What goes through the mind of an architect when he sits in front of a piece of paper, honestly a lot. Whether it’s a self-taught architect like Tadao Ando or one that went to architectural school. The outcome is the same, they filter through years of reading, experience, and mentorship to come up with their great designs. 

Architecture is itself a very multidisciplinary field, that takes years to master, there is no way you will get a comprehensive architectural education. Most of what you learn in your trade is going to come from self-education and reading material from those that came before you. 

I assembled a list of books for architectural students. A list so diverse it includes, history, philosophy, failures, construction, urban theories, visualization, and more, let’s dive straight into them

Lessons for Students in Architecture

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Herman Hertzberger’s Lessons for Students in Architecture was first published in 1991, as an elaborated version of lectures he had given since 1973 at Delft University of Technology.

It presents a broad spectrum of subjects and designs, with practical experience and evaluation of the use of these buildings serving as a leitmotif. This immensely successful book has gone through many reprints and has also been published in Japanese, German, Italian, Portuguese, Taiwanese, Dutch, Greek, Chinese, French, Polish and Persian. More than 750 illustrations give a broad insight into Hertzberger’s library and a stimulating impression of the influences and sources of inspiration of one of the Netherlands’ major postwar architects.

A Visual History of Architecture

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With over 500 images and 13 specially commissioned 3-D artworks identifying key structural and aesthetic features. This is a visual tour covering more than 350 of the world’s greatest buildings. 

Take a spectacular tour of the world’s architecture—from ancient stupas to modern high-tech skyscrapers to today’s green buildings in architecture. From the Great Pyramids of Giza in Egypt to the Parthenon in Greece, from the White House in Washington, DC, to Burj Khalifa in Dubai and beyond. This visual worldwide survey of architecture offers close-up detailed photographic references to the vocabulary of each period, plus principal elements and decorated features.

Presented in a die-cut slipcase, it is the perfect gift for anyone interested in architecture and engineering.

Foundations of Landscape Architecture: Integrating Form and Space Using the Language of Site Design

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A visually engaging introduction to landscape architectural design

Landscape architectural design seeks to create environments that accommodate users’ varying lifestyles and needs, incorporate cultural heritage, promote sustainability, and integrate functional requirements for optimal enjoyment. Foundations of Landscape Architecture introduces the foundational concepts needed to effectively integrate space and form in landscape design.

With over five hundred hand-rendered and digital drawings, as well as photographs, Foundations of Landscape Architecture illustrates the importance of spatial language. It introduces concepts, typologies, and rudimentary principles of form and space. Including designs for projects such as parks, campuses, and memorials, this text provides the core concepts necessary for designers to shape functional landscapes. Additionally, chapters discuss organizational and spatial design structures based on orthogonal forms, angular forms, and circular forms.

Helping students, professionals, and lifelong learners alike, Foundations of Landscape Architecture delivers a concrete understanding of landscape architectural design to inspire one’s imagination for countless types of projects.

Architectural Graphic Standards (Ramsey/Sleeper Architectural Graphic Standards Series)

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Architectural Graphic Standards is the written authority for architects, designers, and building contractors. It provides comprehensive guidance on the visual representation of materials, products, systems, and assemblies. Updated to reflect the most current codes and standards, this new 12^th edition features over 300 new drawings, tables, and designs and twenty-five percent new content. In response to architects’ feedback and overwhelming demand for a more graphics-heavy format. This edition employs shorter, more accessible texts and more images of the standards and evolution of design and construction. New coverage includes building resiliency and the building envelope, expert discussion on the fundamentals of design and construction documentation, and new examination of environmental factors and material properties and performance. Sustainable Design is no longer separated but incorporated throughout, and extensive appendices keep useful data right at your fingertips.

Graphic standards are essential to building design. They cover everything from door frames and roof designs to air ducts and outdoor sports facilities. This meticulous resource provides a compendium of planning standards, optimum dimensions, and normative construction details. The book is organized into three core sections covering: design and documentation, materials, and building elements.

Architectural Graphic Standards features:

• Key architectural design and production processes, functional planning, environmental assessment, building resiliency, and architectural construction documentation
• Thorough coverage of materials: concrete, masonry, metals, wood, plastics, composites, and glass
• An exhaustive survey of building elements, substructures, shells, services, equipment, furnishings, special structures, and site works
• Comprehensive appendixes filled with pertinent data such as classic architectural elements, mathematical data, and structural calculations

Endorsed by the American Institute of Architects, this book has an enduring and unsurpassed reputation for high-quality illustration, text, and graphic design. For crucial information in a user-friendly format, Architectural Graphic Standards is the go-to reference on building design and construction.

