I was just browsing the list above. I actually almost never read any art, architecture, or the philosophy/theory stuff they recommend. I find them insanely boring. I have this Kwinter book. Read about 3 chapters and haven't opened it since, but read 'Origin of Species' for fun.
It's funny ... I go into Labyrinth Books here in New Haven and go to the architecture section and 9 times out of 10, I never find anything I want to read. And when I do, I often wish I hadn't bought the book in the first place. Architecture theory books are typically very poorly written ... and this is what I study, what I'm supposed to be devoting my academic career to. I always end up in history, literature, or sociology/cultural studies.
Don't get me wrong, i love studying architecture. I love writing about architecture. But reading about it just frustrates the hell out of me sometimes.
...tell me about it smokety. Husserl's taken me about six months. You're so right that architecture books are often badly written. What gets me is books that are written in a deliberatly obscure way. I understand that complicated ideas need complicated language. What drives me nuts is when the ideas are obviously simple, but the language is complex.
I figure that if you just read the stuff you're supposed to read then you just think and write the way you're supposed to think and write. You gotta read the wrong stuff, too.
In my attempt to sound highbrow I forgot to mention:
Alistair Maclean - Ice Station Zebra
for some good, refreshing history/theory of architecture that doesn't bog you down, chili's recommendation above of 'theoretical anxiety...' by moneo is something to check out.
hasselhoff - if the kwinter book is 'architectures of time', stop now. i was so excited about that one when i got it, but it's absolutely deadly.
And on that note, I remember being very excited about Reinhold Martin's The Organizational Complex, but it is written in this very stilted, hyper-elevated style. Just because an idea is complex does not mean it needs to be written about in a complex way..
that's why i love reading pallasmaa and zumthor. they don't overcomplicate their language, but they say beautiful things.
another excellent book you should all read: "sculpting in time" by andrei tarkovsky, wherein the russian filmmaker discusses his work in beautiful, simple and yet moving ways. highly highly recommended.
I found Moneo's book interesting, but uneven. I liked the chapters on Siza and Eisenmann, but the Venturi Scott Brown chapter was boring, and I didn't think he had much to say about Herzog and De Meuron or Gehry. The pictures were bad, too.
I've only ever read one Kwinter essay, and it was lots of glitz and I have no idea what it was about.
I recently bought Zumthor's Thinking Architecture and Atmospheres. It was interesting reading because he's a good architect, and I liked reading about how he worked. A bit vague and saccharine though.
I like Tarkovsky, and i see my university has Sculpting in Time. I'll look it up - thanks crillywazzy.
pictures were bad. i forgave that because i'd seen most of it before and/or had it in other books. agreed about the h&d and gehry not being as meaty, but i enjoyed the venturi section very much.
"If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things" by Jon McGregor...stunning writing...
William Gibson has some crazy ways of imagining the world, virtual or otherwise...
"Hav" By Jan Morris...A travel writer, she's created a mythical world of Hav, with a complex and elaborate history...one she transports her readers to with ease and adept observation...
I fourth Murakami--just finished "Kafka On The Shore" and thought about it for days.
I also just finished a few Douglas Coupland's which refreshingly proved to me that it is, in fact, possible to write postmodern lit that isn't total crap.
I keep buying arch books and not reading them. I guess I'd rather draw. Or sleep.
V. (pynchon)
misc. Lawrence Durrell
waiting on a new compilation edited ( but not written by) roger connah
-Atmosphere(pZ)
- Reiser + Umemoto's 'Atlas of Novel Tectonics'
some virilio collected in a reader- ed. by Steve readhead. v. dissapointing commentary
-The conspiracy of art ( baudrillard)
- hedjuk- such places as memory
there's an atlas out by 010 publishers .. at las of te mtropolotain word ? somethign like that , It is great. one of the best references i've had between my hands, Unfortunately pricey however..
also up and comming out to an overpriced arch bookstore near you is the monograph on the Perrault/ M-Preiss collaboration ( austrian super market) I think it's due out in the fall...
also quite good which i recently finished my first round of - Surface Architectue ( mostafavi and Leatherbarrow MIT)
has anyone Bought the Deplazes Handbook that birkhauser came out with . I've almost read it all , crouched in the arch section of various bookstores, cramping my legs, and taking up aisle space... i think i'd like a copy of that more than anything else right now...
