Top Architecture books curated by experts

Whether it's through her thriving design business, Studio McGee, her popular Netflix series, Dream Home Makeover, or her online community of over five million followers, Shea McGee has shown the world how the principles of high-end design can be applied to any home. As the title of her new book …

Overall, "Learning from Las Vegas" is a groundbreaking work that challenges the dominant paradigm of modern architecture and proposes a new approach that is more democratic and responsive to the needs of ordinary people. It is a must-read for anyone interested in architecture, urbanism, and cult…

“In Praise of Shadows” (In-ei Raison) is a long essay published in 1934, in which Tanizaki sums up what he feels Japan has lost in becoming modern. In brief, it is his view that the traditional Japanese arts thrived in the shade, and that the glaring light of the Twentieth Century is destroying …

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 …

Engineering in Plain Sight extends the field guide genre from natural phenomena to human-made structures, making them approachable and understandable to non-engineers. It transforms readers' perspectives of the built environment, converting the act of looking at infrastructure from a mundane ine…

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.

Yes is Moreis the easily accessible but unremittingly radical manifesto of Copenhagen-based architectural practice Bjarke Ingels Group, or BIG. Unlike a typical architectural monograph, this book uses the comic book format to express its groundbreaking agenda for contemporary architecture.

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.

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

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 ric…

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…

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.

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.