Digital Design Exercises for Architecture Students

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Digital Design Exercises for Architecture Students teaches you the basics of digital design and fabrication tools with creative design exercises, featuring over 200 illustrations, which emphasize process and evaluation as key to designing in digital mediums. The book is software neutral, letting you choose the software with which to edit raster and vector graphics and to model digital objects. The clear, jargon-free introductions to key concepts and terms help you experiment and build your digital media skills. During the fabrication exercises, you will learn strategies for laser cutting, CNC (computer numerically controlled) milling, and 3D printing to help you focus on the processes of design thinking. Reading lists and essays from practitioners, instructors, and theorists ground the exercises in both broader and deeper contexts and encourage you to continue your investigative journey.

Architectural Design with SketchUp: 3D Modeling, Extensions, BIM, Rendering, Making, and Scripting

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Architectural Design with SketchUp, Second Edition, is the leading guide to this incredibly useful tool for architects, interior designers, construction professionals, and makers. With easy to follow tutorials that first brush up on the basics of the program and then cover many advanced processes, this resource offers both informative text and full-color illustrations to clearly convey the techniques and features you need to excel. The updated second edition has a new chapter that explains how to make things with SketchUp and covers 3D printing, design to fabrication, CNC milling, and laser cutting. Other chapters also now cover Building Information Modeling (BIM) and 3D web content generation. Additionally, the revised text offers insight into the latest products and plugin extensions, navigation methods, import/export options, and 3D model creation feature to ensure you have an up to date understanding of how to make SketchUp help you meet your project goals.

A leading 3D modeling application, SketchUp features documentation capabilities through photorealistic renderings and construction drawings. Because of its ease of use and ability to be enhanced with many plugin extensions for project-specific applications, SketchUp is considered the tool of choice for professionals in the architecture, interior design, construction, and fabrication fields.

• Access thoroughly updated information in an easy-to-understand writing style
• Increase your efficiency and accuracy when using SketchUp and refresh and supplement your understanding of SketchUp’s basics
• Explore component-based modeling for assembly, scheduling, collaborative design, and modeling with a BIM approach
• Find the right plugin extensions and understand how to best work with them
• See how easy it is to generate presentation-ready renderings from your 3D models
• Learn how you can use 3D printing, CNC milling, and laser cutting to make things with SketchUp
• Use cookbook-style Ruby coding to create amazing 3D objects
• Supplement your knowledge with video tutorials, sample files, and Ruby scripts via a robust companion website

Architectural Design with SketchUp, Second Edition, is an integral resource for both students and professionals working in the architectural, interior design, construction, and fabrication industries.

Architecture: Form, Space, & Order

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For more than forty years, the beautifully illustrated Architecture: Form, Space, and Order has served as the classic introduction to the basic vocabulary of architectural design. The updated and revised Fourth Edition features the fundamental elements of space and form and is designed to encourage critical thought in order to promote a more evocative understanding of architecture.

Architecture: Form, Space, and Order distills complex concepts of design into a clear focus and brings difficult abstractions to life. The book explains form and space in relation to light, view, openings, and enclosures and explores the organization of space, and the elements and relationships of circulation, as well as proportion and scale. In addition, the text’s detailed illustrations demonstrate the concepts presented and reveal the relationships between fundamental elements of architecture through the ages and across cultures.

This edition includes an access card with a redemption code for the online Interactive Resource Center, which features thirty-five animations, flashcards of key architectural terms, and an image gallery showcasing hundreds of photos that enrich the book’s content.

Landscape Architectural Graphic Standards

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Landscape Architectural Graphic Standards, Student Edition is a condensed treatment of the authoritative Landscape Architectural Graphic Standards, Professional Edition. Designed to give students the critical information they require, this is an essential reference for anyone studying landscape architecture and design.

Formatted to meet the serious student’s needs, the content in this Student Edition reflects topics covered in accredited landscape architectural programs, making it an excellent choice for a required text in landscape architecture, landscape design, horticulture, architecture, and planning and urban design programs. Students will gain an understanding of all the critical material they need for the core classes required by all curriculums

Modern Architecture Since 1900

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Since its first publication in 1982, Modern Architecture Since 1900 has become established as a contemporary classic. Worldwide in scope, it combines a clear historical outline with masterly analysis and interpretation. Technical, economic, social and intellectual developments are brought together in a comprehensive narrative that provides a setting for the detailed examination of buildings. Throughout the book, the author’s focus is on the individual architect, and on the qualities that give outstanding buildings their lasting value.

For the third edition, the text has been radically revised and expanded, incorporating much new material and a fresh appreciation of regional identity and variety. Seven chapters are entirely new, including expanded coverage of recent world architecture.

Described by James Ackerman of Harvard University as “immeasurably the finest work covering this field in existence”, this book presents a penetrating analysis of the modern tradition and its origins, tracing the creative interaction between old and new that has generated such an astonishing richness of architectural forms across the world and throughout the century.

Drawing Architecture: The Finest Architectural Drawings Through the Ages

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Throughout history, architects have relied on drawings both to develop their ideas and communicate their vision to the world.

This gorgeous collection brings together more than 250 of the finest architectural drawings of all time, revealing each architect’s process and personality as never before. Creatively paired to stimulate the imagination, the illustrations span the centuries and range from sketches to renderings, simple to intricate, built projects to a Utopian ideal, famous to rarely seen – a true celebration of the art of architecture.

