Published Architect, July 2008 (link)
Some monographs are published as intellectual exercises, to engage
the curious would-be architect. Others grace coffee tables and can help while
away an empty afternoon. Many aid architects in getting more work. And for all
the ways that a reader can look at a monograph, there are just as many ways for
an architect to get one published.
So who gets a monograph? Sometimes the path to publication is surprising—and that's exactly the point. Many architects aim for a boutique publisher like Monacelli Press, a New York City imprint that was started 14 years ago in a SoHo basement and currently has offices overlooking Norman Foster's Hearst Tower (in case the staff ever forget about the sweeping power of architecture in their day-to-day bookmaking). Now owned by Random House, Monacelli was the publisher that issued Rem Koolhaas and Bruce Mau's S,M,L,XL , the seminal 1997 monograph that, editorial director Andrea Monfried says, “everyone wants to do the new version of.” That's a tough call, but she points out that what S,M,L,XL's creators did is crucial: They thought holistically about the relation of the book to what it describes.
“There are so many different ways of organizing the book—from the
structure to the table of contents—that for every architect, there has to be
some relation to the way they practice,” Monfried says. Monacelli's 2000 Tod
Williams Billie Tsien Architects monograph, named for the fluid relationship
the two principals see betweenWork/Life , is a perfect example. “The trick,” Monfried says, “is to get
your personality to come through.”
Practically, it's a matter of the basics. The editorial group at
Monacelli will figure out the book's specifications—the number of pages, number
of photographs, print run, and so forth—and get an estimate from the printers.
“We do feel that each book has to carry its own weight in the marketplace,”
Monfried explains. If it can't? “We adjust as necessary.”
Some publishers, like Images, based in Australia, get around the
market-driven publishing game by offering an entirely different service. For a
fee (often hidden in what's called a “buy-back agreement,” in which the
architect agrees to purchase a certain number of copies), Images will take a
group of files and turn them into a book. It might sound excessively businesslike,
but if you consider a monograph's role in publicizing a firm's work, it makes a
lot of sense. “A book carries a lot more weight than the simple brochures we
all hand out,” says Laura Cabo, a principal at the Boston firm Gund
Partnership, which just published a monograph with Images. “There's something
so special about a hardback that just makes your work seem very precious.”
Images distributes its books globally.
Rizzoli, a venerable publisher that puts out monographs by
starchitects like Zaha Hadid and Richard Meier, is more in line with Monacelli
in its market-driven model. Hadid and Meier might seem like safe bets, but
editor Dung Ngo says that Rizzoli has “always tried to support architectural
books of all stripes.”
Rizzoli's differently striped books include Peter Eisenman's
ultradense Ten Canonical Buildings 1950– 2000, which isn't exactly beach reading. “We have to
[honor] our responsibility to bring such books out,” Ngo says. If a book like
that doesn't support itself, Rizzoli hopes to pick up the slack somewhere else,
like with a Frank Lloyd Wright book (and how many architecture students can say
they own about 15 copies from well-meaning family members?). “We're a little
more nimble” because safe books can offset riskier ones, says Ngo.
The most nimble book publisher on the block these days might be
Princeton Architectural Press, which is associated with the younger, hipper
side of the profession. One way PAPress finds under-the-radar designers is
through its connection to the Architectural League's Young Architects program.
The other? “We start looking really, really early,” acquisitions editor Nancy
Eklund Later says, citing a recent KieranTimberlake Associates monograph as an
example of a before-its-time adoption. “We look at a body of work, and the
editorial staff translates that into a book in our heads,” is how she explains
the selection process, which comes both from in-house recommendations and
architects who approach them. “It's a lot of gut.”
Guts are apparent in the Atlas of Novel Tectonics, a book by the firm Reiser + Umemoto that is
more of a manifesto than a monograph. “It was a bit obtuse,” Later admits, “but
it's who Jesse [Reiser] is, and that's his charm and virtue.” Reiser explains
the book's genesis: “We started looking at 19th century books and atlases. … In
a way [Atlas] has much more
conservative graphic design, so that we could highlight the content rather than
the image.” The firm is now working on a project-driven monograph with
Barcelona, Spain–based Actar (PAPress passed) that will come out in the spring
of next year. This book will be much more straightforward, with project images,
models, drawings, and descriptions.
Even though, as Monfried points out, monographs often benefit from a
book publisher's experienced and relatively objective eye, having full control
is also appealing to many architects. Polshek Partnership Architects, after
putting out monographs through other publishers (like PAPress in 2004), decided
to take over. Since 2006, the firm has published small books devoted to one
project each, released four at a time, with every element—writing, editing,
design, and printing—controlled by the firm. It is Polshek's hope that
together, over time, these small books will paint a richer picture of its work.
What about people who aren't quite established? There's always the
internet. New York City architect William Feuerman published his own monograph
in 2006 on lulu.com, a self-publishing website. He did it initially to make a
portfolio after graduating from architecture school, but it was also, he says,
a way to question the standard.
“I wanted to really rethink these things. It doesn't need to be a
book just about the projects,” he says. “The idea was that it could lead to
something more than just a discussion about the architecture.” Because Feuerman
can easily update the book on the back end—all he has to do is upload a new PDF
to lulu.com and specify how he'd like it bound—completely different versions
can be published with each print run.
And that's where we come
to the final question: Why bother to publish a monograph, when it's possible to
make spectacular portfolios online? Feuerman believes it's an issue of
branding. “What you see in a lot of monographs is, it's branded to create some
sort of identity,” he says. The Feuerman brand, for now, is edgy and renegade.
Would he go with a publisher, given the chance? “Yes,” he says. “But it'll be
about how we can think about [the book] in a new way.”
