World Architecture Festival has again joined forces with the Worshipful Company of Chartered Architects (the City of London livery company) and the Temple Bar Trust, to stage the Architecture Book of the Year Awards 2025.

About the Award

Any book about architecture or architects published between June 2024 and August 2025 could be entered. Entries should be published in English (translations into English welcome).

2025 submissions are now closed, please see the winners below.

The 2025 Winners

Biography

Commended: Grounds, Romberg & Boyd: Melbourne’s Mid-century Modernists, by Marina Larkins, (Uro)

An insightful and original portrait of a short-lived but influential Australian practice, Grounds, Romberg and Boyd combines correspondence, extensive quotation and authorial analysis to reveal the personalities, tensions and ambitions behind the architecture. Despite its exuberant design, this confident, engaging book offers rare depth on the realities of creative collaboration and the business of architecture.

Horace Jones: Architect of Tower Bridge, by David Lascelles (Profile Editions)
A lucid, engaging and well-researched account of a largely unsung architect whose work - ranging from Tower Bridge to Leadenhall Market – has had a profound impact on London. Combining investigative rigour with accessible storytelling, it illuminates both a remarkable individual and the early evolution of the architectural profession, offering a model for architectural history that will appeal to a wide audience.

Winner:
The Master Builder: William Butterfield and His Times, by Nicholas Olsberg (Lund Humphries)An exceptional work of scholarship and presentation, offering a richly detailed and beautifully produced study of one of Victorian England’s most distinctive architects. Lavish in its use of archival illustrations and supported by James Morris’ striking new photography, the book reveals a deep passion for its subject and an impressive command of historic material. While substantial and densely detailed, it remains an accessible and engaging overview that will inspire greater interest in Butterfield’s remarkable architectural legacy.
Judges: Chris Foges, Jo Bacon, Sarah Jackson

Building monograph

Winner:
Hans Hollein’s Masterpiece, Art, Architecture and the City, by Eva Branscome (Lund Humphries)We highly recommend Eva Branscome’s book. It is a study of the Museum Abteiberg in Mönchengladbach, which opened in 1982. It draws on in-depth research, including interviews with the architect. It is well presented and illustrated. It explores the relationship between architecture and conceptual art in a convincing way. (It is hard now to recall the huge impact this piece of art-architecture had on museology and architecture as a whole – but it certainly did.)
 Judges: Catherine Croft, Niall McLaughlin, Robert Wilson

Guide

Winner:The Strand: A biography, by Geoff Browell and Eileen Chan (Manchester University Press)The judges congratulate the authors on a fascinating historic guide of this route through London. By their research and dissection they reveal how the Strand has changed through different modes of transport, war, cultural unravelling and changing fashion; yet importantly retained its essence of familiarity. We could draw lessons from the book on how we can make historic parts of our city change to accommodate new demands. The robust response of this single artery over a millennium is a lesson of the innate strength and durability of historic parts of our cities when viewed from the perspective of time. It is the geological beauty of a strip well worn.
Judges: Samantha Hardingham, Victoria Thornton, Roger Zogolovitch

History

Winner: Urban Planning in Nazi Germany, by Harald Bodenschatz et al (DOM Publishers)Perhaps not an obvious topic for a prize-winning book, this huge and impressively edited volume describes in a clear straightforward manner the full gamut of urban planning under Hitler’s regime. Part of a series of similar studies into mid-20th century totalitarianism, it is both exhaustive and terrifying in equal measure. It is commendable that these German scholars were willing to look at this dark historical period with such rigour and candour: other nations should likewise be scrutinising their own unsavoury built heritage.
Judges: Murray Frazer, Simon Henley, Cindy Walters

Practice monograph
Commended:
It’s Nice Today: On Climate, Comfort, And Pleasure, by Lacaton & Vassal (Ruby Press, Berlin)An excellent title for the work of a French practice that offers lessons, mainly in residential buildings, but offering ideas that could be applied to other building types. Several of the major social housing projects featured in particular, offer compelling, appealing, lightweight and sustainable solutions for upgrading tired buildings, avoiding demolition, with a detailed technical analysis of subsequent environmental performance. A meeting of the academic and practical in a lightweight easy to handle format.