Visually paired images draw connections and contrast between architecture from different times, styles, and places. From Michelangelo to Frank Gehry, Louise Bourgeois to Tadao Ando, B.V. Doshi to Zaha Hadid, and Grafton to Luis Barragán, the book shows the incredible variety and beauty of architectural drawings.

Drawing Architecture is ideal for art and architecture lovers alike, as well as anyone interested in the intersection of creativity and history.

Archidoodle: The Architect’s Activity Book

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This innovative book is the first to provide a fun, interactive way to learn about architecture. Filled with an array of beautiful and elegant drawings, it poses all manner of architectural challenges for the user: from designing your own skyscraper to drawing an island house or creating a constructivist monument, plus many others more.

Aimed at anyone who loves drawing buildings, it encourages the user to imagine their own creative solutions by sketching, drawing and painting in the pages of the book. In so doing, they will learn about a whole range of significant architectural issues, such as the importance of site and materials, how to furnish a space, how to read plans, how to create sustainable cities and so on.

The book also includes numerous examples of works and ideas by major architects to draw inspiration from and will appeal to everyone from children to students to architects

The New Old House: Historic & Modern Architecture Combined

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The New Old House presents 18 private historic homes, from North America to Europe, and traces the ingenious ways architects have revitalized and refreshed them for a new generation.

Most of the renovations occurred in the last decade, but all the homes have origins reaching back into the past, in some cases hundreds of years. Projects and firms featured include Greenwich House, Allan Greenberg; Longbranch, Jim Olson; Astley Castle, Witherford Watson Mann; Hunsett Mill, Acme; Cotswolds House, Richard Found; plus more than a dozen others. These projects address such timely factors as sustainability, multiculturalism, preservation, and style, and demonstrate the unique beauty and elegance that comes from the interweaving of modernity and history.

30:30 Landscape Architecture

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This book captures the essence of how the world is designed around us. A global and influential group of landscape architects will divulge fascinating details about their work – including their inspirations and design processes – as well as debate the key issues for landscape architects today and in the future.

This up-to-date overview of contemporary landscape architecture offers students, practitioners, and enthusiasts an inspiring and insightful look at global landscape architecture today. Catherine Mosbach, George Hargreaves, Martha Schwartz, and Adrian Geuze, as well as the best and brightest of the next generation of designers, engage with a diverse range of projects, demonstrating both the importance and creativity of landscape architecture.

A truly global list of landscape architects from 20 countries working in Chile, Mexico, USA, Canada, UK, China, South Korea, Japan, Australia, Sweden, Spain, France, Germany, and the Netherlands.

The Architecture Reference & Specification Book updated & revised: Everything Architects Need to Know Every Day

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Most architectural standards and references contain thousands of pages of details, overwhelmingly more than architects need to know on any given day. The updated and revised edition of Architecture Reference & Specification contains vital information that’s essential to planning and executing architectural projects of all shapes and sizes, all in a format that is small enough to carry anywhere. It distills the data provided in standard architectural volumes and is an easy-to-use reference for the most indispensable — and most requested–types of architectural information.

The Language of Architecture: 26 Principles Every Architect Should Know

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In order to master the foundation of architecture, you must first master the basic building blocks of its language; the definitions, function, and usage. The Language of Architecture provides students and professional architects with the basic elements of architectural design, divided into twenty-six easy-to-comprehend chapters. This visual reference includes an introduction to architectural design, a historical view of the elements, as well as an overview of how these elements can and have been used across multiple design disciplines. Whether you’re new to the field or have been an architect for years, you’ll want to flip through the pages of this book and use it as your go-to reference for inspiration and ideas. This comprehensive learning tool is the one book you’ll want as a staple in your library.

The Architecture of Light (2nd Edition): A textbook of procedures and practices for the Architect, Interior Designer, and Lighting Designer.

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Welcome to the Second Edition! The Architecture of Light makes lighting design approachable. This vivid, image packed text of lighting concepts and techniques serves as the perfect companion for lighting design students and professionals alike. Built around a successful teaching curriculum, this text provides a logical step by step progression through the phases of conceptualizing, refining, drafting and presenting lighting design. Written by a practicing professional lighting designer who is also an award-winning design instructor, The Architecture of Light presents a perfect blend of visual design tools and fundamental lighting knowledge. In addition to theory and discussion, The Architecture of Light also provides complete chapters of common lighting details, case studies and a catalog of specific lighting tools. Every architect, interior designer and design student deserves a working knowledge of lighting design and this single book makes it possible.

Introduction to Architecture

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Introduction to Architecture presents the essential texts and drawings of Francis D. K. Ching for those new to architecture and design. With his typical highly graphic approach, this is the first introductory text from Ching that surveys the design of spaces, buildings, and cities. In an easy-to-understand format, readers will explore the histories and theories of architecture, design elements and processes, and the technical aspects of the contemporary profession of architecture.

