100 books like Sydney

On Altering Architecture belongs to a small and unique collection of publications that are involved in distinguishing the discipline of working with existing buildings. In the book, Scott constructs an inspired argument for the understanding of the significance of environmental design disciplines such as Interior design and installation art. The book is divided into twelve chapters, each an essay on reuse and overlapping disciplines. 

Each chapter is full of insightful and interesting case studies, expertly analysed and explained. On Altering Architecture is an absorbing and fascinating book that is packed with ideas, witty asides, mischievous digressions, and provocative thoughts. In parts the tone of the book is conversational, in others authoritative, each blends seamlessly into each other providing a compelling read. 

Having lived in West Hollywood for many years, I have always been interested in the beautiful and historically significant courtyard apartment buildings found throughout the city.

One of the more famous buildings, the Villa Primavera (seen in the Gloria Grahame, Humphrey Bogart film, In a Lonely Place) was designed and built by Arthur and Nina Zwebell in 1923. Their story is quite fascinating, since neither one was formerly trained or a licensed architect.

He designed the building’s exterior, while she designed the interior as well as the furniture.

Behind the Glass is an entire book about a building and the family that built it, lost it, and then reclaimed its heritage 60 years later. It is a complex nonfiction book written by an anthropologist, Michael Lambek, a grandchild of the couple that built the house in 1929. It is about the family, their friendship with famous philosophers like Martin Heidegger and Ernst Tuegend, but most of all, about the house.

If you are an avid supporter of cities, like I am, buildings are fascinating - for their history, their design, and, more recently, for their carbon reduction potential. The Villa Tugendhat, the glass house, was (and remains) a modernist masterpiece designed by Miles Van der Rowe in 1928. As an architect, Van der Rowe was incredibly influential in major cities globally - in my home city of Toronto, for example.

This book focuses on the philosophical reasons the… show more.

Don't worry if you really don't care about housing in London or Liverpool: you should read this book about what happens when a country gives high-rise housing its best shot, and then messes things up. It is partly a cautionary tale about what happens when support for ambitious housing projects is killed by right-wing politicians, but also a tribute to the people who thought at first they'd died and gone to heaven when they got a flat with inside plumbing.  

If you have spent any time in Moscow, you can’t help but notice the seven Stalinist vysotki (“tall buildings” – not to be confused with capitalist skyscrapers) that dot the landscape. I love how this book provides a full history and context of how these buildings embodied many aspects of Soviet ideology, with all of its contradictions.

Zubovich combines this with the stories of the people connected with them – those displaced to make way for their construction, Gulag inmates who were key to their construction, and the Soviet elites who lived in them. 

Whenever I’m reading Ruskin, I feel like I’m overhearing a crusty old man’s rant. Some rants I love—when he talks about honesty in materials, or his in-depth thoughts on nature and light; some I question—demonizing cast iron facades; and others I disagree with—the necessity for obedience to God as an architect. And some of his ideas are so outdated, they’ve almost come back full circle. But the reason I included this older volume, is simply because Ruskin’s seven principles on architecture have withstood the test of time.

This book is as much about urban design and landscape architecture as about architecture, its annotated sketches demonstrating how good places respond to their contexts.

I like its straightforward, practical, and concise approach. Although billed as ‘a manual for designers’, it is equally useful in analysing why some environments work, both practically and emotionally, and others don’t.

It is opinionated, not afraid to criticise as well as applaud. 

Over his lifetime, Alexander’s controversial approach to architecture incited widespread criticism, yet it is precisely these unique and thought-provoking ideas that make The Nature of Order an essential read. Beyond his sometimes obscure writing style and lackluster built examples, Alexander's deep commitment to architecture as a complex layered system of patterns—an idea he first popularized in his hippy-architects bible, A Pattern Language—is still palpable in this four-volume magnum opus. 

I found the second volume, where he offers a guide for how to “create life” through patterns, most pertinent to this list. Here he distills his earlier work down to fifteen essential patterns that lead to architecture as a living structure. There is gold to be mined here, for those in search of some semblance of order in the chaotic current of modern architecture. 

In this book, Patsy Healey develops an approach to understanding and evaluating governance processes of urban space by investigating ‘actors’ who are involved in these processes and their power relations.

On the one hand, she emphasizes the importance of context, such as economic, social, and environmental contexts, which impact how the physicality of space and its governance process is shaped. Using a social constructivist and relational approach, she investigates urban space, its dynamics, and governance processes and shows the multiplicity of social worlds, rationalities, and practices that co-exist in the urban context.

Healey also explores and demonstrates the complexity of the power relations between actors of urban space governance. She finds out that particular forms of the collaborative process of spaces (especially socially inclusive and just collaborative ones) can be more effective in transforming practices, cultures, and outcomes.

This is a fun sketching book to let your imagination run wild. More than just a coloring book, there are visual prompts that allow the user to modify or redesign an iconic building, or create one from scratch. It provides the framework; you provide the artistry. For kids and adults of all ages, this book will provoke creativity and encourage the architect in everyone.