Assemble, Building Collective, foreword by Aaron Betsky (Thames & Hudson) Despite there being some dissonance between the nature of Assemble’s light touch, witty and temporary architectural interventions and the heft of the volume which conveys them, there is something intangibly hefty about this high-profile collective’s critique of conventional procurement and built solutions. Assemble have become global players in a generational movement advocating for alternative architecture. Will the architecture be of lasting merit, or is that not the point? Absolutely worth a read, not least for Aaron Betsky’s foreword, which traces Assemble’s socially-sensitive roots.

Winner:
Frei Otto 1925-2015, Building with Nature, edited by Anna-Maria Meister, Joaqu Medina Warmburg (Prestel)A handsome production and an important historic book that describes Frei’s trajectory through key projects, with a few surprises, marking the centenary of an pioneering architect/engineer who was also a great educator. A former pilot in the Luftwaffe, Frei championed biotechnics in architecture and Modernism, and then his influence faded. A timely re-appraisal.
Judges: Gillian Darley, Lee Mallett, Eric Parry 

Technical

Commendations:Architectural Epidemiology, by Adele Houghton and Carlos Castillo-Salgado (Hopkins Press)The judges feel that this book is a very important study connecting issues of health, welfare, urban design and architecture. With those worthy targets in mind, it could be said, for the average reader, it probably covers too much ground and scientific detail. However, the last third of the book is devoted to many different case studies in various cities and climates around the world. These are all very relevant and understandable for the target reader whether city planner, developer, politician or architect.

Fabricate 2024 : Creating resourceful futures, by Ayres, Sheil, Ramsgaard-Thomsen and Skavara (UCL Press)A very useful and important book for architects and students about physical research and prototype experimentation into new building and material techniques. This is the latest in a series promoted by UCL/Bartlett School.Well-written by a variety of international engineers, architects, technologists and students. The book is beautifully designed and illustrated and it is good at informing readers and especially architectural students about the possible building futures.

Winner:
Architecture Follows Climate, by Alexandros Ioannou-Naoum (Birkhäuser)This book was chosen for the award because the judges feel it is not only importantly topical and wide-ranging, but it is also beautifully presented. It is very clear, easy to read and navigate for architects, students and lay readers. The technical and academic narrative is accompanied by the author’s brilliant sketch drawings which make the issues and climate principles easy to understand and appreciate. The “Epilog” at the end puts it all in the current global warming context for the architect. It reminds us that a symbiotic relationship between buildings and climate was culturally pervasive in the past, and how this exploitation of basic building physics offers us valuable lessons for human comfort and low energy design across our diverse planet. This book helps us learn from the past relevant lessons for the future.
Judges: John Lyall, John Robertson, Lynne Sullivan
Typology

Commended:
Set Pieces: Architecture for the Performing Arts in Fifteen Fragments, Diamond Schmitt Architects (Birkhäuser)A tightly defined and focused study of 15 spaces for different types of performance designed by one practice very experienced and best known for their work in this field. This book shows how the practice has developed, documenting some of the challenges inherent in designing performances spaces of varying specifications, both new build and refurbishment. Despite its narrow source material, it is a useful addition to the literature on this subject.
Winner:
Mass Housing in Ukraine: Building typologies and catalogue of series 1922-2022, by Kataryna Malaia and Philipp Meuser (DOM Publishers)This remarkable and substantial book achieves exactly what the title describes but this bald statement hardly captures its significance. Covering 100 years of housing, it offers a fascinating if very focused insight into the political turbulence of its place and time. Initially split between capitalist Poland and the nascent USSR, what is now Ukraine showed the effects of two political systems on mass housing, which was reflected in architecture with the west looking to Vienna and the east drawing on the cultural firmament of the immediate post revolutionary period as well as the Neue Sachlichkeit of Frankfurt and the Bauhaus. After gaining ascendency over the Nazi invasion, attention quickly turned to mass housing, with examples from as early as 1943. Charting the various 'series' of housing types that sprang from Soviet principles allows reader to gain an insight into the strengths and weaknesses of the policies, as well as design and construction, again documenting the effects of political change, from the highpoint of Stalinism, to Glasnost and the post-Soviet chaos of the 1990s. It also records, hauntingly but unsentimentally, the damage and destruction of the ongoing war. The deadpan, documentary tone of the text and images intensifies its value as research and analysis with broader ramifications that its immediate subject.
Judges: Jeremy Melvin, Spencer de Grey, Peter Stewart