The book explains the experience and practice of architecture and allied disciplines for future professionals, while those who love the beauty of architecture drawing will delight in the gorgeous illustrations included.

• Overview of the issues and practices of architecture in an all-in-one introductory text
• Includes new chapters and introductory essays by James Eckler, and features more than 1,000 drawings throughout
• Professor Ching is the bestselling author of numerous books on architecture and design, all published by Wiley; his works have been translated into 16 languages and are regarded as classics for their renowned graphical presentation

For those pursuing a career in architecture or anyone who loves architectural design and drawing, Introduction to Architecture presents a beautifully illustrated and comprehensive guide to the subject.

Residential Landscape Architecture: Design Process for the Private Residence (7th Edition) 

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This comprehensive resource guides readers through the entire process of designing a residential landscape, from initial contact with the client and discussion of a rough concept to completing a finished master plan and selecting materials for implementing the design. Numerous illustrations and helpful case study examples provide a clear look at the principles and techniques discussed in the book, making it an ideal introductory text for students and an invaluable reference for professional designers and homeowners.

Residential Landscape Architecture: Design Process for the Private Residence, 7/e retains the content of the previous editions and provides new learning objectives, clearer text, a new overview, and design project used to convey phases of the design process, additional photographs of built projects, discussion of current technologies, and new techniques for rendering color drawings within limited time frames. 

Rem Koolhaas. Elements of Architecture

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Elements of Architecture focuses on the fragments of the rich and complex architectural collage. Window, facade, balcony, corridor, fireplace, stair, escalator, elevator: the book seeks to excavate the micro-narratives of building the detail. The result is no single history, but rather the web of origins, contamination’s, similarities, and differences in architectural evolution, including the influence of technological advances, climatic adaptation, political calculation, economic contexts, regulatory requirements, and new digital opportunities. It’s a guide that is long overdue in Koolhaas’s own words, “Never was a book more relevant at a moment where architecture as we know it is changing beyond recognition.”

Derived, updated, and expanded from Koolhaas’s exhaustive and much-lauded exhibition at the 2014 Venice Architecture Biennale, this is an essential toolkit to understanding the fundamentals that comprise structure around the globe. Designed by Irma Boom and based on research from the Harvard Graduate School of Design, the 2,600-page monograph contains essays from Rem Koolhaas, Stephan Trueby, Manfredo di Robilant, and Jeffrey Inaba; interviews with Werner Sobek and Tony Fadell (of Nest); and an exclusive photo essay by Wolfgang Tillmans.

In addition to comprehensively updated texts and new images, this edition is designed and produced to visually (and physically) embody the immense scope of its subject matter: Custom split-spine binding: our printer modified their industrial binding machine to allow for the flexible, eight-centimeter thick spine

It contains a new introductory chapter with forewords, table of contents, and an index, located in the middle of the book (where it naturally opens due to its unique spine).

Printed on 50g Opakal paper, allowing for the ideal level of opacity needed to realize Boom’s palimpsest-like design

Translucent overlays and personal annotations by Koolhaas and Boom are woven in each chapter to create an alternative, faster route through the book

Printed at the originally intended 100% size for full readability

World Architecture: The Masterworks

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Will Pryce unveils a world of beauty and genius in this unparalleled, specially photographed survey of the world’s architectural masterpieces. More than 350 color photographs celebrate the finest buildings from over two thousand years of civilization: Hagia Sophia, the Gothic cathedrals of Europe, Islamic masterworks at Isfahan, the Taj Mahal, the Palace of Westminster, Gehry’s iconic Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, and much more.

There are eighty buildings featured, more than forty of which receive in-depth attention in detailed photo essays. Pryce’s accompanying texts and commentaries provide an extra dimension of understanding for the contexts in which they were created, and of the evolution of architecture through history. 357 full-color photographs

How Drawings Work: A User-Friendly Theory

How Drawings Work cheekily explains that what architects make is information that enables other people to make buildings. That information comes in a variety of forms: drawings by hand and computer, models both physical and virtual, and words as needed. The book reflects in witty prose on the nature of architectural drawings as tools of communication, pulling from a diverse and eclectic landscape of theories from grammar, functional linguistics, philosophy, art criticism, science fiction, popular culture, and, of course, architecture, to propose a new way to think about architectural communication.

A Global History of Architecture

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A Global History of Architecture provides a comprehensive tour through the ages, spinning the globe to present the landmark architectural movements that characterized each time period. Spanning from 3,500 B.C.E. to the present, this unique guide is written by an architectural all-star team who emphasizes connections, contrasts, and influences, reminding us that history is not linear and that everything was ‘modern architecture’ in its day. This new third edition has been updated with new drawings from Professor Ching, including maps with more information and color, expanded the discussion on contemporary architecture, and in-depth chapter introductions that set the stage for global views. The all-new online enhanced companion site brings history to life, providing a clearer framework through which to interpret and understand architecture through the ages.

