With the holidays upon us it typically frees up a little time to revisit some favorite books – if nothing else you should get a few of these on your Christmas list. Here are BUILDs favorite, most useful, most looked at books on architecture, design, diagramming and travel. Post your recommendations – we’d love to hear about them.
Architecture without Architects by Bernard Rudofsky
The Works: Anatomy of a City by Kate Ascher
The Power of Limits: proportional harmonies in nature, art, and architecture by Gyorgy Doczi
On Weathering, The Life of Buildings in Time by Mohsen Mostafavi and David Leatherbarrow
Wood Burners by Daniel Mihalyo
Grain Elevators by Lisa Mahar-Keplinger
Country Modern by Aurora Cuito
Scandinavian Modern Houses by Living Architecture Series
New York Minimilism by Aurora Cuito
Informal by Cecil Balmond
Massive Change by Bruce Mau
Typologies of Industrial Buildings by Bernd & Hilla Becher
Water Towers by Bernd & Hilla Becher
Basic Forms of Industrial Buildings by Bernd & Hilla Becher
The Visual Display of Quantitative Information by Edward Tufte
Envisioning Information by Edward Tufte
Visual Explanations by Edward Tufte
Lingua Grafica published by Mutabor
Lingua Universalism published by Mutabor
These designers are the Gods of diagramming
Moleskin City Notebooks
These are just travel journals but if you’re a travel geek like us, they are the Holy Grail of journals.
Ellipsis Guides to recent architecture
Now out of print but you can find them used at Amazon
teNeues City Guides
If you’re like us and enjoy supporting the local shops, we recommend these bookstores:
Powells, Portland (also a good internet distributor)
William Stout Architecture Books, San Francisco
Peter Miller Books, Seattle