Whether you’re an architect looking for inspiration, or you’re an architecture student aspiring for a successful career in architecture, learning architecture through books is a great way to start. But, sometimes figuring out the best architecture books with so many choices in libraries and online can be overwhelming. Especially since some of these books are quite expensive therefore, you should only get the ones that you’ll truly use.
fortunately, our many years of experience working in the architectural field provided us with knowledge of some valuable architectural books that helped us along the way and gave us guidance, inspiration & creative ideas.
So, here we will share our best 20 Architecture books in 2020.
1.Architecture: Form, Space, & Order:
[maxbutton id=”1″ url=”https://amzn.to/2ybZ9Hr” ]
First of all, we have This beautifully illustrated Book which has served as the classic introduction to the basic vocabulary of architectural design. Also, it features the fundamental elements of space and form to encourage critical thought in order to better understand architecture.
- 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
- Also, It explores the organization of space, and the elements and relationships of circulation, as well as proportion and scale.
- In addition, the text’s detailed illustrations demonstrate the concepts presented and reveal the relationships between fundamental elements of architecture through the ages and across cultures.
2.Neufert Architects’ Data:
[maxbutton id=”1″ url=”https://amzn.to/3a6XY9m” ]
This might be the most important book for architects, Perhaps every architect or architecture student used it at least once. This book provides the essential information needed to form the framework for detailed designs and development of any building project. Organized largely by building type,
- It covers planning criteria and considerations of function and siting―and with over 6200 diagrams.
- It provides a mass of data on spatial requirements. Most of the featured illustrations are dimensioned and each building type includes plans, sections, site layouts, and design details.
- The book also includes an extensive bibliography and detailed set of metric/imperial conversion tables.
3.The Architecture Reference & Specification Book:
[maxbutton id=”1″ url=”https://amzn.to/3betDXE” ]
Most architectural references contain thousands of pages of details, overwhelmingly more than architects need to know. However, This book contains vital information that’s essential to planning and executing architectural projects of all shapes and sizes. All in a format that is small enough to carry anywhere. It distills the data provided in standard architectural volumes and is an easy-to-use reference for most requested types of architecture.
4.Architecture: A Visual History
[maxbutton id=”1″ url=”https://amzn.to/3adVUwc” ]
With over 500 images and 13 specially commissioned 3-D artworks identifying key structural and aesthetic features. This is a visual tour covering more than 350 of the world’s greatest buildings of architectural styles.
Take a spectacular tour of the world’s architecture—from ancient stupas to modern high-tech skyscrapers to today’s green buildings in Architecture. From the Great Pyramids of Giza to the Parthenon, from the WhiteHouse in DC, to Burj Khalifa in Dubai. This visual worldwide survey of architecture offers close-up detailed photographic references to the vocabulary of each period, and much more.
5.101 Things I Learned in Architecture School:
[maxbutton id=”1″ url=”https://amzn.to/3cocJWG” ]
It’s a book that students of architecture will want to keep in the design studio and in their backpacks. These 101 concise lessons in design, drawing, the creative process, and presentation. From the basics of how to draw a line to the complexities of color theory. Also, it provides a much-needed primer in architectural literacy
6. Edgy Architecture: Architecture in the Most Impossible Places
[maxbutton id=”1″ url=”https://amzn.to/2xwMjn2″ ]
This beautifully photographed book of striking buildings in impossibly difficult locations features a carefully curated selection of international projects. In 60 case studies, the authors profile houses built on cliffs, steep mountain slopes, and other treacherous places. Like X house in Barcelona, Lookout in Norway, Sunflower House in Girona, and many more. Discover over 60 case studies where nature and architecture show their roughest but most beautiful side.
7.Drawing Architecture: The Finest Architectural Drawings Through the Ages
[maxbutton id=”1″ url=”https://amzn.to/34EpyJR” ]
This gorgeous collection brings together more than 250 of the finest architectural drawings, revealing each architect’s process and personality.
Creatively paired to stimulate the imagination, the illustrations span the centuries and range from sketches to renderings.
