What we're reading this season

We keep a shelf at the studio for books that get passed around. Some are recent, some have been on the shelf for years and keep coming back. Here's what's been moving most lately.

On atmosphere and perception

Atmospheres by Peter Zumthor. A reread, for the third or fourth time. The book is short — barely an essay — but it remains the most precise thing we've found on what it actually feels like to be inside a building. Worth returning to whenever the work starts to feel too technical.

The Eyes of the Skin by Juhani Pallasmaa. Tomas has been keeping this one on his desk for the last three months. It's not a book about architecture so much as a book about how to perceive architecture. Slow and difficult on first read, much clearer the second time through.

On pattern and method

A Pattern Language by Christopher Alexander. Old, sometimes wrong, always useful. We don't follow it as a method, but we keep coming back to specific patterns when a project gets stuck. The chapter on alcoves is particularly good.

It's clarifying to hear what people who don't love what we love have to say about it.

Why You Hate Contemporary Architecture by Brianna Rennix and Nathan J. Robinson. A polemic, deliberately one-sided, but worth reading even if — especially if — you disagree with most of it.

For first-time clients

The Architecture of Happiness by Alain de Botton. Easy to dismiss, harder to ignore. He says things plainly that most architects say obliquely. We've started lending it to clients who are about to begin their first commission.

Living Architecture by Erich Mendelsohn (translated, recent edition). Not new, but newly back in print. The drawings alone are worth the cost.

That's the shelf this season. Email us if you'd like to suggest something for the next one.