In a similar topic of books about system design, someone on HN recommended A Pattern Language and The Timeless Way of Building by Christopher Alexander et. al.
They're not about designing distributed software systems... they're a complete design language for the proper design of a city, from the grossest elements to the most granular. You can flip to a random page and understand what makes a front yard really fulfill its purpose, or you can flip to a different page and learn why some public plazas just don't get used, while others flourish.
It's a template system for designing a room, a house, a neighborhood, a city, etc.
Makes you think about what a component is, what makes it "good" or "bad" at what it's supposed to do, and what makes it harmoniously integrate with other components.
Alexander is fun for sure for thinking about how we got where we are (I suppose if you were able to build your own house it could also be directly used to achieve various goals, which would be fun).
Along similar lines I would recommend Donella Meadows' work, for example her essay Leverage Points[1].
I haven't heard of this book, is it actually about designing cities? I'm probably way off but all I can't think of is that once we started designing cities we built crap. Take the UK for example all its beautiful amazing places were built before we had planning offices. They seem to just have evolved.
No, houses. Each "chapter" is just a page (well both sides of a leaf), sort of like The Society of Mind.
One example is (paraphrased) "find the nicest spot on the property and don't build on it, because then you'll lose it". Another is "corridors are dead spaces; you move through them, and pretty much ignore them, on your way to do something". Not gospel or absolute rules; rather rules of thumb, or ways to talk about and think about what we wanted to accomplish.
They're not about designing distributed software systems... they're a complete design language for the proper design of a city, from the grossest elements to the most granular. You can flip to a random page and understand what makes a front yard really fulfill its purpose, or you can flip to a different page and learn why some public plazas just don't get used, while others flourish.
It's a template system for designing a room, a house, a neighborhood, a city, etc.
Makes you think about what a component is, what makes it "good" or "bad" at what it's supposed to do, and what makes it harmoniously integrate with other components.