Anything by Ching: especially Architecture: Form, Space and Order and Architectural Graphics

Architectural Graphic Standards - if you intend to break conventions with your projects, you should understand why they exist in the first place

Most importantly, keep a sketchbook. Have it with you all the time. Any spare moment...draw, any random thought...write it down or diagram it. Use your sketchbook as your diary and your critic. Call yourself out when something isn't working. Use it to test yourself and the validity of your ideas. Plus, design juries love when you can pull out a sketchbook full of relevant process to back up what's pinned on the wall.

What Spark said, verbatim.

sketch book - write EVERYTHING in it, draw EVERYTHING in it, keep all your lecture notes in it and keep em going. something that's easy to carry around, no need for large unless that's what you like.

there was also a book that I can't remember the title of but most bookstores have it in the arch section...something like "so you want to be an architect." it talks about schools, studio, competition, work place, a 101 course for the business in general for those considering and those just starting, although a "fun" refresher for those already practicing too :)

I just bought Details In Contemporary Residential Architecture. It is rocking my world!

Architect? A Candid Guide to the Profession
Roger K. Lewis

(for Chaos)

.mm

check out XS, a book on very small built projects.

sooooo coooooolllll i take this book with me everywhere, i think maybe my favorite architecture book (non-theory, non-flashy graphics)

biggest impact on me theory-wise was Frampton's Studies in Tectonic Culture

i think that I used books more to weigh down glued pieces of models than for reading

Diagram Diaries - Eisenman
Morphosis - 2nd book and on
Various El Croquis - Hadid's first one primarily
Frank Israel's book

Tons of misc books I can't remember (all of the above, but not for studio)

Most valuable was the countless trips around all the studios, looking and studying classmate's work that I admired

anybody checked out 'the architect's handbook' that was reviewed in the last issue of arch record? sounds potentially useful...

atlas shrugged by ayn rand.

she wrote another book. much shorter... can't remember the name.

the fountainhead.

but it might jade any reader with a leftist slant.

pixel, i'm curious as to what you got out of frampton's tectonics? it's basically a reference to like 80 other books that deserve reading.

ummm, you guys might be veering off track just a bit, I didn't mean what books have been a great value to you in your professional career, I meant books that helped you with your first few studio's. Like I had said, a friend of mine is starting his first studio and wanted to know of books that can help, not just to clarify things but to help him build a steady and consistent process when approached with sketch problems

Thank You though, and keep em coming people

Theory:
The Architecture of Happiness
Alain DeBotton

Delirious New York
Rem Koolhaas

Theories and Manefestos of Contemporary Architecture
Jencks & Kropf

The Fountainhead

Design:
Architecture Now! (any volume, I think the're up to 5 now)

10x10 (1 & 2)

Sketch * Plan * Build

Practice:
AGS (I have the 11th ed., but the 10th is just as good and much cheaper now)

The Studio Companion

Heating, Cooling, Lighting

Building Construction Illustrated

Materials, Structures, Standards (My favorite, a condensing of every hard-to find detail and standard in a nice 5x8 format with a sweet soft plastic cover)

Transmaterial (1 & 2)

and lastly:

A MOLESKINE!!!

I also forgot- A subscription to Detail Magazine- they run a student deal where you can get the whole year (10 issues, 6 German & 4 English) for $150. It's incredibly worthwhile and will keep you exposed to what's happening now in Architecture around the world.

the most useful thing that i read during the first 2 years of design school was Towards a New Architecture by Le Corbusier. It may not answer the practical question of what it is that you're doing, but most of that will sink in well after the project has been completed and critiqued. In the meantime, a book like this may help one stay inspired while figuring out for themselves why the struggle is worthwhile.

on weathering

Back in the mid-90s, every architecture student had a copy of S,M,L,XL on their desk.

I learned a lot from Rem about program and function as a generator.

I second 10x10

Details magazine is so awesome! esp. if you ever have to actually figure out how your crazy design might work, it's a good place to look for nice examples and inspiration.

the newspaper.