Special prize: urbanism and planning

Winner:
Kings Cross: the making of a masterplan, by Bob Allies et al (Lund Humphries)This is an exemplary account of the creation of London’s most significant new quarter since the 19th century, by the people who made it happen. The client/architect/planning collaboration which created New King’s Cross is reflected in the collaboration that produced a book which has lessons for all interested in urban regeneration.
Judge: Paul Finch

The 2025 Categories

History
Biography (including autobiography)
Building (monograph)
Practice (monograph)
Typology (monograph)
Technical
City/country architectural guide
Plus: a special prize (or prizes) for exemplary books which fall outside the above categories

How to enter

Category-winning authors and publishers will be invited to a reception in Temple Bar (a building designed by Wren next to St Paul’s Cathedral) later in the year. There may also be opportunities for live-streamed interviews with winning authors.

• There is no entry fee
• Publishers need to complete the online entry form.
• Once the online entry form is complete, three copies of your book should be sent to the below address:

Book Awards, World Architecture Festival, Emap, 4th Floor, Harmsworth House, 13-15 Bouverie Street, London, EC4Y 8DP

Once received, the books will be dispatched to the judges.

Entries for 2025 have now closed.

Any queries should be addressed to Paul Finch, Programme Director, World Architecture Festival (email paul.finch@emap.com)

The judging process

Judges, a mixture of academics, practising architects and critics, will make their decisions based on (a) quality of content – the primary consideration; (b) quality of design; and (c) production values. There will be three judges per category.

ABYA 2024 winners

Winners of the 2024 Architecture Book of the Year Awards were announced on 10 December at an awards ceremony held in Temple Bar, City of the London. This is the second edition of the annual awards, which are organized by World Architecture Festival, The Worshipful Company of Chartered Architects and the Temple Bar Trust.

The category winners and commended entries, and the category judges, were as follows:

Biography

Winner: The Ingenious Mr Flitcroft: Palladian Architect 1697-1769, by Gill Hedley (Lund Humphries)

Both the winning and commended entries were a delight in completely different ways. The jurors were very impressed by the winner. It is both learned and engaging – which can be difficult to pull off in a scholarly work of history. The author has left no stone unturned, opening up old letters and giving readers a real flavour of the period, from the vicissitudes of daily life to banter between architects. We learn huge amounts in every chapter, and the reader has the sense the author has visited every archive and building, but hasn’t got bogged down in detail. The writing retains an appealing pace and lightness of tone.

Hedley’s references and interest in the contemporary relevance of the 18th century work are great; she has a keen understanding of how people might want to interpret the buildings today. The book also has a clever structure, with impressions of Flitcroft’s personal attributes at the beginning and end framing a nicely organized presentation of his work in the middle. And it is a handsome object, beautifully laid out and illustrated, making it very accessible. To deliver something like this is a serious challenge, and she’s done it brilliantly.

Highly commended: First Quarter, by John Tuomey (Lilliput Press)

Many architects would enjoy this account of John Tuomey’s early life, and the events that shaped his career as co-founder of O’Donnell & Tuomey – albeit there is more attention given to personal experiences here than to practice. It is beautifully written, bravely honest in some places and howlingly funny in others. There are moving descriptions of what it meant to be in Dublin at a time when large parts of the city were being transformed, and notable figures such as James Stirling are rendered with wit and affection in brilliant vignettes. Hopefully there’s a second quarter yet to come.

