Definitive Collections

Unpacking opens with a reprint from literary critic and essayist Walter Benjamin’s 1969 book, Illuminations. "There are spirits, or at least little genii, which have seen to it that for a collector…ownership is the most intimate relationship that one can have to objects," he writes. "Not that they come alive in him; it is he who lives in them." In the chapters that follow, we browse the personal libraries on a curated tour, from Steven Holl to Stan Allen, Toshiko Mori to Michael Graves. Photographs of individual shelves are shown—Henry N. Cobb houses a set of tattered back issues of L’Esprit Nouveau, while Hitchcock and Frankenstein sit by side on Bernard Tschumi’s shelves. Also included is a top-ten-books list from each featured architect.