2023 Architectural Book Awards shortlist unveiled

The shortlist has been announced for the inaugural Architectural Book Awards. The awards were open to any book published in 2020, 2021, or 2022, with genres spanning history, biographies, buildings, practice, typologies, technical, and guides.

The shortlist has been organized into three categories: Monographs, Reference Books, and History, each of which will ultimately crown its own winner. The overall Architectural Book of the Year will be chosen from the winners of the three categories.

In each category, there are three judges — consisting of a combination of academics, practicing architects, and critics — who will base their decisions on content quality, design excellence, and production value. Curiously, the competition organizers have decided to keep the judges anonymous, to help avoid the conflict of interest that can exist when judges and entrants are known to each."

The shortlist for all three categories comprises the following:

Monographs category

• Gentrification is Inevitable and Other Lies by Leslie Kern (Verso)
• Artificial Islands: Adventures in the Dominions by Owen Hatherley (Watkins Media/Repeater)
• If Walls Could Speak: My Life in Architecture by Moshe Safdie (Grove Press UK)
• Land of Stone: A Journey Through Modern Architecture in Scotland by Roger Emmerson (Luath Press)

Reference Books category

• Queer Spaces: An Atlas of LGBTQIA+ Places and Stories by Adam Nathaniel Furman and Joshua Mardell (EDS) (Riba Publishing)
• House London by Ellie Stathaki and Anna Stathaki (Frances Lincoln Publishers)
• A History of Council Housing in 100 Estates by John Boughton (Riba Publishing)
• Brutal Outer London: The First Photographic Exploration of Modernist Architecture in London’s Outer Boroughs by Simon Phipps (September Publishing)
• This is Architecture: Writing on Buildings edited by Stephen Bayley and Robert Bargery (Unicorn)

History category

• Gilded City: Tour Medieval and Renaissance London by Duncan A Smith (Unicorn)
• Built in Chelsea: Two Millennia of Architecture and Townscape by Dan Cruickshank (Unicorn)
• Master of the House: The Theatres of Cameron Mackintosh by Michael Coveney/Delfont Mackintosh Theatres (Unicorn)
• The Architecture Drawing Book by Charles Hind, Fiona Orsini, Susan Pugh (Riba Publishing)
• Carlo Scarpa and Castelvecchio Revisited by Richard Murphy (Breakfast Mission Publishing)
• Iconicon: A Journey Around the Landmark Buildings of Contemporary Britain by John Grindrod (Faber & Faber)