Unique in its non-Eurocentrism, this book provides a fresh survey of architectural history with a truly global perspective, fulfilling the National Architectural Accrediting Board’s requirements for ‘non-Western’ architecture in history education.

• Track the history of architecture through a comparative timeline that spans the globe
• Learn how disparate design styles evolved side-by-side, and which elements migrated where
• Delve into non-Western architecture with expert insight and a historical perspective
• Explore further with an online Interactive Resource Center featuring digital learning tools

Escalating globalization has expanded our perspective of both history and architecture beyond Europe and the U.S. Today’s architects are looking far beyond the traditional boundaries, and history shows us that structures’ evolution from shelter to art mirrors the hopes and fears of society along the way. A Global History of Architecture takes you inside the history itself to witness the growth and movements that built our world.

The Design of Everyday Things: Revised and Expanded Edition

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Even the smartest among us can feel inept as we fail to figure out which light switch or oven burner to turn on, or whether to push, pull, or slide a door.

The fault, argues this ingenious — even liberating — book, lies not in ourselves, but in product design that ignores the needs of users and the principles of cognitive psychology. The problems range from ambiguous and hidden controls to arbitrary relationships between controls and functions, coupled with a lack of feedback or other assistance and unreasonable demands on memorization.

The Design of Everyday Things shows that good, usable design is possible. The rules are simple: make things visible, exploit natural relationships that couple function and control, and make intelligent use of constraints. The goal: guide the user effortlessly to the right action on the right control at the right time.

The Design of Everyday Things is a powerful primer on how — and why — some products satisfy customers while others only frustrate them.

The Structural Basis of Architecture

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This is a book that shows how to “see” structures as being integral to architecture. It engages a subject that is both about understanding the mechanical aspects of structure and being able to relate this to the space, form, and conceptual design ideas that are inherent to the art of building.

Analyzing the structural principles behind many of the best-known works of architecture from past and present alike, this book places the subject within a contemporary context. The subject matter is approached in a qualitative and discursive manner, illustrated by many photographs and structural behavior diagrams. Accessible mathematical equations and worked-out examples are also included to deepen a fundamental understanding of the topic.

This new, color edition’s format has been thoroughly revised and its content updated and expanded throughout. It is perfect as either an introductory structures course text or as a designer’s sourcebook for inspiration, for here two essential questions are addressed in parallel fashion: “How do structures work?” and “What form do structures take in the context of architecture – and why so?” A rich, varied and engaging rationale for structural form in architecture thus emerges.

Experiencing Architecture

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Widely regarded as a classic in the field, Experiencing Architecture explores the history and promise of good design. Generously illustrated with historical examples of designing excellence, ranging from teacups, riding boots, and golf balls to the villas of Palladio and the fish-feeding pavilion of Beijing’s Winter Palace, Rasmussen’s accessible guide invites us to appreciate architecture not only as a profession but as an art that shapes everyday experience.

In the past, Rasmussen argues, architecture was not just an individual pursuit, but a community undertaking. Dwellings were built with a natural feeling for place, materials and use, resulting in “a remarkably suitable comeliness.” While we cannot return to a former age, Rasmussen notes, we can still design spaces that are beautiful and useful by seeking to understand architecture as an art form that must be experienced. An understanding of good design comes not only from one’s professional experience of architecture as an abstract, individual pursuit but also from one’s shared, everyday experience of architecture in real-time. Its particular use of light, color, shape, scale, texture, rhythm, and sound.

Experiencing architecture reminds us of what good architectural design has accomplished over time, what it can accomplish still, and why it is worth pursuing. Wide-ranging and approachable, it is for anyone who has ever wondered “what instrument the architect plays on.”

Buildings Across Time: An Introduction to World Architecture

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Now in its fifth edition, Buildings Across Time brilliantly explores the essential attributes of architecture by uniquely combining both a detailed survey of western architecture, including pre-Columbian America, and an introduction to architecture from the Middle East, India, Russia, China, and Japan.  This latest edition includes over 450 new photos, a new essay on the vision of Pope Pius II, and updates on buildings in various parts of the world, such as those that have been given new purpose and those that have been damaged by ISIS.  

Written in a clear and engaging style, the text encourages readers to examine closely in photographs and line drawings the pragmatic, innovative, and aesthetic attributes of buildings, and to imagine how these would have been praised or criticized by contemporary observers.  Architecture is discussed in various contexts – artistic, economic, environmental, political, social, and technological – to determine the extent to which buildings meet the needs of clients, society at large, and future generations. 

Architects’ Houses (30 inventive and imaginative homes architects designed and live in)

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Inventive and imaginative homes in 17 different countries. Spacious or frugal, ambitious or modest, refined or rough-edged, daring or reductive, the inspiring buildings in Architects’ Houses are unique in design concepts, details, and materials, and how they interact with their landscape.

A treasure trove of ideas for homeowners, practitioners and interior designers. Architects’ Houses are richly illustrated with photographs, sketches, and plans. Learn how established architects design their own homes.

