Most architects tend to collect books, at least all the ones I know I do. Some are fanatical about their books, me – not so much. Since I moved into a smaller house, I don’t have the space to dedicate to book display and I don’t have the need to scream out to people “I read books!”. It’s possible that the architects that do dedicate considerable space to their book collection are owners of books that could only be described as “rare and precious” but somehow I don’t think that’s really the case.
Once I read a book, I tend to get rid of it unless it falls into one of a few specific categories (decided at the moment I need to find space to put it):
- I’m going to read it again
- I will reference it again
- It has pretty pictures
- I will give it to my daughter
- It is rare and/ or precious
- It symbolizes some important time in my life and is a direct link to that period
That’s about it. I am sure that most people, architects or not, have a similar approach to the books they have. Since I started this blog, I have received several emails about the books I have, what I read, what should someone else read if they want to be an architect, etc. I personally think it’s a bizarre question, like wondering what someones taste in art is…(I like good art by the way). I have books on my shelf that suck, or I didn’t buy, and if you were one of those “book people detectives” and snuck into my home to figure me out by looking at my stuff, you wouldn’t know if those books were mine, my father’s, or my wife’s. With that all out of the way, here is a shot of the built-in bookcase in my study. There is another matching built-in on the other side of the room but I think you’ll get the picture.
These are the books that are at the top of the bookcase because these are mostly the books that fall into the rare and precious category. Some of these books I took from my Dad when he was going to chuck them out and I remember them from my childhood. I looked a few up last year to discover that some are worth a lot of money – not that I plan on selling them. The highlights are:
- The Second World War series by Winston S. Churchill
- John Adams volumes I and II by Page Smith
- The Story of Civilization series by Will and Ariel Durant
- Architect series by Taschen
On Rows 3 and 4, things start getting a little hairy and difficult to categorize. There are books that my daughter loves that get pulled off the shelf with regularity there are some others here that I simply do not know what to do with them. The highlights (for me, not my daughter) include:
- InDetail: Building Simply
- InDetail: Single Family Houses
- Experiencing Architecture by Steen Eiler Rasmussen
- The Architecture of Michelangelo by James S. Ackerman
- Dominion – The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy by Matthew Scully
- The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes
- Kindergarten Chats and other Writings by Louis H. Sullivan
- The Age of Augustus by Werner Eck
The bottom two rows are mostly my architecture books. There are a lot of reference types books here as well as pretty picture books. Since so much o f this information is available on the Internet, unless the book has drawings and details in it, I have stopped buying most of these types of books. It’s not that I don’t like them I just can’t justify the expense associated with glossy coffee table books.
- Case Study Houses by Elizabeth A.T. Smith and Julius Shulman
- Breuer Houses by Joachim Driller
- For an Architecture of Reality by Michael Benedikt
- Complicity and Conviction: Steps toward an Architecture of Convention by William Hubbard
- The Art of Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back edited by Deborah Call, text by Vic Bulluck and Valerie Hoffman
The resolution of the pictures I inserted here should be high enough for you to click one and zoom in to get the title and author. If you want something and can’t make it out, send me an email and I’ll get back to you. You will find some books here that are really good but I didn’t single them out – that’s probably because I am lazy and don’t want to spend any more time on this post. I have really been enjoying autobiographies the last few years and most of my non-fiction falls into that category.
If you are an avid book collector, you probably have need for bookcases. You should check this out before purchasing your next one (click here)
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Two important books missing, “A Pattern Language,” Towns, Buildings, Construction pub by Oxford Press explains everything you ever wanted to know about what makes architecture um…architecture.
Second book not out yet but it’s website i; http://www.chasingflw.com
Carry on.
It would be hard to have a book that’s not commercially available yet. I wonder why you would mention it … could it be that you wrote it? I bet that ‘s it isn’t it?
I hope your book sales go well – cheers
We had a client who didn’t want anyone to see his books..it was too private. Since I never saw them, I always wondered what they included!
Take all the books you are sick of, put them in that freaky wheelie bookcasde thingy that @ModernSauce has, and roll them down the hill! Toward me if they are anything to do with Shaker style, which I love. I love books and have specially made cherry shelves just for them. I went through a few years ago (during a huge downsizing) and got rid of a whole bunch of books. It was a cross between liberating and totally depressing.
PS That Star Wars book seems to be an anomaly.
As to where I was when you originally wrote this post – a) not yet on Twitter, b) teaching in Slovenia. Or I would have loved to have read your book list!
I lucked out and when the U of Washington Law Library was redone I was able to buy their old bookshelves at a bargain for my library. 8 feet high – solid wood. Heaven for a book hoarder like me!
You should but up an Amazon widget on your blog!
Re: the kitchen book with all the post its — ha ha love it! 🙂
Very nice! I've got the Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi sketchbooks. Some of the books in my library include a 1975 copy of the Building Construction Illustrated by Ching, and an excellent 1975 copy of Five Architects (the New York five). That's my prize. It's valued over $100 on Amazon, and it only cost me $10 at Half Price. They had no idea what they had. I've got the typical Morphosis, Meier books. One on Folding Architecture, Eric Owen Moss, and the whole New American Houses series, just to name a few.
Anyone who draws should check out those Star Wars sketchbooks (and the Indiana Jones). There are so many tips and tricks in those books – they are amazing! Since I have mostly worked in smaller offices, I generally have to learn new things on my own and most of the architectural books I have added to my “library” are sitting on the shelves in my office. All the Ching, TimeSavers, Graphic Standards, all the books from the In Detail series (definitely worth picking up), details books, etc. I probably have another 50-75 at the office.
You make me want to go through my collection of books (steadily growing since college and few read since then). I'm afraid I'll probably get all sentimental and not give up a single thing. I've packed and hauled many of them to several residences –How nutty is that? Maybe the thought that I'll have to go through that again with even a larger collection than before will inspire me to take a more determined and objective stance on the relative importance of them in my life. After all, anything I want to read about can be found on the internet… right?
Pam,
When we last moved I had to go through about 30 book boxes just to thin what I had down to where I could store them. I did honestly almost kill me to get rid of what I had been moving from house to house but after they had sat in the box, on the floor in my house of 7 rooms, I had to do it. I also had to get rid of the music cd’s I have been acquiring for the last 20 years – that was another painful move and when I went to resell them, it just pissed me off when they didn’t want to buy some of them. How could you NOT buy any and all BB King cd’s? It was really dark to learn that what you have, no one wants and this is coming from someone who thinks he has ridiculously awesome taste in all things music. My collection covered everything except country music (I’m getting sad again thinking about it)
I'm totally going to zoom in and make a list of every book and then judge you on it! Haha! Thanks for sharing – I always like to peruse the bookshelves of houses I visit! It gets a little awkward when they put their bookshelves in their bedroom though…
Thanks for the shoutout!
MS – I expected no less from you. I will step into the light and let you know that I was a little surprised about seeing so many bibles on the shelf. In the first picture, upper left-hand corner is a series of books I have that discuss the different major world religions (Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Catholicism, Judaism, and Protestantism) and this is a great series if anyone is interested in learning a little about a religion that they weren’t indoctrinated into. The super-jumbo bible on the bottom shelf was the one my family would pull out once a year on Christmas Eve and read from before opening presents. So that leaves me with wondering where all the others came from….
Love the Kitchen one with all of the post-its or bookmarks inside.
When I was about to take the pictures I thought about pulling some books out or straightening the order of the books out a bit (which would have included pulling those post-it notes off). I thought for better or worse I am going to go with things the way they are.