauhaus_to_Our_House

Path Uncharted

BV Doshi

Recounts the extraordinary life and achievements of the architect BV Doshi from lifelong notes and diaries kept by him 

A place in the shade

Charles Correa

Indian cities are mechanisms for social engineering—more powerful than anything we have seen before. They will transform this country. A Place in the Shade explores architectural and urban issues in India, from the house as a machine for dealing with our often hostile climate, to the metaphysical role of architecture as a Model of the Cosmos. This reflective, provocative and consistently readable collection of essays argues that our habitat must respond to the overriding parameters of climate, culture and financial resources and that our physical environment should accommodate notions of inclusion and diversity, and that priceless quality of synergy which characterizes a city. Charles Correa identifies the defining issues of the urbanization process that is so rapidly transforming India. He writes, ‘You cannot look at cities without wandering into architecture on the one hand and politics on the other.’ Tragically, over the last few decades, urban real estate has become the primary source of financing for political parties and the politicians who run them. But our towns and cities are assets too precious to be squandered in this manner. Like the wheat fields of Punjab and the coal fields of Bihar, cities are a crucial part of our national wealth. Their success—or their failure—will determine our future.

Housing and Urbanism

Charles Correa

This book documents over forty years of the work of Charles Correa in Housing and Urbanisation.

Louis I. Kahn: Writings, Lectures, Interviews

Rizzoli

A collection of the eminent architect’s writings from some of the most prestigious architectural publications of the last 50 years. Many of the essays are classics in architectural literature, among them “Order is,” “Form and being,” “Poetics,” and “Silence and light,” along with excerpts from CIAM in Otterlo, the World Design Conference, and The Sixties: A P/A Symposium on the State of Architecture. One of the three volumes published to coincide with a major retrospective exhibit scheduled to open Oct. 1991 and travel for three years. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Building Seagram

Phyllis Lambert

“It is beautiful, isn’t it?” Tapping a shaft of white marble in the lobby of the Seagram Building, the bespoke modern tower she willed into being more than 50 years ago, Phyllis Lambert was as close to wistful as her rather unsentimental constitution would allow. “I consider I was born when I built this building,” she said.

Olsen and Kundig

Bedmar and Shi

Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions

Edwin Abbott Abbott

Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions is a satirical novella by the English schoolmaster Edwin Abbott Abbott, first published in 1884 by Seeley & Co. of London. Written pseudonymously by “A Square”,[1] the book used the fictional two-dimensional world of Flatland to comment on the hierarchy of Victorian culture, but the novella’s more enduring contribution is its examination of dimensions.[2]

Kafka on the shore

Haruki Murakami

Kafka on the Shore (海辺のカフカ, Umibe no Kafuka) is a 2002 novel by Japanese author Haruki Murakami. Its 2005 English translation was among “The 10 Best Books of 2005” from The New York Times and received the World Fantasy Award for 2006. 

Kafka on the Shore, a tour de force of metaphysical reality. His work has been described as ‘easily accessible, yet profoundly complex’

Origin

Dan Brown

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_(Brown_novel)
The addition of a few fictional books, such as this is to talk about the setting sin which these stories take place. This book features the Guggenheim in Bilbao, the Sagrada Familia, among others.