Explore the creative process and influence of architects’ houses over the past two hundred years. From Jefferson Monticello to the creations of Charles and Ray Eames, Toyo Ito to Frank Gehry. This generously illustrated book brims with ideas and inspiration as these architects’ houses show different answers to the question: how can a house enrich lives and its natural

Radical Landscapes: Reinventing Outdoor Space

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For many years landscape design was an often disregarded component of the building it surrounded. Today, however, the highly professional practice of landscape architecture is one of the most active and revolutionary areas of design. Drawing on a broad palette of ideas and concepts, landscape designers are reshaping man-made surroundings, from small-scale private gardens to large public spaces. Radical Landscapes presents entirely new ways of seeing and designing outdoor space. Innovative, sometimes synthetic materials, unusual plants, and unexpected forms offer alternative solutions to standard approaches to gardens and yards. To help the reader unlock the potential hidden in any landscape, the book is organized according to the most important issues and techniques of the moment: light and color, movement, order and objects, interaction, new contexts, urban interventions, and narrative. Each chapter is illustrated with works by internationally known designers and architects such as Fernando Caruncho, Adriaan Geuze, Kathryn Gustafson, Walter Hood, Maya Lin, Reiser & Umemoto, and Peter Walker. Meticulously researched and written in an engaging and accessible style by practicing landscape architect Jane Amidon, the texts are packed with information and ideas, a boundless

Architecture: Residential Drafting and Design

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Architecture: Residential Drafting and Design provides comprehensive instruction on traditional and computer-based methods of preparing architectural working drawings, as well as coverage of design and construction principles and methods. It is organized around the design-building process, a logical way for students to easily learn. It is intended to help build the necessary technical skills to communicate architectural ideas in an understandable, efficient, and accurate manner.  

Architecture: Residential Drafting and Design covers all phases of architectural drafting and design. In addition to providing information on architectural drafting, design, and construction, the text includes excellent coverage of computer-aided drafting and design (CADD), 3D parametric modeling applications, and building information modeling (BIM).

The Architecture of Additions: Design and Regulation

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Paul Spencer Byard, an architect and lawyer, looks at more than sixty combinations, built and unbuilt, for criteria to help protect the public interest in great buildings. Drawing on examples from Grand Central Terminal to St. Peter’s Church in Rome, from the Louvre Pyramid to the Salk Institute, this book will help architects work with significant old buildings and help interested private and public persons arrive at judgments about architectural successes and failures that are rational, satisfying, and enforceable. The issues discussed here affect everyone who has a stake in livable cities. 400 Illustrations

Landscape Architecture: An Introduction

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Aimed at prospective and new students, this book gives a comprehensive introduction to the nature and practice of landscape architecture, the professional skills required and the latest developments.

After discussing the history of the profession, the book explains the design process through principles such as hierarchy, human scale, unity, harmony, asymmetry, color, form, and texture. It looks at how design is represented through both drawing and modeling, and through digital techniques such as CAD and the use of GIS (Geographic Information Systems). This is followed by an examination of project management and landscape management techniques. Finally, the book explores educational and employment opportunities and the future of the profession in the context of climate change and sustainability.

Illustrated with international examples of completed projects, Landscape Architecture provides an invaluable, one-stop resource for anyone considering studying for a career in this field

The Architecture Student’s Handbook of Professional Practice

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The Architecture Student’s Handbook of Professional Practice opens the door to the vast body of knowledge required to effectively manage architectural projects and practice. A professional architect is responsible for much more than design; this book is specifically designed to help prepare you for the business and administrative challenges of working in the real world, whether you are a student or are just starting out in practice. It provides clear insight into the legal, financial, marketing, management, and administrative tasks and issues that are integral to keeping a firm running. This new edition has been restructured to be a companion textbook for students undertaking architectural practice classes, while also fulfilling the specific knowledge needs of interns and emerging professionals. It supplements information from the professional handbook with new content aimed at those setting out in the architectural profession and starting to navigate their careers. New topics covered in this new edition include path to licensure, firm identity, professional development, strategic planning, and integrated project delivery.

Whether you want to work at a top firm, strike out on your own, or start the next up-and-coming team, the business of architecture is a critical factor in your success. This book brings the fundamentals together to give you a one-stop resource for learning the reality of architectural practice.

• Learn the architect’s legal and ethical responsibilities
• Understand the processes of starting and running your own firm
• Develop, manage, and deliver projects on time and on budget
• Become familiar with standard industry agreements and contracts

Few architects were drawn to the profession by dreams of writing agreements and negotiating contracts, but those who excel at these everyday essential tasks impact their practice in innumerable ways. The Architecture Student’s Handbook of Professional Practice provides access to the “nuts and bolts” that keep a firm alive, stable, and financially sound.

How to Read Architecture: An Introduction to Interpreting the Built Environment

How to Read Architecture is based on the fundamental premise that reading and interpreting architecture is something we already do, and that close observation matters. This book enhances this skill so that given an unfamiliar building, you will have the tools to understand it and to be inspired by it. Author Paulette Singley encourages you to misread, closely read, conventionally read, and unconventionally read architecture to stimulate your creative process.

