The New York Architecture + Design Book Club, launched in 2023 by the Brooklyn cultural organization Head Hi and the design journal Untapped, is a quarterly public program and book subscription series that explores remarkable new titles in the field.

Its unconventional format approaches reading from a designer’s perspective: First, it puts the book’s author and an industry expert in conversation about the title, allowing the audience to be a fly on the wall as they listen to their lively discussion. The group collectively then judges the book by its cover, identifies useful takeaways, and shares their reflections and reactions. The goal of the program: building deeper connections between people, ideas, and the world in which we live.

When it started, Head Hi saw an opportunity to create New York’s only architecture and design book club (that we know of!). It was conceived in 2022, after considering that a book club centered on design literature requires a different format than one centered on, say, fiction or biographies. Head Hi’s book club doesn't read cover-to-cover; instead, it turns, digresses, and circles back across the text for inspiration. They officially launched in 2023 with this non-linear structure in mind, allowing members to get the book, read a critical review ahead of the gatherings, and engage with the authors and special guests at the meetings.

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The book club’s fall pick is Charlotte Perriand: The Art of Dwelling. The first monograph of the designer’s work in two decades, the title expands on an international exhibition of the same name, presented at Kunstmuseen Krefeld and Museum der Moderne Salzburg over the last two years. It’s currently on view at Fundació Joan Miró, in Barcelona, through February 28, 2027.

For Perriand, “dwelling was not a style but an attitude.”

The next meeting takes place  at 6:30 p.m. on Thursday, October 22, at Head H

Gallerist Cristina Grajales, who was a close friend and champion of Perriand's, will explore the designer’s legacy in a conversation with longtime Perriand admirer Alex Gilbert.

“Perriand was much more than an architect and designer; she was an exceptional phenomenon of her generation,” Katia Baudin, director of the Kunstmuseen Krefeld, writes in the book’s introduction. “Her work transcends the realm of mere form-making and highlights the central role that design can play in society and the quality of everyday life. She experimented with more than just furniture and interiors: her oeuvre includes photography and photo-montage, exhibition design and curating, theoretical research, publications, urban planning and development.”

“Her extraordinary adaptability, creative power, and collaborative spirit were particularly evident in times of crisis, such as during the Second World War,” Baudin continues. “Her work was marked by keen observation, an inquiring mind, cultural openness, a deep love of nature, and a desire to experience the world with alert eyes. Travels and formative stays in Japan, Germany, the Soviet Union, Spain, Brazil, and not least in her native France, whose urban and alpine environments were equally familiar to her, broadened her artistic and theoretical spectrum.”

Learn more and RSVP for the October 22 gathering.

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