Earthly delights.
For Earth Month, we highlight four books that uniquely explore the problems and solutions of sustainability—ranging from rethinking materials and buildings to examining our place in, and impact on, broader ecosystems. Each invites reflection on how design is as much a discipline of facts and data as it is a philosophical, aesthetic pursuit of the notion of “better.” While the path forward is complex, these books remind us that meeting the needs of our evolving planet requires doing much more with much less.
A Sand County Almanac
By Aldo Leopold
Oxford University Press, 1949
A foundational text in the early organics and conservation movements, this collection of seasonal essays helped shape a global conversation on land, stewardship, and our place within natural systems. Moving through the year with patience and care, it invites a more attentive, reciprocal relationship with the environments we inhabit. Enduringly relevant despite its age, it’s a reminder that sustainability begins with how we choose to see and value the living world around us.
Under A White Sky
by Elizabeth Kolbert
Crown, 2021
Heads up! We’re officially in the Anthropocene—an era defined by radical human intervention in the natural world. From reversing river flows to using electric currents to stop invasive species, the book explores how solutions to environmental challenges can cascade into entirely new challenges. An eye-opening read, Kolbert invites reflection on what it really means to “fix” the planet.
The Art of Architectural Grafting
by Jeanne Gang
Park Publishing, 2024
In this small book, which offers an antithesis to the typical architectural monograph, architect Jeanne Gang borrows a term from horticulture to rethink the built environment. Like the agricultural practice of joining old and new plants so they grow as one, architectural grafting begins with what already exists—treating buildings as reservoirs of embodied carbon rather than relics. Part manifesto, part guide, and part poetic memoir, the book presents grafting as a creative strategy to revitalize structures, landscapes, and even entire cities while addressing the climate challenge both with quantitative and qualitative solutions.
Better Things
By Daniel Liden
Laurence King Publishing, 2024
Part field guide, part reality check, Better Things lands at a moment when “sustainable” has become as ubiquitous—and slippery—as “natural.” Liden cuts through the haze of greenwashed buzzwords with a clear-eyed guide to the materials that shape the products around us. Organized by typology and enriched with interviews, case studies, and concise data sets, the book offers designers (and the rest of us) a practical way to think about environmental impact: the stuff things are made of.
Make it nice.
Wood shelves and metal blocks stack without the need for hardware forming beautiful voids and cubbies to house all things in a perfectly curated manner. Two widths of foot and shelf blocks celebrate asymmetry while bringing stability and visual appeal.
