The Reading Bundle
Sat, Oct 18, 2014I realized that whenever I talk about my work, I end up giving a list of pretty standard books, rather than the latest new fancy thing in my feeds. They are not my daily read, neither my only reading topic. It is more a minimal list of the basics of my discipline. It should give you a good sense of where I’m from.
If you had only one to read
- Cities and Forms: On Sustainable Urbanism : The big bad guy. I was in Serge’s lab when he wrote this and he is kind of my mentor. I’m not sure it’s readable straight from start to finish and I don’t necessarily endorse all views. But the amount of information in this book is just incredible.
Morphology
- The Urban Housing Handbook : before anything, look at what has been done in the world. Excellent maps and essential figures on density. Follow-up on towers and masterplanning are definitely worth reading too.
- Streets & Patterns: Once again a broad view, not super technical. Just make sure you have all those pictures in mind.
- Space Matrix : Are you sure you know you basic arithmetics of urban morpho’ ? Super simple, still essential for good problem setting.
Urban Energy Modeling
- Computer Modeling For Sustainable Urban Design : everything urban energy modeling, state of the art (the few newly published things doesn’t really change the game).
- A few articles: Ratti 2003, Ratti 2005, Robinson 2006, for passive volume, perimeter blocks and irregular irradiation patterns.
Modeling Epistemology
- Théorie du Système Général - Théorie de la Modélisation : why are we even modeling ? This book is my base on systemic, on complex systems and more broadly on why I’m not modeling like a physicist.
- Economic Models as Analogy: a primer on case-based reasoning and analogy interpretation of models. Initially for economy, it works really well for city modeling too (found this one on James Keirstead’s website).
Once again, remember that it is a very minimal list, nothing exhaustive. But it should get you started on the topic.