Academic blog on Architext series
A very interesting if rather dry discussion has unfolded for me, carrying the name of a rival bookshop business in Australia.
‘Architext’: A book series on architecture, design, history and discourse
This turns out to be the name of a series of Routledge books of which I was unaware. Coincidentally the blog rather easily organizes some of the major architecture pubishers thus:
- Rizzoli and Taschen are art publishers
- MIT Press and University of Minnesota Press are academic publishers
- University of Texas Press is a local publisher
Missing of course are Konemann, or Kodel, and TeNeues, Thames and Hudson and a host of other US publishers such as AVA, Loft, and Images (whose home is Australia).
Since the major Architectural trend for sustainability has developed, the Routledge upcoming book on that subject is mentioned:
Reinterpreting Sustainable Architecture: Theories, Discourses, Practices
By Simon Guy, Graham Farmer (Series: Architext of course)
The author makes some interesting observations:
Architext’s owners (ultimately controlled by the Thompson family of Toronto) holds the copyright on most of Chambers’ material. Beginning with Jaskot’s Architecture of Oppression, the books have maintained an interest in the operation and expression of power within architecture. This thematic has been developed over many years in the work of Tom Markus in particular. Elsewhere, the politics of building and the management of construction projects are a thinly spread mortar indeed. http://www.spaceandculture.org/2008/01/30/
