Favorite Architecture Books of 2025
Architecture Books – Week 51/2025
This newsletter for the week of December 15 highlights my ten favorite architecture books from the nearly 50 “Books of the Week” featured in A Weekly Dose of Architecture Books over the course of the year. With Christmas this week and New Year’s Day next week, this newsletter is taking a couple weeks off, returning on January 5, aka week 2/2026. Happy reading—and Happy Holidays and Happy New Year!
Favorite Architecture Books of 2025
These ten books are listed in chronological order of when the books were featured in this newsletter, broken down into pairs accompanied by cover illustrations. Note that, even though the books were reviewed in 2025, at least one of the books was published in 2024. It is a diverse mix, with the books running the gamut from monographs and theoretical manifestos to historical case studies and an exploration of materials in contemporary architecture. Below the list is another list: 10 Books I’m Looking Forward to Reading and Reviewing in 2026.
In Depth: Urban Domesticities Today, edited by Florian Idenburg and Jing Liu, with photographs by Iwan Baan and Naho Kubota, published by Lars Müller Publishers. A monograph/gentle manifesto on SO–IL’s domestic architecture, as I described it in my review in January.
Building Institution: The Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies, New York 1967-1985, by Kim Förster, published by transcript. “[A] fascinating and illuminating read that had me reconsidering every position I previously held about the IAUS,” as I described it in my review in January.
Heatwave: The National Pavilion of the Kingdom of Bahrain, edited by Andrea Faraguna. The companion to Bahrain’s Golden Lion-winning national pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale is like five books in one and has design and contents that are “impressive and memorable,” as I wrote in my my review in May.
A Moratorium on New Construction, by Charlotte Malterre-Barthes, published by Sternberg Press. The 14th title in the Critical Spatial Practices series, edited by Nikolaus Hirsch and Markus Miessen, is a “book-length argument that finds a cure to numerous global crises in the halting of new construction projects,” as I wrote in my review in July.
Assemble: Building Collective, by Aaron Betsky, published by Thames & Hudson. The first monograph on the collective of architects called Assemble “conveys the collective’s working process through a documentation of dozens of projects and a narrative text that is very engaging,” as I wrote in my review in September.
The House of Dr Koolhaas, by Françoise Fromonot, published by Park Books. The first title in the “Gumshoe” series, edited by Françoise Fromonot and Thomas Weaver, is “a thorough theoretical analysis of a single building made more accessible than its ilk by its pulp-inspired format, abundance and diversity of illustrations, and clear language,” as I wrote in my review in September.
Smaller Architecture, by Michael Meredith, published by Architecture Exchange. The first title in the Memo Books series produced by the Architecture Exchange platform is “a breezy and occasionally humorous read that articulates the titular idea without bogging readers down with references or theory-speak,” as I wrote in my review in October.
New York 2020: Architecture and Urbanism at the Beginning of a New Century, by Robert A.M. Stern, David Fishman and Jacob Tilove, published by Monacelli Press. The sixth and final title in Robert Stern’s magisterial series of books chronicling the architecture and urbanism of New York City over the last 150 years is, like the others, exhaustive in its coverage of the city’s architecture, as I wrote in my review in October.
Archigram: The Magazine, by Archigram, et. al., published by D.A.P. and Designers & Books. An impressive facsimile edition of the ten issues of Archigram—technically nine and a half issues, numbered 1 through 9-½—accompanied by a reader’s guide and packaged in a large clamshell box. I unpacked the publication in November.
Design for Construction: Tectonic Imagination in Contemporary Architecture, by Eric Höweler, published by Routledge. The latest book by Boston architect Eric Höweler is “an excellent book that (re)positions architecture within its material reality, but does it acknowledging the myriad other realities of contemporary practice,” as I wrote in my review in November.
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10 Books I’m Looking Forward to Reading and Reviewing in 2026
(In order of release date)
Public Spaces NY, by Michael Meredith and Hilary Sample, published by Park Books (Dec 2025)
Architecture Record Covers, by Paul Groenendijk, published by nai010 Publishers (Jan 2026)
MAKI OPUS, by Fumihiko Maki, published by Thames & Hudson (Jan 2026)
Right-Wing Spaces: Political Essays, by Stephan Trüby, published by Birkhäuser (Jan 2026)
We the Bacteria: Notes Toward Biotic Architecture, by Beatriz Colomina and Mark Wigley, published by Lars Müller Publishers (Jan 2026)
Building Correctly, by Francesca Torzo, published by Walther König (Feb 2026)
Architecture Against Architecture: A Manifesto, by Reinier de Graaf, published by Verso (Mar 2026)
Astra Zarina: She Was an Architect, by Laura Helena Wurth, published by Hatje Cantz (Mar 2026)
Rem Before Koolhaas: Journalism by an Architect, edited by Antonio Cantero, published by nai010 Publishers (Mar 2026)
Our World in Ten Buildings: How Architecture Defines Who We Are and How We Live, by Michael Murphy (Apr 2026)
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— John Hill
Looking forward to discover the Assemble monographs. Thanks for sharing