“Not to know what has been transacted in former times is to continue always as a child”, Marcus Tullius Cicero, 143-106 BCE
Reading is key to understanding architecture: an architect’s thinking is best found in text and section drawings. But long form reading is rarely popular in architecture schools, where the image dominates over text. It’s declined further with the rise of Twitter and Instagram, which promotes image and product over ideas and process.
As architecture students return to school, I am prompted to set out a list of key texts in the hope of helping reverse the trend, ever mindful that nominating the ‘top ten’ books has been a recent staple of numerous websites and blogs, and some recent Facebook exchanges.
My list has four rules. Firstly, I am premiating books that treat architecture as purposeful space - not as objects. Secondly, I have categories, rather than a single list, as books treat different aspects of the wide field of architecture. Thirdly, the book must have something fundamental to say, in most cases be the first to say it. Lastly, the book must be readable.
The list.
Introduction: architecture = space
Poetics of Space, Steen Eiler Rasmussen
Architecture as Space, Bruno Zevi
Genius Loci: Towards A Phenomenology of Architecture, Christian Norberg-Schulz
Architectural Principles in The Age of Humanism, Rudolf Wittkower
Why Architecture Matters, Paul Goldberger
In Praise of Shadows, Junichiro Tanizaki
Design Process + Primers
A Pattern Language, Christopher Alexander et al
Analysing Architecture, Simon Unwin (and 2 other of his texts)
The Language of Architecture: 26 Principles Every Architect Should Know, Andrea Simitch & Val Warke
Composition in Architecture, (or Good and Bad Manners In Architecture), A Trystan Edwards
Five Historical Treatises
The Ten Books on Architecture, Vitruvius, about 30-15 BC
The Four Books of Architecture, Andrea Palladio, 1570
The Seven Lamps of Architecture, Ruskin, 1849
Towards a New Architecture, Le Corbusier, 1923
Complexity & Contradiction in Architecture, Robert Venturi, 1966
Modern history
Modern Architecture Since 1900, William J.R. Curtis
Theory & Design in The First Machine Age, Reyner Banham, 1960
Modern Architecture: A Critical History by Kenneth Frampton
Modern Architecture, Alan Colquhoun
From Bauhaus To Our House, Tom Wolfe
Contemporary theory
Critical Regionalism (or Studies in Tectonic Culture), Kenneth Frampton
Learning From Las Vegas, Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown
The Decorated Diagram, Klaus Herdeg
For an Architecture of Reality (or Deconstructing the Kimble), Michael Benedikt
The Edifice Complex, Deyan Sudjic
Design Like You Give a Damn, Cameron Sinclair
Cities and Urban Design
Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jane Jacobs
Los Angeles, City of The Four Ecologies, Reyner Banham
Image of The City, Kevin Lynch
Urban Space, Rob Krier
Cities for People, (or Life Between Buildings: Using Public Space), Jan Gehl
The Architecture of The City, Aldo Rossi
Townscape (or The Concise Townscape), Gordon Cullen
Landscape Architecture
Design With Nature, Ian Mcharg
The RSVP Cycles, Lawrence Halprin
Constructing Landscapes, Ed. Deplazes
Constructing Landscape, Ed. Astrid Zimmermann
Architectural science, technology and sustainability
Design With Climate, V. Olgyay
Architecture of The Well-Tempered Environment, Reyner Banham
Thermal Delight in Architecture, Lisa Heschong
Constructing Architecture: Materials, Processes, Structures, Andrea Deplazes
The Details of Modern Architecture (Vol 1 and 2), Edward R. Ford
Books I would never recommend
Architecture: Form, Space, & Order, Francis D.K. Ching (form without content)
Anything by Roger Scrutton (right, but wrong), or Alain de Botton (smarmy nothings)
101 Things I Learned in Architecture School, Matthew Frederick (trite)
101 Things I Didn't Learn in Architecture School: And Wished I Knew Before my First Job, Sarah Lebner (triter)
If you have a suggestion for a book that is missed, send me an email, and by return I will send the list of the 250-odd books from which this was culled.
Tone Wheeler is principal architect at Environa Studio, Adjunct Professor at UNSW and is President of the Australian Architecture Association. The views expressed here are solely those of the author and are not held or endorsed by A+D, the AAA or UNSW. Tone does not read Instagram, Facebook, Twitter or Linked In. Sanity is preserved by reading and replying only to comments addressed to [email protected]