Simple to intricate, built projects to a utopian ideal, and, it’s a true celebration of the art of architecture.
8.Archidoodle: The Architect’s Activity Book:
[maxbutton id=”1″ url=”https://amzn.to/34BHdC8″ ]
This innovative book is the first to provide a fun, interactive way to learn about architecture. Filled with an array of beautiful and elegant drawings, it poses all manner of architectural challenges for the user.
From designing your own skyscraper to drawing an island house or creating a Constructivist monument, plus many others more.
Also, it includes examples of works & ideas by major architects to draw inspiration from & will appeal to students to architects.
9. Modern Architecture Since 1900:
[maxbutton id=”1″ url=”https://amzn.to/2wG3HoT” ]
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 an astonishing richness of architectural forms across the world.
10. The Architecture of Happiness:
[maxbutton id=”1″ url=”https://amzn.to/3baK47q” ]
This book is a dazzling and generously illustrated journey through the philosophy and psychology of architecture. One of the great but often unmentioned causes of both happiness and misery is the quality of our environment. For instance, the kinds of walls, chairs, buildings, and, streets that surround us. And, yet a concern for architecture is too often described as frivolous, even self-indulgent.
11. The Language of Architecture: 26 Principles Every Architect Should Know
[maxbutton id=”1″ url=”https://amzn.to/34GbbVK” ]
In order to master the foundation of architecture, you must first master the basic building blocks of its language; the definitions, function, and usage. This book provides students and professional architects with the basic elements of architectural design. Divided into 26 easy-to-comprehend chapters. Also, it includes an introduction to architecture design, a historical view of the elements.
As well as an overview of how these elements can and have been used across multiple design disciplines. Whether you’re new to the field or have been an architect for years, you’ll want to use it as a reference for inspiration. This comprehensive learning tool is the one book you’ll want as a staple in your library.
12. Sketching for Architecture + Interior Design: A practical guide on sketching for architecture and interior design students
[maxbutton id=”1″ url=”https://amzn.to/3bh6jZu” ]
This book teaches architecture and interior design students all they need to know about sketching. With the advancement of technology, the debate surrounding hand drawing versus computer-generated imagery has become a hot topic.
Having grown up with computers, today’s interior design and architecture students are extremely adept at creating computer imagery, but often lack confidence in their freehand sketching skills, or do not know how to sketch at all.
Sketching is essential for the successful development of the next generation of designers. Whether they practice architecture, interior, or product design.
45 steps take the student from the simple three–dimensional forms of furniture, to interiors, to complex building exteriors, and cityscapes. Technical topics covered include tools, line weights, perspective, proportion, composition, shading, serial views, and context. Exercises are illustrated with beautiful sketches specially created by the author.
13. A Visual Dictionary of Architecture:
[maxbutton id=”1″ url=”https://amzn.to/3eoOwkW” ]
This book 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.
It is sure to be by the side of and used by any serious architect or designer, students of architecture, interior designers, and those in construction.
14. The Future of Architecture in 100 Buildings (TED Books):
[maxbutton id=”1″ url=”https://amzn.to/2yVMVmr” ]
The founder of Architizer.com draws on the crossroads of architecture & social media to highlight 100 important buildings that embody the future of architecture.
Like an architectural cabinet of wonders, this book collects the most innovative buildings of today and tomorrow. The buildings hail from all seven continents, offering a truly global perspective on what lies ahead. Each page captures the soaring confidence, the thoughtful intelligence, the space-age wonder, and at times the sheer whimsy of the world’s most inspired buildings—and the questions they provoke: Can a building breathe?
Filled with gorgeous imagery and witty insight, this book is an essential and delightful guide to the future being built around us—a future that matters more, and to more of us, than ever.
15. Analysing Architecture:
[maxbutton id=”1″ url=”https://amzn.to/2Vvs5Cf” ]
Analysing Architecture has become internationally established as the best introduction to architecture. Aimed primarily at those wishing to become professional architects.