Judges: Jo Bacon, Chris Foges

Building

Winner: Upper Lawn, Solar Pavilion, Alison and Peter Smithson, (MACK)

The Smithson’s weekend house at Fonthill in Wiltshire is already well known, but this republished and revised deep dive into the archive (first published in earlier form almost forty years ago in 1986) reveals the story of how the project came into being and how life within it evolved. Very much at its heart is the architects’ perspective on its construction and inhabitation and this is now framed in this reprint by the book opening with a contextual new essay by Paul Clarke (Professor of Architectural Design at the Belfast School of Architecture and The Built Environment).

It was the most thoughtful and emotionally entry in this category, elegantly bringing together material which still feels revelatory and relevant: family snapshots and close-ups revealing the materiality of the site, original drawings, perceptive reflections and diary entries. It is a calm, poetic evocation of both a specific time and a process of exploration and habitation, within a changing seasonal landscape. It stands up against more frenetic and exhaustive approaches, including those drawing on copious archive material, by displaying poise and restraint. It is the more powerful for its careful curation and incorporation of a more intimate narrative, with a clear exposition of the building itself.

So much has been published on the Smithsons, but this reworked book still conveys a surprising freshness, and presents a question-raising and inspirational kaleidoscope of material, deftly edited and with graphic clarity.

Judges: Catherine Croft, Robert Wilson

Guide

Winner: Blackheath and Greenwich - Modern Buildings 1950-2000, by Ana Francisco Sutherland (Park Books)

This deserving winner squarely hits the brief of architectural guide book. It is a thorough and ‘complete’ piece of work, brought to life by clear layout and provision of the context of all the architects and communities served. The inclusion of plans/drawings are really instructive, and provide a fantastic starting point for a conversation about the design of houses and housing – topical.

Judges: Samantha Hardingham, Victoria Thornton, Roger Zogolovitch

History

Winner: Dublin – Creation, Occupation, Destruction, Niall McCullough, (Unthink Press)

More a love-poem rather than architectural text, this astonishingly original appreciation of Dublin owes much to the writings of W.G. Sebald or films of Wim Wenders. The author’s deep knowledge of his home city is also entwined in affinity with the rich literary tradition of Joyce and others. Copious undated monochrome photographs carry a haunting quality, like Dublin seen in reverie. As a posthumous publication, it is a fitting finale for a distinguished career as architect and writer on Ireland’s buildings, towns and cities.

Judges: Murray Fraser, Simon Henley, Cindy Walters

Practice

Winner: I. M. Pei, Life is Architecture, edited by Shirley Surya and Aric Chen (Thames & Hudson, London and New York, in collaboration with the M+ museum of Hong Kong)

A magisterial look at the life and works of Ieoh Ming Pei who died at a prodigious age in 2019. Born into the Hong Kong elite, Pei made his name in Modernist America, survived a stint as partner of developer Bill Zeckendorf, then left landmark iconic buildings across a wide range of typologies around the world that still resonate in national and global cultures.

At the core is I.M.Pei’s extraordinary trajectory, from innovator with his 1940 thesis project for a bamboo propaganda hut in rural China to become a world statesman of the profession. The clarity of the book’s themed chapters, its graphic presentation of material, including personal correspondence, historic photos, newspaper clippings, superb essays, without prolixity or adulation, ensure the man himself and his practice’s architecture are readily accessible.

A must for any architectural library. We didn’t have a moment’s doubt that this exemplary volume was our unanimous category winner.

Runner Up: Unfinished & Far Far Away, The Architecture of Irving Smith Architects, edited by Aaron Betsky (Altrim Publishers, Barcelona)

What an engaging monograph. Two Kiwi architects persuaded US academic Aaron Betsky to visit them in their small town, Aotearoa, in New Zealand’s South Island. Jeremy Smith and Andrew Irving, live ‘far, far away’ where an unusual landscape dominates. But they point out, in our collective global warming crisis, all our ‘far, far aways are not so far apart’. And, they ask, ‘Will you continue to mow a lawn around architecture and hope you don’t need to change your buildings or, will you look to participate with the landscapes and environments that we share?’

