Our top 11 books on how to generate architectural concepts and how to turn them into meaningful architecture designs. Some of which also feature in are round-up of the best architecture books featured here.
We’re a little biased, but the below Concept Kit offers an all-in-one comprehensive guide with actionable processes that actually work (a lot of the books currently available don’t do this), and also provides a second book containing a full list of literal conceptual approaches that can be used and adapted.
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Learn the process of how to create successful and meaningful design concepts, and the tools and techniques that help to develop them.
- Conditional Design: An introduction to elemental architecture
- Le Corbusier - An Analysis of Form
- Design Strategies in Architecture
- Basics Design Ideas
- Analysing Architecture
- The Elements of Modern Architecture
- Siteless: 1001 Building Forms
- Architecture: Form, Space, & Order
- Design Process in Architecture: From Concept to Completion
- The Architecture Concept Book
- Operative Design: A Catalog of Spatial Verbs

This is part of an excellent series of architectural concept books, that offers a whole host of examples and rules on how to expand, lift, twist, connect and embed simple spacial forms to generate compositions for architectural design concepts. The methods described are translated through clear and simple diagrams and architectural applications.
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Number one on our list, this book is undoubtedly one of the best resources for demonstrating how to generate a concept & form from a sites context & environment. Through analysis, drawings and diagrams each project is broken down and rationalised to reveal exactly how each design was generated.
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Through its clear methodology of architectural design analysis this book provides an excellent explanation of how architectural concept strategies are developed and implemented. Using many historical references it reveals the underlying organisation of buildings, and makes sense of there meaning through line drawings and text.
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This book describes and unveils the architectural concept and design process in easy to understand stages. Aimed at architectural students, it describes design methods showing the reader how to generate an architectural design concept, use different materials, compile volumes, and how to organize them spatial to a form a floor plan.
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Aimed at architecture students, Analysing Architecture offers a clear and accessible insight into the underlying strategies behind architectural design, exploring the various architectural elements and spatial organisation strategies required to develop design concepts with depth.
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This book targets rising students and architects who seek to understand the principles of meaningful and enduring architecture. It analysis's fifty buildings, starting from the site, through to surroundings, use of natural light, volumes and massing; program and circulation; details, fenestration and ornamentation, going straight into the mind of the architect.
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The perfect starting point for any student of architecture this book offers an open-ended library of building forms that are free from the constraints of site, program, and budget. Including architectural ideas such as structural parasites, chain link towers and ball bearing floors, many of which may require construction techniques yet to be developed. Visual ideas for the architectural imagination.
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This is an excellent introduction into the basic vocabulary of architectural design that examines how form and space are ordered in the built environment. It includes sections on circulation, light, views, and site context, with contemporary examples of form, space, and order that encourage and promote a deeper understanding of architecture.
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Every building starts with an idea. But how do you get from a concept to a piece of architecture? Why do some ideas work better than others? What is a "good" design?
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An inspirational and insightful resource for architecture students and professionals that offers a new way of thinking about architecture to meet the challenges of the twenty-first century
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The core idea for this book is the use of operative verbs as tools for designing space. These operative verbs abstract the idea of spatial formation to its most basic terms, allowing for an objective approach to create the foundation for subjective spatial design.
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archisoup.
Develop concept design ideas with ease.
This kit teaches you how to establish, craft, and communicate consistent and successful design responses each and every time.