Details magazine is very good

I am still proud to say I never bought S,M,L,XL. I vividly recall my prof bringing a copy of it in and saying it was the 'next big thing'. She was correct, of course, but little of his work has ever interested me (new stuff is starting to be interesting).

I am really surprised that there are so few people mentioning design oriented books, seems like that's what studios about...?

beautiful evidence, edward tufte

http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/books_be

a good way to think about representation and mapping

Studio Companion
Building Construction Illustrated
-- both of which have aleady been mentioned,

but also:
Sun Wind and Light

otherwise:
Holl's Intertwining and Anchoring were big influences for me.

#1. Ford... the details of modern architecture... two volumes... basically, it goes through the figureheads of modern architecture from, briefly, h.h.richardson and gothic revival, and moves chronologically through all the modern icons... frank lloyd wright, wagner, loos, corb, mies, saarinen, neutra, aalto, louis kahn, to pomo... tells a history through simple, line detail drawings... axons, sectional details, etc... everything black and white drawings, or photos of details, where you can basically draft this stuff and build the same detail... it's like techical and aesthetic history that tells the history through details... how those guys actually build stuff... it's a bit pricey, but worth it...

#2. as in introductory theory reader, neil leach... rethinking architecture: a reader in cultural theory... basically, it covers alot of the major writings on architecture by philosophers... it's broken out into sections... modernism, phenomenology, structuralism, postmodernism, and poststructuralism... leach writes a consise and clear introduction to each section telling you what that particular philosophical movement for that section is about, and then each section is then broken out by writers and has a couple key essays by each... adorno, walter benjamin, heidegger, lefebvre, roland barthes, baudrillard, habermas, frederic jameson, deleuze, derrida, foucault, etc... focuses only on those writings that are relevant to architects...

#3. a quick easy read, the very first architecture book I read, that inspired me and made me start thinking about spaces... rasmussen... experiencing architecture... its broken out into sections about different aspects of spaces... solid and void, rhythms, sound of architecture, etc...

#4. my own personal read (it might not be for everybody)... edward soja.... third space... not so much because of any real original thought that soja really writes about... alot of it is taken from lefebvre... but soja is alot more readable and easy to comprehend than lefebvre, and he writes about all these other postmodern writers, so its a good starting point to thinking differently, maybe critically?... but i think the thing that i valued from that book was more the part about understanding space as a. physical, b. mental, and c. lived (both physical and mental)... the idea that space is embedded with subjective cultural aspects, and how to think and talk about space equally in terms of those three different and related things...

catalytic formations by ali rahim changed my whole perspective on shit....
technique is probably too advanced to a first year but the theory it discusses can definitely provide a way of thinking about form that will prove invaluable.

MVRDV- KM3. total badass book i forgot. i referenced it for an entire semester when working on an urban design project.

bRink,

rasmussen's book is avail. online - though i will never be able to read in that format...

link

holz,

cool... thanks for the link! how cool would it be if in the future, all books were accessible online, maybe in a more user friendly format, like something we flipped through on an iphone... we would be able to discuss books all the time on archinect...!

but yeah, i'd totally recommend that book to anybody just starting out in architecture school (a great introduction IMHO, things you can use immediately in your designs, and in studio critiques as conversation points about your projects)... because it's about experience, these are things you could talk about with a friend who knows nothing about architecture and it would be understandable to them, and they would actually appreciate it... totally relevant stuff i think to any design project, and it's a quick read...

Anything Ching- form space and order, arch graphics, design drawing
A pattern language is good stuff
Graphic Thinking for Architects and Designers by Paul Laseau
THE UNIVERSAL TRAVELER is aweeesome for design studio, esp for first year.

Time Management for Architects and Designers by Thorbjoern Mann.

Maybe not the best book on time management but its well geared toward the specific pitfalls of the profession I think.

10 x 10

any Stan Allen book (points and lines) great for diagramming

archispeak - dictionary of architecture words

SMLXL and SHOPPING are very helpful to add weight to pieces of model you want to glue together