Inspiration

Here is a selection of our favourite books. We have found them inspiring and hope you will too. Click on the cover image to get hold of your copy.

	‘Salutogenic City Sketchbook’ Marcus Wilshere, Liz Loughran and Richard Mazuch 2021 – A sketchbook of design ideas to put principles of  healthy places into practice. This is the first of a series ultimately creating an open-source library of ideas.
	‘General Theory of Urbanisation’ Ildefons Cerda 2018 – Cerda’s groundbreaking and encylopaedic work has been overlooked for too long. Now in English translation, his work is essential reading for anyone wanting to understand how cities grow and function
	‘The Structure of the Ordinary , Form and Control in the Built Environment’ N.J.Habraken / Jonathan Teicher, Editor 1998 – Habraken’s insights were always ahead of his time. This book is the ideal introduction to his work.
	‘Space is the Machine’ Bill Hillier 2015 – Personally I found Space is the Machine to be a more accessible and focussed work than Hillier and Hanson’s better-known ‘Social Logic of Space’.
	‘Making Massive Small Change’ Kelvin Campbell 2018 – Campbell, my one-time colleague at Urban Initiatives, challenges received wisdom by demonstrating how the accumulated impact of many small decisions can make massive change to urban environments and quality of life.
	‘Restorative Cities: Urban Design for Mental Health and Wellbeing’ Jenny Roe & Layla McCay 2021 – Roe and McCay’s excellent contribution to the growing debate on how place quality contributes to health and wellbeing.
	‘The Image of the City’ Kevin Lynch 19xx – Another classic text, essential to understand how we experience and navigate cities.
	‘The Death and Life of Great American Cities’ Jane Jacobs 19xx – Another essential for any library. Jacob’s learnt by observing first-hand how people live in cities. As a result, she saw many things that professional architects and planners missed.
	‘Triumph of the City’ Edward Glaeser 2012 – Just why do cities become more productive, creative drivers of economies?
	‘A pattern Language’ Christopher Alexander 1978 – With so much recent debate around design codes, it’s helpful to see how Alexander took systems theory further, suggesting that urban places could be assembled from carefully selected patterns.
	‘Places of the Heart: The Psychogeography of Everyday Life’ Colin Ellard 2015 – Ellard looks at cities as a neuroscientist but his insights are invaluable to designers wanting to understand how we experience our world.
	‘Non-Standard Architectural Productions: Between Aesthetic Experience and Social Action’ Sandra Löschke 2018
	‘A City is not a Computer’ Shannon Mattern 2021