Unpacking My Library: Architects and Their Books
✍ 2009: Jo Steffens, editor; with an essay by Walter Benjamin
A great way to annoy friends or loved ones with an interest in popular culture is to consistently look past the celebrities in the glossy magazines at the books on the shelves behind them (“Look at her arms; do you think she’s anorexic?” “I don’t know, but don’t you think she’s a bit old to be reading Ayn Rand and Hermann Hesse?”). More than any other conceit, an individual’s library provides reliable insight into their their self image. This delicious little book, based on an exhibition at Urban Center Books (The Architecture Bookstore of the Municipal Art Society of New York), showcases the libraries of twelve renowned architects, simultaneously cataloguing their intellectual influences and betraying their intellectual affectations. Editor Jo Steffens, who previously edited Block by Block: Jane Jacobs and the Future of New York City, offers a series of photographs of each library with the books in place on their shelves, recording the library’s aesthetic and organizational context along with its contents.
In addition to the photographs, each participant is asked to provide a reading list of the ten books that have most influenced them and interviews allow each to assess the importance of their libraries to their careers. One wonders if, after the initial flattery of being approached for the project, any of the twelve experienced trepidation at the thought of all those strangers looking at their books. While allowing guests to snoop our books is something that we readily tolerate, one’s library is undoubtedly more revealing than the medicine cabinet we keep locked, or the porn collection and notebook of juvenile poetry we hide so scrupulously. (2009: Yale University Press; ISBN 9780300158939)
$22.95
Oh, and the architects whose libraries and reading lists are featured are:
Stan Allen
Henry Cobb
Liz Diller & Ric Scofidio
Peter Eisenman
Michael Graves
Steven Holl
Toshiko Mori
Michael Sorkin
Bernard Tschumi
Todd Williams & Billie Tsien
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