Our Education Panel Chairman, Frazer Macdonald Hay, recommends a few of his favourite books on Interior Design and Architecture – with one written by Ro Spankie, also on the SBID Education Panel!

“Drawing out the Interior by Ro Spankie from AVA’s Series ‘Basics Interior Design & Interior Architecture’ is easily the best academic book of its kind, I haven’t enjoyed or been inspired this much since reading Ed Hollis’s book titled The Secret Lives of Buildings.

Ro Spankie’s book is beautifully structured and written with the right balance between text and image to engage the reader visually and intellectually. The book will, in my view, be a big hit with students but strangely, I also feel, it should be an even bigger hit in the realm of professional practice.

I have lost count of the amount of colleagues which have voiced an insecurity and/or a frustration about drawing without CAD. It’s this type of book which will inspire and rekindle a lost love for some, and for others it will inspire and energise their learning and practice.

I am very relieved to see Ro Spankie has written and researched this book with rigor and depth. I am so tired of seeing publications of so called authors, who just catalogue their past students’ work. Although this is at times interesting, it’s one dimensional and shallow, with little impact value to student’s education in my opinion. Ro Spankie on the other hand has written a document with authenticity and integrity, which works on many levels.

The AVA series in general is well worth a look, I feel their range of Design Topics and their authors are excellent. I was fortunate enough to read yet another book from the same range earlier this year, by Graeme Brooker and Sally Stone, the book is titled Context and Environment and I immediately recommended it to my students…”

Frazer is also Director of the Big Stone Collective ltd.