Works of architecture are instruments for managing, orchestrating, modifying our relationship with the world around us. They frame just about everything we do. Architecture is complex, subtle, frustrating… but ultimately extremely rewarding. Also, It can be a difficult discipline to get to grips with; nothing in school quite prepares anyone for the particular demands of an architecture course. But this book will help.
16. Thinking Architecture:
[maxbutton id=”1″ url=”https://amzn.to/2V9GTHG” ]
Thinking Architecture is a must-read for any architect, student, or individual interested in stepping into the mind of one of the greatest architects of this century. Winner of the Pritzker Prize for Architecture 2009, Swiss architect Peter Zumthor which considered to be one of the most extraordinary and controversial architects working today.
17. Sustainable Design: A Critical Guide (Architecture Briefs):
[maxbutton id=”1″ url=”https://amzn.to/2RHS207″ ]
Written for students and practitioners in the fields of architecture and interior design, this book provides a concise overview of all the techniques available for reducing the energy footprint of structures and spaces.
With clear, simple language and a practical “can-do” approach, author David Bergman covers everything from the profession’s ethical responsibility, to design structures and spaces that sustain our natural resources, to specific considerations such as rainwater harvesting, graywater recycling, passive heating techniques, solar orientation, green roofs, wind energy, daylighting, indoor air quality, material evaluation and specification, and how to work with green building certification programs.
18. The Architecture Of Light (2nd Edition): A textbook of procedures and practices for the Architect, Interior Designer, and Lighting Designer
[maxbutton id=”1″ url=”https://amzn.to/34DtsTr” ]
The Architecture of Light makes lighting design approachable. This vivid, image packed text of lighting concepts and techniques serves as the perfect companion for lighting design students and professionals alike. Built around a successful teaching curriculum, Furthermore, this text provides a logical step by step progression through the phases of conceptualizing, refining, drafting, and presenting lighting design. Written by a practicing professional lighting designer who is also an award-winning design instructor, The Architecture of Light presents a perfect blend of visual design tools and fundamental lighting knowledge. In addition to theory and discussion, The Architecture of Light also provides complete chapters of common lighting details, case studies, and a catalog of specific lighting.
19. Small Architecture (Bibliotheca Universalis):
[maxbutton id=”1″ url=”https://amzn.to/3cjVMg5″ ]
Over the years, talented architects have occasionally indulged themselves with the challenge of designing small but perfectly formed buildings. Today, with reduced budgets, many architects have turned in a more focused way to creating works that may be diminutive in their dimensions, but are definitely big when it comes to trendsetting ideas. Whether in Japanese cities, where large sites are hard to come by, or at the frontier between art and architecture, small buildings present many advantages and push their designers to do more with less.
Furthermore, A dollhouse for Calvin Klein in New York, a playhouse for children in Trondheim, vacation cabins, and housing for victims of natural disasters are all part of the new rush to develop the great small architecture of the moment. The 2013 Pritzker Prize winner Toyo Ito is here, but so are emergent architects from Portugal, Chile, England, and, New Zealand. From world-famous names to the freshest new talent, come discover architectural invention on a whole new, small scale.
20. Modern Architecture A–Z (Bibliotheca Universalis)
[maxbutton id=”1″ url=”https://amzn.to/2yjAK2q” ]
Last of all, we have this book that offers an indispensable overview of the key players in the creation of modern space.
Like a bespoke global architecture tour, you’ll travel from Manhattan skyscrapers to a Japanese concert hall, from Gaudí’s Palau Güell in Barcelona to Lina Bo Bardi’s sports and leisure center in a former factory site in São Paulo.
Moreover, You’ll take in Gio Ponti’s colored geometries, Zaha Hadid’s free-flowing futurism, the luminous interiors of SANAA, and Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s unique blend of Scottish tradition and elegant Japonisme.
In conclusion, If you’re looking for a way to learn architecture, it’s good to pick the books from our list. Prefer to read the description & details of each book before investing in one. And, One can place an order online to ensure fast delivery at your doorstep.
Finally, please make sure to check our article on the best office chairs for architects and architecture students.