Reddit mentions of Yes is More. An Archicomic on Architectural Evolution

Yes Is More! is a great book about BIG's practice and projects and is done like a comic book. It does a fantastic job of explaining the developmental process for their projects and how they transitioned into the final designs. Granted this is just one firm and not a great overall educator in architecture but i've always loved Bjarkes style and BIG's way of doing / explaining things.

This is one of my favorite books right now. very fun book by one of my favorite firms.

Understanding Architecture: Its Elements, History, and Meaning

A Global History of Architecture

A Visual Dictionary of Architecture

The Death and Life of Great American Cities


Bonus book because I like this firm's concepts:

Yes Is More: An Archicomic on Architectural Evolution - Bjarke Ingels Group

Right on.

From when I used to teach design studio (2nd year) I looked for and tried to teach a few things.

1. Diagramming: Keep your spaces simple blobs for now (or rectangles or whatever) and start to document relationships. Where do materials come in? How do they move to where they are processed? How do they move to where they go out or are distributed? Diagram how the spaces are connected with different types of lines (color, stroke, etc.) which mean different things (create a key to explain it). Congrats, you just started documenting "spatial adjacency"!
   
   
2. Now list some of the requirements of the spaces. Lighting, view, access, whatever you can think of. Document this in some way (not just a list, try to figure out a way that makes the most sense to you, it's not always binary, there can be a gradient). Alright, now you're starting to figure out some "spatial requirements!"
   
   
3. Alright, how do those things begin to inform your design? What is most important that you learned from your analysis? View? Access? Lighting? Color? Whatever you choose, make that/them the driving factor (rule) in your design decision process. Now that you have created a framework, start playing with your design so that it follows your rules. Congratulations, you just developed your "design language". What happens if you break one here and there? Does it reinforce the importance of your other rules? Does it create tension in a good way? Can you justify the reason for breaking your rules? Hell, bro, you've gone pro.
   
   I just picked up (because this book came out AFTER I stopped teaching) Operative Design and Conditional Design. These would have been amazing to expose my students to as not only options for basic architectural moves but also help with EXPLAINING them and why they did them. Instead I had to rely on Yes is More which is fine but I wanted something slightly more rigorous.
   Talk to your university's architectural librarian about ordering them if they don't have it. My experience has been very good in asking the librarian to order books. They usually have a budget each cycle and appreciate suggestions.
   
   
4. One last thing. Do things multiple times. Create a lot of different schemes. Iterate like crazy and review your previous designs. Figure out what works and what doesn't. You learn more from failure than from success so FAIL OFTEN and SPECTACULARLY.
   
   Good luck!