murakami? really? i thought windup bird couldve been called suck my life out chronicles. ugh...and i read a lot. all the time. i could barely get through it. you guys must be way intellectual than i am...
fierce invalids home from hot climates. or almost anything tom robbins except his latest one which sucks.
i second the coupland.
and the salinger although my favorite is franny and zooey.
i liked delirious new york inspite of its snooty architecture-ness.
is good in a fragmentary-manifesto type way. I find Tschumi's approach to programming to be a very helpful alternative to 1:1 functionalism. A student of mine pulled out Design Like You Give A Damn and i tried to grab it seeing as Cameron hangs out here, but he grabbed it back.
So .. although I do not usually read theory for pleasure, I am halfway through Foucault's The Order of Things. I bought it because I thought that it would be important for my research .... I may have to read it again once I am done.
I fourth Murakami--just finished "Kafka On The Shore" and thought about it for days.
He is Franz Kafka!
Franz Kafka!
Be careful if you get him pissed…
Franz! Franz Kafka!
He’ll smite you with metaphor fists!
Writing all he can, he’s just a man
A warrior of words taking a stand
He is Franz Kafka!
Spoken: Oh look, but there he is, what will he say?
I’m a lonely German…a lonely German from Prague!
Kafka! Kafka! Kafka!
I'm sorry Myriam, I just couldn't resist after our failed Home Movies adventure.
I just took out Nine Stories by JD Salinger and Reason: Why Liberals Will Win the Battle for America by Robert Reich from the library back home, as well as the Graham Parker cd, Struck by Lightning, but I have yet to read/listen to them.
'The World Is Flat' by Thomas L. Friedman is great book.
It has changed my perception about a lot of things. Don’t be caught off guard when a major disruption out sources a lot of the entry level work to other areas. Hey they even can outsource the order taker at McDonalds. – it is in the book.
Beyond outsourcing there is a growing divide between those who have the skills to leverage technology and those who can not. From most of gen X to millenniums they have the skill set. The boomers are in real trouble in about 5 more years.
The e-myth revisited, Michel Gerber
The portable MBA in entrepreneurship, William Bygrave
The ten day MBA
The Effective Executive, Peter Drucker.
All the rest of the twenty or so business books by Drucker
The 48 Laws of Power
Winning, Jack Welsh (helping a lot as we ramp up to pass the 10 employee mark)
The Goal, by Eliyahu M. Goldratt and Jeff Cox (North River Press, 1986)
The Art of War, by Sun Tzu,
Good to Great,
Rainmaking
Managing the Proessional services firm. - Has helped us a lot too.
saw graham parker do a solo show at a chicago street fair a few years back. he did some of his great old songs, a few new ones and, since it was just after joey ramone's death, sheena is a punk rocker. oh books, 'the man who would marry susan sontag' about post world war 2 bohemian new yawk.
"...features an impressive and sharply detailed heavy, architect West Crosse, who's hailed as a genius for his design skills. But underneath Crosse's art lies a dark soul, a man who wants to engineer human beings to match his perfect buildings at any cost. When a link surfaces among several bodies, each dissected with a brilliant surgeon's skills, Clevenger gets on the case. Crosse, who gave himself a jagged facial scar at age 20 to deliberately spoil his perfect beauty, is now 38. He shocks prospective clients with his opinions ("This is Walter Gropius's house.... It has nothing to do with you," he tells a magnate who proudly inhabits a home designed by the legendary German) and seems not to care if he gets any more work." -
It's a relief to see that all youze architects are reading so much non-architecture stuff: I thought it was just me. I got so tired of reading these pretentious, tedious books in fake-poetic-technical jargon.
There are some good ones, of course. I'm (trying to) read Dalibor Vesely's Architecture in the Age of Divided Representation again. This is a difficult read but, unlike the ones I alluded to above, it actually rewards the effort with some properly profound insights. I rather like architect biographies, not that there's many around. Mark Girouard's of James Stirling is wonderfully gossipy.
As for other subject matter / novels, I've got so many on the go...
Can I flag up one dissention? Murakami. I started to read Norwegian Wood and just couldn't get into it at all.
