68 Best Geometry Books for Mathematicians and Designers

SHELF I

The Canon: where the page itself is a design object

In these eight books, content and form can't be pulled apart; the printing itself is part of the proof.

SHELF II

Proportion, symmetry, pattern

The question of how a motif repeats itself leads, in mathematics, to group theory — and in design, to wallpaper.

SHELF III

The designer's shelf

Where geometry comes down to the table: the grid, proportion, the grammar of form, and a certain amount of pasta.

SHELF IV

Architecture and perspective

Where proportion turns into structure and geometry into a gaze: the vanishing point is a mathematical object.

A good diagram is not the ornament of a proof; more often, it is the proof itself.

The working principle for Shelf V

SHELF V

The mathematicians' bedside books

These books carry theorems; but every one was written by someone who knows the theorem is a matter of form too.

SHELF VI

Nature, fractals, the new generation

The geometry of roughness, of the spiral, of everything that isn't straight — plus the most recently dated books on the shelf.

Sixty-eight books, one question: why does this form stand the way it does?

Closing

Closing

Building this shelf a second time, what I noticed is this: not one book on the list says "mathematics resembles art." They all say something harder — good form is form with a reason; and the reason, sooner or later, comes out to geometry. Byrne's choice of color, Müller-Brockmann's column, Kepler's snowflake, and Taimiņa's stitch are products of the same discipline: reduce arbitrariness, make the decision visible.

No one will read all sixty-eight; nor is there any need. Proceed by the logic of the shelf: one book from the canon and two from the shelf that speaks to your own work is enough to begin. Sometimes the best reading plan is the book pulled at random. Compared with the first, deleted version, this list has grown fourfold; losses, sometimes, are made up for this way.