10 books we read and recommend for summer

“There’s only one season,” wrote Ennio Flaiano in Diario degli errori (Diary of Mistakes), “summer. So beautiful that all the others revolve around it. Autumn remembers it, winter invokes it, spring envies it and childishly tries to spoil it.” Summer is the high point of the year, the reward after months of hard work, a pause from the constant hustle, a moment to recharge with new energy and sunlight. But it’s also a time to reflect, reassess, and maybe even chart a new direction… That’s why summer is also the perfect time to read, whether you’re reaching for something light, whimsical, and magical to let your imagination wander or something deeper, stimulating, and more thought-provoking. Like every summer, we’ve selected ten book recommendations, varied in tone and purpose, but all connected to the world of design and architecture.

This book may not scream “summer,” but it radiates a joyful, carefree, almost vacation-like vibe. It’s a photographic diary of Peter Shire’s travels through Italy that recounts the legendary Memphis movement in the 1980s. Through the bewitching, offbeat lens of the Californian artist himself, we rediscover icons like Ettore Sottsass, Barbara Radice, Alessandro Mendini, Andrea and Nicoletta Branzi, and Matteo Thun, and breathe in the energy of a time when design felt like the center of the universe and Italy seemed as vibrant as California.

A new release from Dunne & Raby is always a major event; it has been ever since the mid-2000s, when their work started to spark a conceptual and critical shift in experimental design moving from objects into the realm of narrative, fiction, and dystopian scenarios. As pioneers of “speculative design” and “design fiction,” they have helped reframe design as a way of projecting futures that are possible, probable, and often unsettling. In this latest book – brimming with evocative examples and their trademark brilliance – they propose yet another shift: liberating design from the future to rediscover the present, a present increasingly ambiguous and paradoxical. An essential read.

A double-volume set one devoted to “Architecture,” the other to “Not Architecture” by the acclaimed firm Diller Scofidio + Renfro. It’s a kind of design bible, spanning visionary projects like New York’s High Line, The Broad in downtown L.A., and the 2002 ephemeral Blur Building over Lake Yverdon in Switzerland. But it also explores their interdisciplinary ventures by Elizabeth Diller, Ricardo Scofidio (who passed away recently) and Charles Renfro – from exhibition curation to collaborations with choreographers and visual artists. As choreographer William Forsythe writes about his experience of their work: “You made me move.” That’s the sensation their projects and this book evoke: an architecture that stirs not only the body but the spirit.

First presented at the Arles Festival, “Fashion Army” is a true gem. The book originated from a declassified U.S. Army archive uncovered by critic Mathieu Nicol: 14,000 enigmatic images whose original purpose remains unknown. Think parabolic sunglasses, moon trench coats, odd suits bloated with pockets and surreal masks. The bizarre experiments in military clothing shown here seem to prefigure some of today’s fashion trends, blurring the line between utility and absurdity. 

“The designer is often seen as a giver of form to an industry whose technological expertise will allow production. Like most things, it’s not that simple, and in this case there can be no textbook approach to a particular problem; solutions are always arrived at in unexpected ways. Occasionally a form will arrive, either through hard analysis or, more satisfyingly, intuition and chance…”: so begins “A Book of Things” by Jasper Morrison, now available in a newly expanded edition by Lars Müller. The book is a tribute to the beauty of complex simplicity, to the devotion to things, to a definition of design as a careful observation of the world – and to an ethic grounded in respect.

What if the future of design – or more radically, the future of society through design – no longer played out in factories or on store shelves, but in museums? What if museums, rather than being mere repositories of the past, were actually construction sites for the society of tomorrow? That’s the central question driving “The New Design Museum” by curator Beatrice Leanza. Combining international case studies and interviews, this book is both an inquiry and a manifesto of the change cultural institutions are undergoing; in today’s world museums are not just marginal cultural spaces, they need to recover their central role as a civic, political, and design-oriented hub.

Kenya Hara’s books are always a gift; at once deeply grounded and poetically abstract, refined yet rooted in reality. His latest work, Draw, is the newest chapter in what feels like a saga. For the first time, the Japanese designer turns his attention to the roots of his practice, the intimate act of drawing, the first spark of an idea, the moment when perception meets form. It’s invigorating.

Extravagant Lives of Architects – or perhaps Lives of Extravagant Architects? With dry wit and a sharp eye for anecdote, Manuel Orazi offers a captivating gallery of portraits. From visionary eccentrics like Jean-Jacques Lequeu and Adolf Loos to Italy’s radical architects like Gianni Pettena, Cristiano Toraldo di Francia, Adolfo Natalini, Remo Buti, Ugo La Pietra, onward to Carlo Mollino, Italo Rota, Philip Johnson, Gae Aulenti, Denise Scott Brown, Peter Eisenman, and Frank O. Gehry. Each mini-biography reads like a costume sketch from another time and reveals the strong link between (extravagant) life and architecture.

This catalog about the ongoing exhibition by AMO/OMA – founded by Rem Koolhaas – at Fondazione Prada located in Ca Corner della Regina, Venice, is a dazzling trove of treasures. Bringing together a kaleidoscope of “diagrams” – visual representations of data – it explores humanity’s enduring urge to organize the world. From celestial charts to architectural plans, from economic stats graphs to historical atlas and ecological infographics, the book spans fields and centuries, continents and cultures. The map may not be the size of the territory, but it can contain so much more.

We’ll end with a fable written by the research-based contemporary design studio Formafantasma. Featuring illustrations by Clément Vuillier, texts by Teresa Castro, and interviews with four scientists, the book is made up of a series of visual essays that tell the story of a post-industrial Belgian landscape caught between identity and ecological collapse. Enchanting and deeply engaged, it’s a book first and foremost for children, but perhaps even more for adults, challenging them to see the world through the eyes of a child. Because, as Enzo Mari once said, if anyone can save the world, it will be children.