A Weekly Dose of Architecture Books

Two weeks ago I was in Venice for the Biennale, covering the 18th International Architecture Exhibition curated by Lesley Lokko for World-Architects . It was my first trip back to Venice since the 2018 Biennale, which was the 16th edition and was curated by Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara of Grafton Architects. Like other writers outside of Europe, the interim edition, though delayed from 2020 to 2021 due the pandemic, still opened at a time when international travel was difficult. I passed on it, as many others did.  My 2018 trip yielded a pair of "book briefs"  on this blog with two handfuls of catalogs from the main exhibition, some from the national pavilions, and some on collateral events. Although a similar number of books from the current Biennale is featured below, it felt this year that print catalogs were slimmer than in years past. For instance, the national pavilions were focused more on digital than print publications, making them available via QR codes and ...

Over at World-Architects I wrote about two self-published books recently published by BNIM and KPF: ALL - The Tom and Ruth Harkin Center by BNIM Design in Detail by Kohn Pedersen Fox The "Found" feature also includes responses to a few questions on why the firms opted to self-publish rather than work with publishers on these books.

This year's New York International Antiquarian Book Fair is my third, following the 2022 book fair  and, just days before lockdown,  the 2020 book fair . Three hardly makes me an expert, even in my specialization of architecture books, but it does help with gauging the value given to books on the subject and getting a sense of how architecture books are seen within the wider rare books market. Generally, "rare" equates with "old" first editions that have signatures and, in some cases, limited print runs. The last, in the realm of architecture, points to anything pre-capital-M-modern but also, ironically, architecture books in general, since they tend to have limited print runs compared to fiction — compared to anything but artist books, really — and usually just one printing. But the small print runs of architecture books do not equate to high asking prices, as could be grasped by the smattering of architecture books that I came across at the 2023 edition of the...

Life, they say, throws you curve balls, and that's just what happened last month, when a family emergency had me put this blog on hiatus . This post, appearing on a Friday instead of its regular Monday, does not mean regular weekly posts will resume, as I'll be dealing with said emergency on and off for the foreseeable future. Although reading has been low on my list of priorities under the circumstances, I wanted to take the brief chance I have now to highlight some books released so far this year — a dozen of them, presented in order of date of publication. Even though I haven't made my way through all or most of these books, they are ones that I find important and/or timely and/or beautiful, based on my limited firsthand glances of them as well as what I've gleaned from reviews on other platforms. If you think I left out any worthwhile books published so far this year — and I'm sure there are plenty — please let me know in the comments. The Architecture of Disabi...

Monday is when I would normally post a new book review, but instead, this blog and its related newsletter are going on hiatus indefinitely due to a family emergency. 

Preparing for this post I counted roughly one hundred books in my library that are related to exhibitions. Surprisingly, given that I tend to buy catalogs and other companion books to exhibitions I visit, only a quarter of those hundred are exhibitions I have seen in person. Granted, a fair number of them are classics that predate my existence, such as  The International Style , the book version of MoMA's Modern Architecture: International Exhibition from 1932, or are from exhibitions that happened on the other side of the world, including two of the exhibition catalogs featured here. The fact I have so many catalogs that do not function as souvenirs to exhibitions I visited points to their enduring value: They are permanent records of temporary displays and, as such, expose the research and contents from exhibitions to considerably more people than who attended. Not all books coming out of architectural exhibitions are the same. Many of them function like art catalogs and have a ...