# Architecture theory books

> A reading list on architecture theory: Calvino's Invisible Cities, Bachelard, Tschumi, Mitchell's City of Bits, Le Corbusier, Iain Borden.

- Page: https://www.elasticspace.com/2004/02/architecture-theory/
- Author: Timo Arnall (https://www.elasticspace.com/)
- Section: Notes (https://www.elasticspace.com/notes/)
- Published: 2004-02-03
- Updated: 2026-07-05
- Tags: Architecture, Books, Place, Research, Urbanism
- Site map for agents: https://www.elasticspace.com/llms.txt

---

This is one of a series of reading lists I put together between 2002 and 2004 when I was starting out in interaction and experience design, building out a personal canon from books I was buying, borrowing from libraries, or lending to students. The lists are grouped by topic. Architecture is the parent discipline of a lot of interaction design thinking, and this list is the shelf I was reading on the theory side: space, the city, urbanism, and the politics of the built environment.

Calvino’s Invisible Cities is the book I keep giving to people. Bachelard’s Poetics of Space is the phenomenological counterpart, both are worth reading slowly. Bernard Tschumi’s Architecture and Disjunction and Manhattan Transcripts are the most polemical of the theoretical books. William J. Mitchell’s City of Bits and E-topia are the early digital-urbanism texts that most directly speak to interaction designers working on networked spaces.

The Amazon links below are what I had at the time, most will be dead now, but the ISBNs will find you a copy.

### City of Collective Memory

M. Christine Boyer.
[amazon.co.uk](http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/026252211X/elasticspace-21) / [amazon.com](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/026252211X/elasticspace-20)

### Breathing Cities: Visualizing Urban Movement

Nick Barley.
[amazon.co.uk](http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/3764362367/elasticspace-21) / [amazon.com](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/3764362367/elasticspace-20)

### Metapolis Dictionary of Advanced Architecture

Manuel Gausa.
[amazon.co.uk](http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/8495951223/elasticspace-21) / [amazon.com](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/8495951223/elasticspace-20)

### Rebuilding the Reichstag

Norman Foster.
[amazon.co.uk](http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0297825062/elasticspace-21) / [amazon.com](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0879517158/elasticspace-20)

### Towards a New Architecture

Le Corbusier.
[amazon.co.uk](http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0750606274/elasticspace-21) / [amazon.com](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0750606274/elasticspace-20)

### Architecture and Disjunction

Bernard Tschumi.
[amazon.co.uk](http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0262700603/elasticspace-21) / [amazon.com](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0262700603/elasticspace-20)

### Manhattan Transcripts

Bernard Tschumi.
[amazon.co.uk](http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/1854903810/elasticspace-21) / [amazon.com](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1854903810/elasticspace-20)

### The Logic of Architecture

William J. Mitchell.
[amazon.co.uk](http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0262631164/elasticspace-21) / [amazon.com](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0262631164/elasticspace-20)

### Mobile: The Art of Portable Architecture

Jennifer Siegal ed.
[amazon.co.uk](http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/1568983344/elasticspace-21) / [amazon.com](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1568983344/elasticspace-20)

### City of Bits

William J. Mitchell.
[amazon.co.uk](http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0262631768/elasticspace-21) / [amazon.com](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0262631768/elasticspace-20)

### E-topia

William J. Mitchell.
[amazon.co.uk](http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0262632055/elasticspace-21) / [amazon.com](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0262632055/elasticspace-20)

### Strangely Familiar

Iain Borden, Joe Kerr, Alicia Pivaro, Jane Rendell.
[amazon.co.uk](http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0415144183/elasticspace-21) / [amazon.com](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0415144183/elasticspace-20)

### Invisible Cities

Italo Calvino.
[amazon.co.uk](http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0749397640/elasticspace-21) / [amazon.com](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0749397640/elasticspace-20)

### The Poetics of Space

Gaston Bachelard, Etienne Gilson, John Stilgoe.
[amazon.co.uk](http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0807064734/elasticspace-21) / [amazon.com](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0807064734/elasticspace-20)

### De Stijl

Paul Overy.
[amazon.co.uk](http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0500202400/elasticspace-21) / [amazon.com](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0500202400/elasticspace-20)

### Fragments of Utopia

David Wild.
[amazon.co.uk](http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0907259103/elasticspace-21) / [amazon.com](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0907259103/elasticspace-20)

### Architects in Cyberspace

Neil Spiller, Martin Pearce.
[amazon.co.uk](http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/1854902520/elasticspace-21) / [amazon.com](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1854902520/elasticspace-20)