Flipping through The End of Poverty and Maximum City... ...about to start the Life of Pi. It's about a boy from Tamil Nadu who gets shipwrecked and ends up on a liferaft with a zebra, a hyena, an orangutan and a Bengal tiger.
off to India in 10 days, after a week on the Gulf Coast.
Currently reading The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky, a brilliant little read so far. I recently have finished up, The Dharma Bums by Kerouac, Lolita by Nabokov, and Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy. Enjoyed them all, and as you can tell, I've been on a Russian kick.
It's my favourite of Foucault's books. It's the most strictly methodological one: he sets out his critical method for describing and analysing discourses - the method he uses in The Order of Things. He goes on to change his mind about a few things in The Birth of the Clinic, but I prefer him at his most logical and structural.
"THE ARCHITECT" by Keith Ablow....It is in paperback. Thinking if you don't have time to read it...maybe Brad Pitt might get the leading role in the Movies....
current book obsessions
I second Murakami. Everyone I know who has read him absolutely loves him and will vouch for his books. I read Norwegian Wood and liked it very much.
I was just browsing the list above. I actually almost never read any art, architecture, or the philosophy/theory stuff they recommend. I find them insanely boring. I have this Kwinter book. Read about 3 chapters and haven't opened it since, but read 'Origin of Species' for fun.
It's funny ... I go into Labyrinth Books here in New Haven and go to the architecture section and 9 times out of 10, I never find anything I want to read. And when I do, I often wish I hadn't bought the book in the first place. Architecture theory books are typically very poorly written ... and this is what I study, what I'm supposed to be devoting my academic career to. I always end up in history, literature, or sociology/cultural studies.
Don't get me wrong, i love studying architecture. I love writing about architecture. But reading about it just frustrates the hell out of me sometimes.
Currently obsessed with John Le Carre, some of the best writing about politics ever. The Russia House makes me nostalgaic for the Cold War.
...tell me about it smokety. Husserl's taken me about six months. You're so right that architecture books are often badly written. What gets me is books that are written in a deliberatly obscure way. I understand that complicated ideas need complicated language. What drives me nuts is when the ideas are obviously simple, but the language is complex.
I figure that if you just read the stuff you're supposed to read then you just think and write the way you're supposed to think and write. You gotta read the wrong stuff, too.
In my attempt to sound highbrow I forgot to mention:
Alistair Maclean - Ice Station Zebra
for some good, refreshing history/theory of architecture that doesn't bog you down, chili's recommendation above of 'theoretical anxiety...' by moneo is something to check out.
hasselhoff - if the kwinter book is 'architectures of time', stop now. i was so excited about that one when i got it, but it's absolutely deadly.
Ha, this is great, I was just talking to someone about how much I disliked Architectures of Time.
And on that note, I remember being very excited about Reinhold Martin's The Organizational Complex, but it is written in this very stilted, hyper-elevated style. Just because an idea is complex does not mean it needs to be written about in a complex way..
that's why i love reading pallasmaa and zumthor. they don't overcomplicate their language, but they say beautiful things.
another excellent book you should all read: "sculpting in time" by andrei tarkovsky, wherein the russian filmmaker discusses his work in beautiful, simple and yet moving ways. highly highly recommended.
I found Moneo's book interesting, but uneven. I liked the chapters on Siza and Eisenmann, but the Venturi Scott Brown chapter was boring, and I didn't think he had much to say about Herzog and De Meuron or Gehry. The pictures were bad, too.
I've only ever read one Kwinter essay, and it was lots of glitz and I have no idea what it was about.
I recently bought Zumthor's Thinking Architecture and Atmospheres. It was interesting reading because he's a good architect, and I liked reading about how he worked. A bit vague and saccharine though.
I like Tarkovsky, and i see my university has Sculpting in Time. I'll look it up - thanks crillywazzy.
pictures were bad. i forgave that because i'd seen most of it before and/or had it in other books. agreed about the h&d and gehry not being as meaty, but i enjoyed the venturi section very much.
Maybe I'm just prejudiced against Venturi!
but so was moneo! that was part of the fun.
"If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things" by Jon McGregor...stunning writing...
