On Amanda Levete’s bookshelves
Founder of AL_A in 2009, British architect Amanda Levete was recently appointed to rethink the Paisley Museum in Scotland. Passionate about art history, she shares with AA three of her reference books.
![© Phaidon](https://www.larchitecturedaujourdhui.fr/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/1-GOMBRICH.png)
Histoire de l’art
Ernst Hans Gombrich,
Phaidon, Paris, 1950 (première édition).
During my year at art school, I naturally started reading about art history and through that reading I discovered architecture. Reading about architecture in the context of art, from Renaissance Italy to European Modernism, I was struck by the profound role our discipline has played in the making of civilisations. Gombrich opened up a new world to me embodying everything I value most. For me, architecture is such a rich field because it touches on so many issues beyond creativity, on society, economics, politics.
![© Penguin Books](https://www.larchitecturedaujourdhui.fr/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/2-Marshall-McLuhan.png)
The Medium is the Massage
Marshall McLuhan,
Penguin Books, London, 1967 (first edition).
I have always been interested in the messaging of things and this book raised questions about the hidden ideologies within the visual. Many years later I held onto McLuhan’s thesis when Jan Kaplicky and I were working on the competition for the Media Centre at Lord’s Cricket Ground. As a building it is pure McLuhan, it’s both the medium and the message — it’s the place from which the message is broadcast and at the same time images of itself are broadcast around the world.
![© Gallimard](https://www.larchitecturedaujourdhui.fr/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/3-MALRAUX.png)
Le Musée imaginaire
André Malraux,
Gallimard, Paris, 1965 (first edition).
This book has been a constant companion. It’s not about scholarship but about ideas, written in sublime prose. I first came across Malraux’s work as a student, drawn by its conceptually provocative title that mirrored my obsession at the time with ‘buildingless’ architecture. Our project at the V&A in London also references Malraux’s ideas, which in retrospect seem incredibly prescient in imagining the digital world without walls that we inhabit today.
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You can find this article in the 432nd issue of L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui, available in bookstores and on our online store.