Unpacking My Library: Architects and Their Books

I am unpacking my library. Yes I am. . . . Be ready to share with me a bit of the moodit is certainly not an elegiac mood but rather one of anticipationwhich these books arouse in a genuine collector. . . . What I am really concerned with is giving you some insight into the relationship of a book collector to his possessions into collecting rather than a collection. Walter Benjamin 1931 What does a library say about the mind of its owner? How do books map the intellectual interests curiosities tastes and personalities of their readers? What does the collecting of books have in common with the practice of architecture? Unpacking My Library provides an intimate look at the personal libraries of twelve of the worlds leading architects alongside conversations about the significance of books to their careers and lives. Photographs of bookshelvesdisplaying well-loved and rare volumes eclectic organizational schemes and the individual touches that make a bookshelf ones ownprovide an evocative glimpse of their owners personal life. Each architect also presents a reading list of top ten influential titles from architectural history to theory to fiction and nonfiction that serves as a personal philosophy of literature and history and advice on what every young architect scholar and lover of architecture should read. An inspiring cross-section of notable libraries this beautiful book celebrates the arts of reading and collecting. Unpacking My Library: Architects and Their Books features the libraries of: Stan Allen Henry Cobb Liz Diller & Ric Scofidio Peter Eisenman Michael Graves Steven Holl Toshiko Mori Michael Sorkin Bernard Tschumi Todd Williams & Billie Tsien Peter Eisenmans Recommended Titles: Robert Musil The Man Without Qualities Le Corbusier Vers une Architecture Thomas Pynchon Gravitys Rainbow Robert Venturi Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture Rem Koolhaas Delirious New York Jacques Derrida Of Grammatology Andrea Palladio The Four Books on Architecture Walter Benjamin Illuminations James Joyce Finnegans Wake William Faulkner Light in August Published in association with Urban Center Books The Architecture Bookstore of the Municipal Art Society of New York