READING LIST
We love books. They are wonderful little windows into knowledge and the narrative of unknown worlds. Books inform and evoke our senses, they shape our critical minds and bring world-issues to our homes. Books simply make us better humans (and not just better architects). We love those academic, poetic, science-fiction and literary authors.
You are WELCOME to browse our "BookClubMN" blog. Here we take the challenge to experiment with representing those worlds, being either past, present or future, real worlds or imaginary utopias or dystopian. We are not afraid to go BEYOND the known, we are not afraid to SKETCH and freeze in time what words can otherwise merely suggest. We are not afraid to interpret facts, to speculate with the unknown or to IMAGINE alternative realities!
Dr. Guillermo Aranda-Mena, 21 November 2019 (updated on October 27th, 2023)
Reading list for 2023/24:
“The Spire” by William Golding
“Toprak Ana” (English Translation _ Mother Earth) by Chinghiz Aitmatova (originally written in Kyrgyz)“Moon Palace” by Paul Auster
"Rome" by Robert Hughes
"Barcelona" by Robert Hughes
"How to Do Nothing; Resisting the Attention Economy" by Jenny Odell
"The Secret Power of Beauty, Why Happiness is in the Eye of the Beholder" by John Armstrong
"The Architecture of Happiness" by Alain de Botton
"The Consolations of Philosophy" by Alain de Botton
“Rinascimento Privato” by María Bellonci (in Italian)
“Last futures: Nature, Technology and the end of Architecture” by Douglas Murphy
"Gertrude", by Hermann Hesse (1910)
"Small Island Developing States" by Stefano Moncada et.al. (from the series of volumes "The World of Small States")
"Letters to a young poet" by Rainer Maria Rilke
"Genius Loci: Towards a Phenomenology of Architecture"
by Christian Norberg-Schulz
"Kafka on the Shore", by Murakami Haruki (2002).Reading list for 2022/23:
"Circe" by Madeline Miller (2019)
“The Exodus Quest” by Will Adams (2010)
“Buying a fishing rod for my grandfather” by Gao Xingjian (2004)
“ Susan Sontag On Photography” (Penguin Classics 1971)
“Museum of Innocence” by Pamuk Orhan (2008)
“In Praise of Shadows” Junichiro Tanizaki (1933)
"Critical Path" by R. Buckminster Fuller. St. Martin's Griffin. N.Y."The Pillars of the Earth" by Ken Follett" MacMillan Ed. (1989).
"A Room of One's Own", “Miss Holloway” and "Three Guineas by Virginia Wolf Vintage Classics (2001).
"War Gardens; A Journey Through Conflict in Search of Calm" by Lalage Snow, Quercus Eds. (2019).
"Landscape and Memory" by Simon Schama. Knopf. New York (1995). ISBN 0670402551
"Buying a Fishing Rod for my Grandfather" (six short stories by Gao Xingjian's). Flamingo, Harper Collins Eds. Also, "Soul Mountain" by Gao Xingjian (1997).
"Love in the Time of Cholera" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Knopf. Ed. New York. (2007).
"Space Odyssey; Stanley Kubrick, Arthur C. Clarke, and the Making of a Masterpiece" by Michael Benson. Simon & Schuster Eds. (2018)>
“Scritto di Note” da Ettore Sotsass
Reading list for 2021/22:
“The Beauty of Everyday Things” by Soetsu Yanagi.
“The New Urban Crisis” by Richard Florida.
“After Dark” by Haruki Murakami.
“Thérèse Raquin” by Émile Zola.
“Species of Spaces” by Georges Perec.
“Last Man in Tower” by Aravid Adiga.
“La polvere del Messico” (short stories) by Pino Cacucci.
“How Buildings Learn: what happens after they are built?” Stewart Brand, 1994
by John Habraken Taylor & Francis ISBN 0-415-35791-8
“Parallax” by Steven Hall.
“Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” by Phillip K. Dick.
“The Shadow of the Wind” by Carlos Ruiz Zafón.
“Design for the Real World” by Victor Papanek
"Dentro il labirinto" by Andrea Camilleri
"Dune" by Frank HerbertReading list for 2019/20:
“Flesh and Stone” Richard Sennett.
"The hunchback of Notre Dame" by Victor Hugo.
"The Fall of the House of Usher" by Edward Allan Poe.
"Il Conde di Montecristo" Alexandre Dumas (attributed to).
"Papillon" by Henri Charrière.
"Essai sur l'architecture" by Marc-Antoine Laugier.
"Energy and equity" Ivan Illich.
"Brave New World" by Aldous Huxley.
"Fahrenheit 451" Ray Bradbury's.
"Le case che siamo (The homes that we are) by Luca Molinari, Milano Nottetempo Ed 2016 - ISBN 978-88-7452-745-8
"Amate l'architettura" by Gio Ponti.
"Fictions" (Ficciones) by Jorge Luis Borges.
"La poétique de l'espace" by Gaston Bachelard.
"The game" by Alessandro Baricco.
"Learning from Las Vegas" by Robert Venturi.
"Atmospheres: Architectural Environments, Surrounding Objects" by Peter Zumthor.
"Why Architecture Matters" by Paul Goldberger.
"Norwegian Wood" by Murakami, Haruki.
"American Lessons" by Italo Calvino.
"A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction" by Christopher Alexander, Murray Silverstein e Sara Ishikawa.
"The image of the city" by Kevin Lynch.
"The Generic City" by Rem Koolhaas.
"Two weeks in another town" by Irwin Shaw (is a story about holiday in Rome).
Reading list for 2018/19:
Here below is a list of the various titles we have read and enjoyed depicting:
"The Well-Tempered City" by Jonathan Rose.
"Darwin Comes to Town" by Menno Schilthuizen.
"Happy City" by Charles Montgomery.
"Book of Unforgettable Journeys", The Conde Nast Traveler collection.
"The Art of Travel" by Alain de Botton.
"The Ruins of Paris" by Jacques Réda.
"Invisible Cities" by Italo Calvino.
"La Metamorfosi" by Franz Kafka.
"The Australian Ugliness" by Robin Boyd.
"Building and Dwelling; Ethics for the City" by Richard Sennett.
"The Death and Life of Great American Cities" by Jane Jacobs.
"Creating Emotionally Intelligent Workspaces: A Design Guide to Office Chemistry" by Edward Finch and Guillermo Aranda-Mena.
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