The Reading Design is an archive of critical writing about design.

Reading Design

Norman Foster, one of the world’s most acclaimed architects one of his favourite buildings, the Boeing 747. 

Michael Bott

Building sights: Why Norman Foster loves the Boeing 747

From the Viennese couch to the cigarette packet, advertising has always exploited psychoanalysis. Christopher Turner looks at the success of Edward Bernays and Ernest Dichter in commercialising the persuasive potential of psychoanalytic theory. 

Malk Williams

The hidden persuader: How citizens brought into the American dream with their every purchase

“No better way is there to learn to love Nature than to understand Art. It dignifies every flower of the field.”

In 1882, Oscar Wilde toured the United States delivering a series of lectures. Here, he examines the ideals of beauty, the couture of men and how no art should ever be rationally explained. Published in Reading Design.

Gary Furlong

House decoration: Oscar Wilde's aesthetics

 Is Die Hard one of the best architectural films?

Why walk around a large building when you can blow a hole straight through it? Geoff Manaugh compares the architecture of the first Die Hard film with the tactics of the Israeli army, and reflects on the power to move through walls.