For an architect, Atlas of Mid-Century Modern Houses by Dominic Bradbury covers more than 400 homes in 40 countries, and Case Study Houses documents the whole 1945–1966 Los Angeles programme with photographs and floor plans. For someone interested in brutalism, Eastern Blocks is a book of photographs of modernist and brutalist architecture in six cities of the former Eastern Bloc.
This guide is for anyone buying a present for an architect, an architecture student or someone who loves buildings. Most of the picks are large illustrated hardbacks for a coffee table. There are also three paperbacks about how buildings are made and how they affect people, and a practical book on drawing buildings.
For an architect interested in post-war houses. This 448-page hardback covers more than 400 homes in 40 countries by more than 290 architects, built between the 1940s and 1960s, from houses by Marcel Breuer, Le Corbusier, Lina Bo Bardi and Oscar Niemeyer to little-known houses in Australia, Africa and Asia.
For someone interested in American modernism. This 512-page hardback documents the whole Case Study House programme (1945–1966), which produced designs for 36 prototype homes in the Los Angeles area by architects including Richard Neutra, Charles and Ray Eames and Eero Saarinen, with period and contemporary photographs, floor plans and sketches.
For an architect interested in the interwar Bauhaus school and its part in modernism. Magdalena Droste, who worked at the Bauhaus-Archiv in Berlin from 1980, covers the school across its three sites in Weimar, Dessau and Berlin in 552 pages, with some 575 illustrations including architectural plans, studies, photographs, sketches and models.
For someone who has been to Barcelona or plans to go. This 512-page hardback presents Gaudí's complete works, from Casa Vicens and Casa Batlló to the Sagrada Família, with hundreds of colour illustrations including new photography and an account of his life.
For someone interested in brutalism and post-war housing. It has over 100 photographs of modernist and brutalist architecture in Moscow, Berlin, Warsaw, Budapest, Kyiv and Saint Petersburg, in six chapters with maps and short texts on each city and building.
For an architect who is also interested in interiors. Drawn from the magazine's archive, this 464-page hardback with a foreword by Anna Wintour covers a century of homes, including those of David Bowie and David Hockney, and the work of architects and designers such as Frank Gehry, Oscar Niemeyer and Frank Lloyd Wright.
For an architect who reads. In this 576-page Pelican paperback, Calder tells the history of buildings from prehistoric huts to modern airports through the energy available to build and run them, and considers what that means for sustainable architecture now.
For a reader who likes the story behind a building. In 192 pages, Ross King tells how Filippo Brunelleschi raised the dome of Florence's cathedral, Santa Maria del Fiore, which for more than a century after work on the cathedral began was thought all but impossible to build.
For anyone with opinions about modern buildings. Designer Thomas Heatherwick argues that too many buildings are designed for business rather than for people, drawing on thirty years of his own work, neuroscience and cognitive psychology, with hundreds of images.
For someone who wants to start sketching buildings. In this beginner's guide, watercolourist Richard Taylor shows how to draw and paint buildings in pencil, pen, graphite powder, watercolour, water-soluble pencils and Indian ink, with exercises that move from easy to more challenging.
The large illustrated hardbacks here include Atlas of Mid-Century Modern Houses (448 pages), which covers more than 400 houses; Case Study Houses (512 pages), on a single Los Angeles housing programme; and Gaudí: The Complete Works (512 pages).
Eastern Blocks is a book of photographs of modernist and brutalist architecture in Moscow, Berlin, Warsaw, Budapest, Kyiv and Saint Petersburg, with maps and short texts on each city.
Architecture by Barnabas Calder is a history of buildings told through energy. Brunelleschi's Dome is the story of how Florence's cathedral dome was built. Humanise is Thomas Heatherwick's argument for designing buildings around people.
Eames by Gloria Koenig is a 96-page hardback on the husband-and-wife team Charles and Ray Eames, covering their furniture as well as their architecture, textile design, photography and film.
Selected by Fox & Fable from books in stock. Last updated 30 September 2026.
