No matter how prepared I think I am, December is always a frenzy. Between wrapping up end-of-the-year projects and remembering to buy wrapping paper, the days disappear faster than my coworker’s toffee. If you’re anything like me, the holidays are heralded by a panicky visit to the mall and a desperate scramble to find the right gift. Chances are that gift will be a book (sorry, sis).

Luckily for you, we’ve put together a handy guide to some of this year’s most exciting titles. Have an architecture student in the family? No problem. A vegan, card-carrying eco-warrior aunt? Perfect. A cousin who just loves design? We’ve got you covered.

And if you have a long-haul flight coming up, treat yourself to one of these great titles and you’ll arrive at your destination before you know it!

The Young-at-Heart

Architecture is always changing and it can be hard to catch up. Young Architects 16: Overlay highlights the six emerging American firms who won the prestigious Architectural League Prize, and is a great introduction to how these practices are shifting things up.

Alternatively, the Treatise series, curated by Jimenez Lai, includes 14 of some of the most exciting new(it) voices in architecture. There’s a lot to choose from here, and it would be hard to go wrong with one of these elegantly-designed editions. They’re also a good excuse for a party – trust us.

The Avant-Gardist

Slow Manifesto, the print translation of the influential architect Lebbeus Wood’s blog, which began in 2007 and lasted until his death in 2012, is the perfect gift for your more radically-minded loved ones. Then again: “Woods' ideas are essential to any era of architecture,” states Slow Manifesto’s editor, Clare Jacobson, in an interview with Archinect’s Amelia Taylor-Hochberg. The book contains a wealth of drawing and writing by Woods.

The Urbanist

Sidewalking: Coming to Terms with Los Angeles, by the Guggenheim Fellow and Los Angeles Times book critic David Ulin, makes the perfect gift for an Angeleno but will be loved by any cityphile, regardless of location. According to Archinect’s Julia Ingalls, “By richly layering history and personal observation, Ulin unspools the divergent threads of LA one walk at a time, exploring not only his relationship to the city, but the city's relationship to itself.”

The (New) Classicist

Okay, so here I’m using “classicist” loosely, but nonetheless, the great (and radical) tomes of the last century always deserve a second glance. Check out Amelia Taylor-Hochberg’s 1-star Amazon reviews of famous architecture texts for a humorous revisiting of some famous architecture texts, as reviewed by Amazon users. Or, revisit the impressive oeuvre of Steven Holl – far from a classicist, although his works are contemporary classics, in my opinion – with his new monograph published by Phaidon. Check out his conversation with Julia Ingalls, here. 

The Poet

Reviewed here by Julia Ingalls, the New Concrete is a contemporary reinvestment in “concrete poetry,” an art form mostly associated with the 1960s. Making the case that the medium is far from used up, the book looks at new modes of visual poetry. While not an architecture book, per se, it’s always important to consider the bridges spanning disciplines: the poetics of space and the architecture of a poem.

The Technophile

There’s a lot of talk today about the so-called “smart city” and “intelligent architecture.” But cities have been “mediated, and intelligent, for millennia,” according to Shannon Mattern, the author of Deep Mapping the Media City, an important addition to contemporary discourses on the relationship between the city and technology. This slim volume is stocked with clear-headed analysis and, in turn, will make the perfect stocking-stuffer.

The Technophobe

Drawing from Practice: Architects and the meaning of freehand will make the perfect gift for that person in your life who refuses to replace their pencil with a cursor. With over 200 full-color drawings, the book explores the importance of the freehand sketch for architects.

These pocket-sized Architect Says notebooks are the perfect complement to Drawing from Practice. You never know when inspiration will strike, especially when your notebook has an inspirational quotation emblazoned on its cover!

The Speculative Ecologist

End Matter is another ideal stocking stuffer: a compact volume loaded with fascinating content. The only book on this list that qualifies as fiction, Katrina Palmer’s novella imagines an enigmatic group tasked with counterbalancing the loss of Portland stone (used for monuments and buildings throughout the UK) with presence. A strange, but digestible, narrative, End Matter will appeal equally to geologists, metaphysicists, and your average book-lover.

Strangely enough, this made-up category also vibes with The Geologic Imagination, a large-format volume that collects a wide-range of responses by architects, philosophers, geologists, and artists to the Anthropocene thesis. Both eye-opening and inspiring, it will make a great gift for your environmentalist friend with a predilection for the weirder side of ecological thinking. 

The Pragmatist

Designed for the Future: 80 Practical Ideas for a Sustainable World, a diverse collection of design strategies to adapt to various climate crises and contexts, will make the perfect for the friend or family member who wants to make a difference. Spanning socially-oriented practices and environmentally-aware projects, this book is sure to spark some inspiration for the do-good’er in your life.

Another handy and practical guidebook, the Underdome Guide to Energy Reform  “catalogs ideologies behind energy rhetoric to enable participants in the building process to make informed choices and identify allied approaches.” It’s a well-designed, accessible text that helps you figure out where various design strategies sit ideologically, as well as question preconceived notions of what qualifies as smart resource use.