Top Architecture books curated by experts

Toward an Architecture tries to open up the field to its outside in order to open up the walls of traditional buildings. Indeed, opening the eyes of the architect and opening the eyes of the building constitute a single gesture that liberates an architecture, polemically dissolving the line betw…

First published in 1960, Theory and Design in the First Machine Age has become required reading in numerous courses on the history of modern architecture and is widely regarded as one of the definitive books on the modern movement.

A "gentle manifesto for a nonstraightforward architecture," Venturi's Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture expresses in the most compelling and original terms the postmodern rebellion against the purism of modernism.

Architects' Data (German: Bauentwurfslehre), also simply known as the Neufert, is a reference book for spatial requirements in building design and site planning.

The purpose of Why Architecture Matters is to “come to grips with how things feel to us when we stand before them, with how architecture affects us emotionally as well as intellectually”—with its impact on our lives.

Delirious New York is a polemical investigation of that Manhattan; it documents the symbiotic relationship between its mutant metropolitan culture and the unique architecture to which it gave rise. Though this book argues that it often appears that the architecture generated the culture.

The Architecture of Happiness by Alain de Botton explores how architecture influences our emotions and well-being. It advocates for the importance of beautiful design in our built environment to enhance our quality of life.

The Architecture of the City (Italian: L'architettura della città) is a seminal book of urban design theory by the Italian architect Aldo Rossi published in Padova in 1966. The book marks the shift from the urban doctrines of modernism to a rediscovery of the traditional European city.

It is the only dictionary that provides concise, accurate definitions illustrated with finely detailed, hand-rendered drawings. From Arch to Wood, every concept, technology, material and detail important to architects and designers are presented in Ching's unique style.

S,M,L,XL presents a selection of the remarkable visionary design work produced by the Dutch firm Office for Metropolitan Architecture (O.M.A.) and its acclaimed founder, Rem Koolhaas, in its first twenty years, along with a variety of insightful, often poetic writings.

Thinking architecture is an elegiac allegory on the simplest of feelings of touch, sound, smell and sight and its resonance with architecture. A keen observer, Zumthor is in perpetual search of truth, beauty and meaning.

Marion Mahony Griffin passed the architectural licensure exam in 1898 and created exquisite drawings that buoyed the reputation of Frank Lloyd Wright. Her story is one of the many told in The Women Who Changed Architecture, which sets the record straight on the transformative impact women have m…

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.