This book explores three essential ways to help you understand architecture: reading a building from the outside-in, from the inside-out, and from the position of out-and-out, or formal, architecture. This book erodes boundaries between the frequently compartmentalized fields of interior design, landscape design, and building design with chapters exploring concepts of terroir, scenography, criticality, atmosphere, tectonics, inhabitation, type, form, and enclosure. Using examples and case studies that span a wide range of historical and global precedents, Singley addresses the complex interaction among the ways a building engages its context, addresses its performative exigencies, and operates as an autonomous aesthetic object.

Including over 300 images, this book is an essential read for both undergraduate and postgraduate students of architecture with a global focus on the interpretation of buildings in their context.

Frank Lloyd Wright: The Houses

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Frank Lloyd Wright is not only synonymous with architecture, his name is also synonymous with the American house in the twentieth century. In particular, his residential work has been the subject of continuing interest and controversy. Wright’s Fallingwater (1935), the seminal masterpiece perched over a waterfall deep in the Pennsylvania highlands, is perhaps the best-known private house in the history of the world. In fact, Wright’s houses – from his Prairie-style Robie House (1906) in Chicago, to the Storer (1923) and Freeman (1923) houses in Los Angeles, and Taliesen West (1937) in the Arizona desert-are all touchstones of modern architecture. For the first time, all 289 extant houses are shown here in exquisite color photographs. Along with Weintraub’s stunning photos and a selection of floor plans and archival images, the book includes text and essays by several leading Wright scholars. Frank Lloyd Wright: The Houses is an event of great importance and a major contribution to the literature on this titan of modern architecture.

Constructing Architecture: Materials, Processes, Structures; A Handbook

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Systematically structured and prepared with the student in mind, the book conveys in one volume the necessary basic technical building construction knowledge to enable readers to implement a wide range of designs. For this reason, over the last 14 years, it has developed into an indispensable information and reference handbook, not only for students and teachers, but also for architects.

The 4th edition of this standard work for building construction has again been revised in terms of content and illustrations. References to standards, thermal insulation standards, and some project examples have been updated; they are now comprehensively and systematically documented, explaining the design process from start to finish.

The SketchUp Workflow for Architecture: Modeling Buildings, Visualizing Design, and Creating Construction Documents with SketchUp Pro and Layout

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The revised and updated second edition of The SketchUp Workflow for Architecture offers guidelines for taking SketchUp to the next level in order to incorporate it into every phase of the architectural design process. The text walks through each step of the SketchUp process from the early stages of schematic design and model organization for both renovation and new construction projects to final documentation and shows how to maximize the Layout toolset for drafting and presentations. Written by a noted expert in the field, the text is filled with tips and techniques to access the power of SketchUp and its related suite of tools.

The book presents a flexible workflow method that helps to make common design tasks easier and gives users the information needed to incorporate varying degrees of SketchUp into their design process. Filled with best practices for organizing projects and drafting schematics, this resource also includes suggestions for working with Layout, an underused but valuable component of SketchUp Pro. In addition, tutorial videos complement the text and clearly demonstrate more advanced methods. This important text:

• Presents intermediate and advanced techniques for architects who want to use SketchUp in all stages of the design process
• Includes in-depth explanations on using the Layout toolset that contains example plans, details, sections, presentations, and other information
• Updates the first edition to reflect the changes to SketchUp 2018 and the core functionalities, menus, tools, inferences, arc tools, reporting, and much more
• Written by a SketchUp authorized trainer who has an active online platform and extensive connections within the SketchUp community
• Contains accompanying tutorial videos that demonstrate some of the more advanced SketchUp tips and tricks

Written for professional architects, as well as professionals in interior design and landscape architecture, The SketchUp Workflow for Architecture offers a revised and updated resource for using SketchUp in all aspects of the architectural design process.

The Art of Place: Architecture and Interiors

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The work of architect and interior designer Lee Ledbetter represents a one-of-a-kind combination of traditional details and chic modernism. Lee Ledbetter established his practice in New Orleans in 1996 and has developed a body of work that emerges from his ability to incorporate historical precedent as well as regional and environmental context, and his firm has received recognition for its expertise well beyond its Deep South roots. Ledbetter’s interiors and architecture combine cleanly tailored and bright modernity with the unapologetic embellishment of refined and luxurious decoration. Ledbetter strongly believes design to be a fine art along with painting and sculpture, and he considers the placement and scale of furniture, artwork, and lighting as carefully as he does the creation of walls and the spaces they contain. As Mayer Rus, who provides the text for this title, once wrote in House & Garden, “Lee Ledbetter rejects the idea that a

Japanese Architecture: An Exploration of Elements & Forms

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In Japanese Architecture, author Mira Locher explores how each of these stories encompasses the particular development, construction, function and symbolism inherent in historic architectural elements. From roofs, walls and floors to door pulls and kettle hangers, Japanese architecture situates these elements firmly within the natural environment and traditional Japanese culture.

