MAP turns 10

MAP Contributors

• MAP 12  Marble Fairbanks
• MAP 11  Lindy Roy
• MAP 10  Diller + Scofidio
• MAP 9   Shim Sutcliffe**
• MAP 8   Gigon/Guyer
• MAP 7   Mack & Merrill*
• MAP 6   Mecanoo**
• MAP 5   Tod Williams Billie Tsien**
• MAP 4   Thompson and Rose**
• MAP 3   Ten Arquitectos
• MAP 2   Allies and Morrison*
• MAP 1   RoTo Architects*

• Rafael Moneo
• Michael Benedikt
• Kenneth Frampton
• Richard Sennett
• Michael Sorkin
• Vincent Scully*
• Daniel Libeskind*

• Françoise-Hélène Jourda
• Will Bruder
• Studio Granda
• Rafael Viñoly
• Richard Horden**
• Patkau Architects*

• Volume 1:  Everyday Urbanism
• Volume 2:  New Urbanism
• Volume 3:  Post Urbanism & Reurbanism: Designs for Ground Zero

* out of print
** out of print, available in PDF.

In 1995, Brian Carter, then chair of the architecture program, conceived a series of publications that would prompt a broader discussion of architecture by making the views of outstanding architects and critics more widely accessible to students. He collaborated with two visiting lecturers to produce monographs based on their lectures. The first was internationally-known architect Daniel Libeskind, who delivered the 1995 Raoul Wallenberg Lecture. The other was a young Canadian, John Patkau, the 1995 John Dinkeloo Memorial Lecturer. Carter tapped Professor Annette Lecuyer and recent UM graduate and SCI-Arc master’s student Christian Unverzagt to edit and design the books. These volumes were modest, published in-house, with no distributor. They were given to graduating students at commencement and quantities were dropped off at bookshops any time a faculty member happened to visit a new city. (Since 2002, new titles have been distributed by Distributed Arts Publishers.)

The following year the Wallenberg and Dinkeloo lectures were presented by Vincent Scully and Richard Horden, respectively; and these, too, were published. At the same time there was interest in publishing titles tied to exhibitions and symposia. Thus the Michigan Architecture Papers, or MAP Series, was inaugurated.

The books are designed to provide relevant, elegant, and inexpensive publications on architecture for students, for professionals, and for those with a curiosity about the discipline. They range between 48–160 pages in length and are illustrated with drawings and photographs. Each book is both a conceptual undertaking and a real project with client, timetable, specifications, budget, and contractor.

Five books in the series received a 1998 American Institute of Architects (AIA) International Book Award. In 2001 the American Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA) recognized the Michigan Architecture Papers with a Creative Achievement Award. More recently, the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA) named MAP 10: Diller + Scofidio one of its 50 Books for 2005 in their “50 Books/50 Covers” competition. MAP 10 also received an honorable mention in the graphics category in ID Magazine’s 51st Annual Design Review Awards; with juror Richard Baker, creative director of Life magazine, commenting, “So many architecture books make architecture look uninteresting; this makes it look cool.” The books have been cited in Wallpaper* (#32), The Architectural Review, and reviewed in Architectural Record, Azure, The Architects’ Journal, and the German magazine Detail.

Between 1995–2005, the College produced 28 volumes, averaging nearly three per year. Lecturer in Architecture Christian Unverzagt, (a contributing editor or designer on 18 of the 28 titles) has recently assumed a leadership role for the series and the Michigan Architecture Papers are stronger than ever. Five new books are in the works, including volumes on Kennedy/Violich, Donlyn Lyndon, and Hitoshi Abe. To commemorate 10 years of publishing, many out-of-print titles are available as PDFs from our website. See the list to the right for downloadable titles.