Unpacking my Library

I just read (if that's what you call it when a book actually has very little writing in it) Unpacking My Library : Architects and Their Books, edited by Jo Steffens with an essay by Walter Benjamin. Unbeknownst to the person who gave it to me, my library occupies a large portion of my physical and intellectual world; in fact, my family would say too large a portion. There is something about being surrounded by - inside - a collection of books that gives a person the idea that much of the known world is accessible, and the remainder of the unknown world is attainable. Sitting in a library induces the concept that ideas are possible and that much of life is like a complicated math equation that can be solved by mining the required formulas from available texts and arranging them in the correct order.

Who could possibly sit in Asplund’s Stockholm Library and not imagine the power and opportunity of knowledge as an accumulation of humankind?

More importantly, who could enter the library without literally grasping the importance of this knowledge and power!

Is it any coincidence that Steven Holl was Bill Stout’s first employee at William Stout Architectural Books? Is it true when Peter Eisenman says “Without The Four Books on Architecture of Palladio no one would have cared about Palladio?" Why is it that Tod Williams reflects my own assessment when he posits “Rarely will I pick up a book on architecture when at home in the evening. This is my time for reflection, exploring, and getting lost in the stories.”

A colleague recently confessed to me that it has been years since he read a novel. Perhaps architects spend too much time thinking about architecture, and not enough time thinking about society, culture, and the people who interact with their buildings. Books are a perfect prescription for this. Four books which show up on the architect’s lists in Unpacking My Library are Faulkner’s Light in August, Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow, Melville’s Moby Dick, and Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake. I would suggest Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury, but any of these will do.

Architects would be well served to step outside the boundaries of their profession and connect with the larger world.

-mark-