6 books on architecture

If you want to dig deeper into what design and architecture are, then it makes sense not only to watch videos and read articles in popular magazines – but also to replenish your bookshelf. We have collected 6 books that will help you better understand the modern practices of organizing space.

Paul Goldberger “Why Architecture is Needed”

Written by New Yorker and Vanity Fair architecture columnist and Pulitzer Prize-winning Paul Goldberger. In the book, both subjectivity, when the author shares his feelings about a particular project, and a scientific approach are present in equal shares. Much is said about the history of architecture, as well as about the impact of design on urban life.

Daniel Brook “A History of Future Cities”

An urban architect’s guide to four metropolitan areas. Daniel Brook talks about Mumbai, Shanghai, Dubai and … St. Petersburg. Each of these cities at one time became a platform for experiments, a place where the architecture of the future was embodied – and Daniel tells exactly how everything happened.

Colin Ellard Habitat. How architecture affects our behavior and well-being “

Colin Ellard is a professional research psychologist whose work focuses on the influence of architecture and design on our thoughts, desires and moods.

Colin Allard’s popular science book answers many questions. Is it true that people who see trees get sick less? How should a temple be built so that believers come more often? Why are the rats living in a shoebox not as smart as those living in special rat houses? ..

And the main thing is that all the answers given by the author are supported by the authority of the scientific method.

Christopher Alexander, Sarah Ishikawa, Murray Silverstein “Template Language”

The authors express a paradoxical hypothesis: the best projects are born not from celebrities, but from ordinary people – and therefore it is better if you design your house yourself and do not order a project from a design bureau. For example, it is better to entrust the city square to the residents of the district.

The book consists of hundreds of small articles that talk about both construction and the interaction of architecture with the environment. After reading The Language of Patterns, you will understand how to design stadiums, roads, hospitals and spaces for teenagers where to put a lamp. Because all these, according to the authors, are different sides of the same problem: the problem of creating comfort

Walter Gropius “The Circle of Total Architecture”

Gropius’ Circle of Total Architecture is a Bauhaus classic. The book was published in 1955, and it contains the results of thirty years of development of the ideas of the Bauhaus.
Despite the fact that the book is more than sixty years old, it raises urgent problems of the creative role of the designer and architect. An entire chapter is devoted to housing construction, some of the ideas from it are still applied in metropolitan areas like London and New York.

Rem Koolhaas “Waste space”, “Gigantism, or the problem of the Bolshoi”, “Generic city”

In these three essays, Koolhaas talks about the vices of modern urbanism. “Waste space” reveals the main problem of a modern metropolis – a heap of faceless business centers, which make cities look like one another.

The elements are not connected in any way, buildings are erected without regard to context. In “Gigantism” Koolhaas draws attention to megalomania, “the extreme stage of architecture”, when the tasks of buildings are disproportionate to the scope of construction, meaning is lost against the background of scale, and fresh forms are outside the urban landscape.