William Gibson has some crazy ways of imagining the world, virtual or otherwise...
"Hav" By Jan Morris...A travel writer, she's created a mythical world of Hav, with a complex and elaborate history...one she transports her readers to with ease and adept observation...
Hmm, this Moneo thing sounds interesting.
I fourth Murakami--just finished "Kafka On The Shore" and thought about it for days.
I also just finished a few Douglas Coupland's which refreshingly proved to me that it is, in fact, possible to write postmodern lit that isn't total crap.
I keep buying arch books and not reading them. I guess I'd rather draw. Or sleep.
V. (pynchon)
misc. Lawrence Durrell
waiting on a new compilation edited ( but not written by) roger connah
-Atmosphere(pZ)
- Reiser + Umemoto's 'Atlas of Novel Tectonics'
some virilio collected in a reader- ed. by Steve readhead. v. dissapointing commentary
-The conspiracy of art ( baudrillard)
- hedjuk- such places as memory
.........and agfa8x i can't fault your taste
there's an atlas out by 010 publishers .. at las of te mtropolotain word ? somethign like that , It is great. one of the best references i've had between my hands, Unfortunately pricey however..
also up and comming out to an overpriced arch bookstore near you is the monograph on the Perrault/ M-Preiss collaboration ( austrian super market) I think it's due out in the fall...
also quite good which i recently finished my first round of - Surface Architectue ( mostafavi and Leatherbarrow MIT)
has anyone Bought the Deplazes Handbook that birkhauser came out with . I've almost read it all , crouched in the arch section of various bookstores, cramping my legs, and taking up aisle space... i think i'd like a copy of that more than anything else right now...
Pynchon has a new novel coming out in December. I like V. because it contains characters that reappear in Gravity's Rainbow ...
Justine by Durrell is simply amazing.
yes
&
yes
LEED studyguide
murakami? really? i thought windup bird couldve been called suck my life out chronicles. ugh...and i read a lot. all the time. i could barely get through it. you guys must be way intellectual than i am...
fierce invalids home from hot climates. or almost anything tom robbins except his latest one which sucks.
i second the coupland.
and the salinger although my favorite is franny and zooey.
i liked delirious new york inspite of its snooty architecture-ness.
I've just started The Devil in the White City. Its fantastic! (so far)...
Devil in the White City
I am more intellectual than a dead fish.
Here is the link to the Rafael Moneo book if anyone is interested.
Theoretical Anxiety and Design Strategies in the Work of Eight Contemporary Architects
Also, I just got this one.
Architecture and Disjunction
Has anyone else read any Tschumi?
Also, I just got this in the mail today...
Design Like You Give a Damn: Architectural Responses to Humanitarian Crises
I just finished Reyner Banham's Los Angeles: the Architecture of Four Ecologies. Good book. Smart guy.
is good in a fragmentary-manifesto type way. I find Tschumi's approach to programming to be a very helpful alternative to 1:1 functionalism. A student of mine pulled out Design Like You Give A Damn and i tried to grab it seeing as Cameron hangs out here, but he grabbed it back.
So .. although I do not usually read theory for pleasure, I am halfway through Foucault's The Order of Things. I bought it because I thought that it would be important for my research .... I may have to read it again once I am done.
He is Franz Kafka!
Franz Kafka!
Be careful if you get him pissed…
Franz! Franz Kafka!
He’ll smite you with metaphor fists!
Writing all he can, he’s just a man
A warrior of words taking a stand
He is Franz Kafka!
Spoken: Oh look, but there he is, what will he say?
I’m a lonely German…a lonely German from Prague!
Kafka! Kafka! Kafka!
I'm sorry Myriam, I just couldn't resist after our failed Home Movies adventure.
I just took out Nine Stories by JD Salinger and Reason: Why Liberals Will Win the Battle for America by Robert Reich from the library back home, as well as the Graham Parker cd, Struck by Lightning, but I have yet to read/listen to them.
just rocked out to THE MASTER by Colm Toibin. nice for those who appreciate Henry James...
I'm reading I Write What I Like by Steve Biko, south african revolutionary murdered for his stand ..... good stuff.
Anyone read either of these?