Japanese architecture developed with influences from abroad and particular sociopolitical situations at home. The resulting forms of construction materials—soaring roofs with long eaves, heavy timber structures of stout columns supporting thick beams, mud plaster walls flecked with straw and sand and the refined paper-covered lattice shoji screen—are recognizable as being of distinctly Japanese design. These constructed forms, designed with strong connections to the surrounding environment, utilize natural construction materials in ways that are both practical and inventive.

This fascinating architecture book provides a comprehensive perspective of traditional Japanese architecture, relating the historical development and context of buildings and the Japanese garden while examining the stories of the individual architectural elements, from foundation to roof.

Precedents in Architecture: Analytic Diagrams, Formative Ideas, and Partis

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Precedents in Architecture, Fourth Edition provides a vocabulary for architectural analysis that illuminates the works of leading architects and aids architects and designers in creating their own designs.

Thirty-eight leading architects are represented in this updated edition through an analysis of more than 100 buildings that are assessed using a diagrammatic technique applicable to any building. This impressive collection includes fourteen new buildings and seven new, innovative architects distinguished by the strength, quality and interest of their designs. It delivers valuable guidance in analyzing architectural history as an evolutionary process by exploring the commonality of design ideas reflected in a broad range of structures by internationally renowned architects.

Both novices and seasoned professionals will find Precedents in Architecture, Fourth Edition to be a very useful tool for enriching their design vocabulary and for the ongoing assessment of buildings found in today’s evolving landscape.

Programs and Manifestoes on 20th-Century Architecture

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The present volume offers eloquent testimony that many of the master builders of this century have held passionate convictions regarding the philosophic and social basis of their art. Nearly every important development in the modern architectural movement began with the proclamation of these convictions in the form of a program or manifesto. The most influential of these are collected here in chronological order from 1903 to 1963. Taken together, they constitute a subjective history of modern architecture; compared with one another, their great diversity of style reveals in many cases the basic differences of attitude and temperament that produced a corresponding divergence in architectural style. In point of view, the book covers the aesthetic spectrum from right to left; from programs that rigidly generate designs down to the smallest detail to revolutionary manifestoes that call for anarchy in building form and town plan.

The documents, placed in context by the editor, are also international in their range: among them are the seminal and prophetic statements of Henry van de Velde, Adolf Loos, and Bruno Taut from the early years of the century; Frank Lloyd Wright’s 1910 annunciation of Organic Architecture; Gropius’s original program for the Bauhaus, founded in Weimar in 1919; “Towards a New Architecture, Guiding Principles” by Le Corbusier; the formulation by Naum Gabo and Antoine Pevsner of the basic principles of Constructivism; and articles by R. Buckminster Fuller on universal architecture and the architect as world planner. Other pronouncements, some in flamboyant style, including those of Erich Mendelsohn, Hannes Meyer, Theo van Doesburg, Oskar Schlemmer, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, El Lissitzky, and Louis I. Kahn. There are also a number of collective or group statements, issued in the name of movements such as CIAM, De Stijl, ABC, the Situationists, and GEAM.

Since the dramatic effectiveness of the manifesto form is usually heightened by brevity and conciseness, it has been possible to reproduce most of the documents in their entirety; only a few have been excerpted.

The Revit Formula: Parameters and Formulas

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The Revit Formula is a direct response to the 400+ page books on Revit that tend to be more discouraging than encouraging; this is a “you-can-do-it book” laser-focused on a specific topic, parameters and formulas.

The goal is to cut through the dry, illegible, and bloated tutorials written by software engineers, and provide an affordable, concentrated, pocketable, and utilitarian guide to parameters and formulas written by a designer for designers. The Architect, the Interior Designer, Structural MEP, the recently graduated, etc. If you work with Revit, this book should sit on your desk.

Now, while the main focus of this book is to learn parameters and formulas in an un-intimidating format, there is a secondary goal. 

There are very useful tried and tested formulas and formula combinations in this book that can help anyone. So, if you don’t have time to digest all of its content, just copy some examples and learn that way. There is no wrong way. Learn by going step by step, by trial and error, or by copying and backward engineering formulas later. Just learn.

Ricardo Bofill: Visions of Architecture

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Poetic spaces, surreal structures, and dramatic visions. The extraordinary career of Ricardo Bofill is collected in this monograph, which reveals his inspiring approach to architecture and to life.

Ricardo Bofill is one of the 20th century’s unique architects and radical visionaries. His visions for urban and communal life challenged preconceived notions of shared space and proposed alternative styles of living. This monograph explores his revolutionary approach by profiling his greatest projects like La Fábrica, Walden 7, La Muralla Roja or Abraxas. Spectacular new photography by Salva López, texts by experts like Nacho Alegre and Douglas Murphy as well as by Bofill himself are complemented with sketches and floor plans.