Best summer books of 2023: Architecture and design

Receive free Non-Fiction updates

We’ll send you a myFT Daily Digest email rounding up the latest Non-Fiction news every morning.

Architect, Verb: The New Language of Building by Reinier de Graaf (Verso)

Most architectural writing is not by practising architects. It is profoundly obvious that this book is. De Graaf (of OMA) skewers the platitudes of the industry, from grating buzzwords like “placemaking”, “liveability” and “sustainability”. He is acerbic on an industry that continues to wallow in its self-congratulatory vocabulary while ignoring its role in the climate crisis and the brutalities of late capitalism.

Animal Architecture: Beasts, Buildings and Us by Paul Dobraszczyk (Reaktion)

Whether we want to share our dwelling spaces with animals or whether — as in the case of rats, mice, spiders, mosquitoes and the rest — we do not, we have to acknowledge that we are never alone in our homes. Dobraszczyk’s thoughtful book looks at this network of relationships and how we might learn from the way in which other species build and inhabit space.

Brutalist Paris by Nigel Green and Robin Wilson (Blue Crow)

The first book from a publisher that made its name with a series of beautifully designed architecture maps is a delight, a compact guide to the concrete architecture of a city better known for its Belle Époque finery. Brutalist Paris is stuffed with radical housing, weird churches, dystopian offices and amazing, unfamiliar monuments to the architectural imagination.

Architectures of Spatial Justice by Dana Cuff (MIT Press)

The political geographer Edward W Soja described “spatial justice” as “the fair and equitable distribution in space of socially valued resources and the opportunities to use them”. In this book, Cuff attempts to examine architects’ entanglements with capital, power and oppression and to highlight projects where spatial justice has been addressed or even achieved, from Chile to Japan via the US.

Bone Music edited by Stephen Coates (Strange Attractor Press)

Picture discs were a thing in my youth but this is something different. In pop-starved 1950s Moscow, a few enterprising characters bought lathes to cut records on but, lacking materials to press, they found that cutting them on to discarded X-ray plates worked well enough. The result is a haunting collection of grooves inscribed on to skulls and broken ribs. It was a risky business and many ended up in jail. This book presents an unforgettable series of images and a bizarre confluence of cultures, ad hoc design, music, politics, medicine and viscera.

Summer Books 2023

All this week, FT writers and critics share their favourites. Some highlights are:

Monday: Environment by Pilita Clark
Tuesday: Economics by Martin Wolf
Wednesday: Fiction by Laura Battle
Thursday: Politics by Gideon Rachman
Friday: Critics’ picks
Saturday: History by Tony Barber

Join our online book group on Facebook at FT Books Café