'Guns, Germs, and Steel' by Jared Diamond
or
'The World Is Flat' by Thomas L. Friedman
guns,germs, and steel. was pretty good...as a filler in of one's historical cracks?
'The World Is Flat' by Thomas L. Friedman is great book.
It has changed my perception about a lot of things. Don’t be caught off guard when a major disruption out sources a lot of the entry level work to other areas. Hey they even can outsource the order taker at McDonalds. – it is in the book.
Beyond outsourcing there is a growing divide between those who have the skills to leverage technology and those who can not. From most of gen X to millenniums they have the skill set. The boomers are in real trouble in about 5 more years.
Other good books:
The e-myth revisited, Michel Gerber
The portable MBA in entrepreneurship, William Bygrave
The ten day MBA
The Effective Executive, Peter Drucker.
All the rest of the twenty or so business books by Drucker
The 48 Laws of Power
Winning, Jack Welsh (helping a lot as we ramp up to pass the 10 employee mark)
The Goal, by Eliyahu M. Goldratt and Jeff Cox (North River Press, 1986)
The Art of War, by Sun Tzu,
Good to Great,
Rainmaking
Managing the Proessional services firm. - Has helped us a lot too.
saw graham parker do a solo show at a chicago street fair a few years back. he did some of his great old songs, a few new ones and, since it was just after joey ramone's death, sheena is a punk rocker. oh books, 'the man who would marry susan sontag' about post world war 2 bohemian new yawk.
its always good to dream about dean moriarty...
Anybody read this?
The Architect
link
"...features an impressive and sharply detailed heavy, architect West Crosse, who's hailed as a genius for his design skills. But underneath Crosse's art lies a dark soul, a man who wants to engineer human beings to match his perfect buildings at any cost. When a link surfaces among several bodies, each dissected with a brilliant surgeon's skills, Clevenger gets on the case. Crosse, who gave himself a jagged facial scar at age 20 to deliberately spoil his perfect beauty, is now 38. He shocks prospective clients with his opinions ("This is Walter Gropius's house.... It has nothing to do with you," he tells a magnate who proudly inhabits a home designed by the legendary German) and seems not to care if he gets any more work." -
Architect as serial killer...fitting.
sounds unreadable...
It's a relief to see that all youze architects are reading so much non-architecture stuff: I thought it was just me. I got so tired of reading these pretentious, tedious books in fake-poetic-technical jargon.
There are some good ones, of course. I'm (trying to) read Dalibor Vesely's Architecture in the Age of Divided Representation again. This is a difficult read but, unlike the ones I alluded to above, it actually rewards the effort with some properly profound insights. I rather like architect biographies, not that there's many around. Mark Girouard's of James Stirling is wonderfully gossipy.
As for other subject matter / novels, I've got so many on the go...
Can I flag up one dissention? Murakami. I started to read Norwegian Wood and just couldn't get into it at all.
spradic
maximum city is a great book. read it last year, and i just picked it up again. can't wait to get to india.
Flipping through The End of Poverty and Maximum City... ...about to start the Life of Pi. It's about a boy from Tamil Nadu who gets shipwrecked and ends up on a liferaft with a zebra, a hyena, an orangutan and a Bengal tiger.
off to India in 10 days, after a week on the Gulf Coast.
read absurdistan on vacation -beautiful and hilarious
Currently reading The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky, a brilliant little read so far. I recently have finished up, The Dharma Bums by Kerouac, Lolita by Nabokov, and Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy. Enjoyed them all, and as you can tell, I've been on a Russian kick.
Karamazov is so, so brilliant.
Smokety: have you read Foucault's Archaeology of Knowledge?
agfa8x ... I have not read that text. Should I?
It's my favourite of Foucault's books. It's the most strictly methodological one: he sets out his critical method for describing and analysing discourses - the method he uses in The Order of Things. He goes on to change his mind about a few things in The Birth of the Clinic, but I prefer him at his most logical and structural.
Actually ... I bought it today .... thanks for the tip!
"THE ARCHITECT" by Keith Ablow....It is in paperback. Thinking if you don't have time to read it...maybe Brad Pitt might get the leading role in the Movies....
Block this user
Are you sure you want to block this user and hide all related comments throughout the site?
Archinect
This is your first comment on Archinect. Your comment will be visible once approved.