Designers and Books

from PYLON: FALL 2022

by AIA Brooklyn

A School Grows in Brooklyn New York City College of Technology — City Tech

A publisher and website based in Park Slope, Brooklyn

Designers and Books aims to be a unique resource for books and information about books for the international architecture and design communities.

WRITTEN BY STEVE KROETER, EDITOR IN CHIEF; STEPHANIE SALOMON, EXECUTIVE EDITOR

Founded in 2011, the website designersandbooks.com was inspired by the ubiquitous bookshelves filled with volumes found in design offices.

What became evident was that for designers and architects, who are required daily to be creative on demand, books served as sources of inspiration, influence, and education.

We concluded that if we could persuade respected designers to reveal the books they looked to for inspiration, that we would be providing a worthwhile service.

We began to receive book lists from architects, fashion designers, graphic designers, interior designers, product designers, critics, and deans. Among the architects we heard from, and a sample title they sent:

→ David Adjaye (In Praise of Shadows) → Deborah Berke (Modern Architecture) → Winka Dubbeldam (Out of Control) → Norman Foster (Architecture Without Architects) → Jeanne Gang (The Map that Changed the World) → Juhani Pallasmaa (Invisible Cities)

The responses were always interesting and enlightening, and sometimes turned out to be quite surprising. Not just books on architecture, but also on art, poetry, science, biography, fiction: a very wide swath of topics.

The website gradually led to a direct involvement for us in publishing initiatives, first helping others, and then going out on our own. Our particular interest was always in books with content of consequence, also equally with interesting and unusual design features.

We were invited to assist Lars Müller Publishers in bringing a classic design book from the 1960s by Ladislav Sutnar back into print: Visual Design in Action. We then introduced titles from our own imprint: Depero Futurista, also known as “The Bolted Book” (which was co-published by Thames & Hudson), and The Notebooks and Drawings of Louis I. Kahn (which is distributed by Yale University Press).

Our next project, currently in development, will feature unpublished drawings of Pritzker Prize winner Aldo Rossi. Following Rossi, our plans include volumes on Alvar Aalto, Zaha Hadid, Mies, Charlotte Perriand, and Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown.