Reading list

I’m personally particularly fond of selections marked with a (!). Not to say that all the other selections aren’t genius, but these are books I think of as foundational either in and of themselves, or because they’re canny distillations of other work.

V/A: Know Your Place: The Headmap Manifesto

(!) Alexander, Christopher: A Pattern Language

(!) Ascher, Kate: The Works: Anatomy of a city

Augé, Marc: Non-places: Introduction to an anthropology of supermodernity

Baines, Phil and Catherine Dixon: Signs: Lettering in the Environment

Barth, Gunther: City People

(!) Benjamin, Walter: selections from The Arcades Project

(!) Borden, Iain: Skateboarding, Space and the City: Architecture and the Body

(!) Brand, Stewart: Chapter 2, “Shearing Layers,” from How Buildings Learn: What Happens After They’re Built

Brecht, Bertolt: Brecht on Theater

Canetti, Elias: Crowds and Power

Chetgov, et al.: Theory of the Derive: And other Situationist Writings on the City

Davis, Mike: City of Quartz

De Cauter, Lieven: The Capsular Civilization

(!) De Certeau, Michel: Chapter VII, “Walking in the City,” from The Practice of Everyday Life

DeLanda, Manuel: Part I, “Lavas and Magmas,” from A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History

Dourish, Paul: Where the Action Is

Ferre, Albert, et al.: Verb Connection

Ferro, Gaetano: The Genoese Cartographic Tradition and Christopher Columbus

Forrester, Jay: Urban Dynamics

Garreau, Joel: Edge City

Greenfield, Adam: Everyware: The dawning age of ubiquitous computing

Haydn, Florian, ed.: Temporary Urban Spaces: Concepts for the Use of City Spaces

Holland, Laurence: Who Designs America?

Hughes, Jonathan, ed.: Non-Plan

(!) Jacobs, Jane: The Death and Life of Great American Cities

Johnson, Steven: The Ghost Map

Kinneir, Jock: Words and buildings

Latour, Bruno: Aramis, or the Love of Technology

(!) Lefebvre, Henri: The Production of Space

(!) Lynch, Kevin: The Image of the City

Lynch, Kevin: What Time is This Place?

McCullough, Malcolm: Digital Ground

Mollerup, Per: Wayshowing

Neuwirth, Robert: Shadow Cities

(!) Norman, Donald A.: The Design of Everyday Things

Oldenburg, Ray: The Great Good Place

Pawley, Martin: Terminal Architecture

RAMTV: Negotiate My Boundary

Rudofsky, Bernard: Streets for People

Ryan, Zoe: The Good Life: New Public Spaces for Recreation

Sadler, Simon: The Situationist City

Sante, Luc: Low Life

Sterling, Bruce: Shaping Things

(!) Suchman, Lucy: Plans and Situated Actions

Tuan, Yi-fu: Space and Place

Virilio, Paul: Speed and Politics

(!) Whyte, William H.: The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces

Zardini, Mirko, ed.: Sense of the City

You will also find this list, compiled by our friend Timo Arnall at AHO in Oslo, extremely helpful. Timo’s dug up links for free online excerpts from many of the above titles.