Travel by Design: See The Places That Inspire Architects and Other Creative Minds

What’s it like to go on vacation with an architect? It’s not all staring at Doric columns and flying buttresses, according to a new book of photographs snapped by more than 150 leading American architects, interior designers, and other creative professionals during their travels across the globe. 

Published by Assouline in collaboration with the Design Leadership Network, Travel by Design (280 pages; $95) gathers hundreds of images across 60 countries where the contributors found inspiration. Featured sites include ancient ruins (such as Peru's Machu Picchu, pictured above), majestic natural wonders, cities, luxurious resorts, and other beautiful locations. 

“Anyone who knows designers, architects, and those in similar creative professions understands that most of them have a very broad perspective on the nature of design, and of their own creativity,” writes Design Leadership Network founder Peter Sallick in the book’s foreword. “They see things differently than the rest of us, and are always in search of knowledge, inspiration, and resources.”

In addition to illustrating the way travel can spark creativity, the lavish volume's 350 photos supply readers with plenty of reasons to update wish lists for their own future journeys. Here’s a sampling of the book’s creativity-sparking spots around the world.

A hot air balloon floats through mist over Bagan, an ancient city filled with more than 2,000 Buddhist temples and pagodas.

With its tropical setting, crumbling classical architecture, exuberant culture, and frozen-in-the-Cold-War classic cars, it's not hard to see how the Cuban capital and its twin poles of uplift and decay could fire an artistic imagination. 

Frommer's Hawaii names the towering sea cliffs and lush valleys of Napali Coast State Wilderness Park the most impressive natural feature on Kauai—and that's saying something on an island where even the less impressive features already look like an improvement on the Garden of Eden.  

The beach of Castiglione lies about 200 stairsteps below the clifftop town of Ravello on Italy's Amalfi Coast, where pastel-hued villages cling to seaside hills. 

Trout Lake is the glittering focal point of Coon's Franklin Lodge, a collection of log cabins established in 1892 on 250 forested acres in Wisconsin's rural Northwoods.