Ten fantastic projects set in their New Zealand contexts are presented, supplemented with essays on global themes. Editor Aaron Betsky brings an American, even Virginian, angle to his examination of the work and its setting which ensures that it doesn’t feel parochial. He also, delightfully, conveys his pleasure in the company of and characteristics of the partners, ’having some fun.’ We concur.

A modest publication providing global lessons on how to avoid the solipsism of the practice monograph.

Highly commended: Caruso St John, Collected Works, Volume 2, 200-2012 ( Mack)

Adam Caruso and Peter St John have worked hard to refurbish the foundations of Britain’s traumatised architectural culture alongside the built manifestations of their ideas. So much so, they’ve been welcomed in Europe, travelling in the opposite direction to the UK’s populist politics and something few other British practices have been able to achieve, exemplified by Caruso’s chair in architecture and construction at ETH Zurich, and the practice’s European work.

Their positioning as essentially ‘post-Modern’, a critique of Modernism and Neo-Modernism’s shortcomings, is extensively explained with substantial quotations from modern cultural history to amplify their position. These are summarised in Caruso’s closing essay – which alone is worth a couple of reads to remind us of where we’ve got to with architectural culture.

It can feel a bit overpowering, and possibly too referential, but no other practice would put this much effort into illuminating the wider roots of their architectural philosophy. Someone’s got to do it, and if there was any accusation of British architectural discourse being in some way anaemic, these substantial, carefully wrought volumes of Caruso St John’s work, can always be hurled at the source. 

Judges: Gillian Darley, Lee Mallett, Eric Parry

Technical

Winner: The Art of Architectural Grafting, Jeanne Gang (Park Books)

This is a charming, well written book by a clever and accomplished architect. The narrative and delightful illustrations are both useful and helpful. they take the metaphor of tree-grafting to the adaptation of existing buildings and extensions of urban areas. It can also be read as , not only inventive use of timber, but also as a valuable treatise in the low-carbon re-use of building materials generally. A good read!

Commendation

Landscape Architecture for Sea Level Rise, Galen D Newman and Zixu Qiao (Routledge)

This is an important study of an urgent crisis currently facing many parts of the world, intended to protect communities, their land and buildings against global sea level rises. It contains ideas and practical solutions from expert contributors around the world. It can be seen as an important state-of-the-art manual for landscape architects, engineers, architects, developers and politicians. There are inevitable instances of repetition given the involvement of so many authors. But it fits the bill by being a full-on technical guide.

Judges: John Lyall, John Robertson, Lynne Sullivan

Typology

Winner: Housing Atlas: Europe 20th Century, Orsina Simona Pierini, Carmen Espegel, Dick van Gameren, Mark Swenarton (Lund Humphries)

An important book on architectural history, given its prescient selection of 87 projects from across Europe in the 20th century, and beautiful production (including specially drawn plans, sections and elevations to standard scales). It encourages proper understanding (not glossing over their faults) of some very sophisticated works of architecture (some less so), including their relationship to programme and place.

It brings home the importance of the urge in fascist, communist and democratic regimes to provide decent, affordable urban housing for a wide range of the population as the driving nexus of architecture in the 20th century, and raises still relevant questions that give insights into the relationship between architecture and policy formation.

High commendation: The Japanese House Since 1945, Naomi Pollock, Tadao Ando (Thames & Hudson)

A superbly produced book that benefits from deep research into and knowledge of a single building type in one country since World War II. Given that the country is Japan, source of so much technological inspiration behind modern lifestyles, it raises questions about how much of the developed world lives. It also works as an insight into Japanese culture, including the relationship of tradition to modernity, and locates the overall significance of Japanese architecture in a global context.

Judges: Paul Finch, Jeremy Melvin

Special prizes

Sérgio Ferro, Architecture From Below, edited by Silke Kapp and Mariana Moura, translated by Ellen Heyward and Ana Naomi de Sousa (Mack)

A translated collection of architectural theorist Sérgio Ferro’s ideas and essays offers English readers new access to a remarkable set of theories, driven by Ferro’s experiences in Brazil where he worked on Brasilia. Initially a member of the Communist Party, he resisted the junta that took over in 1964 and was imprisoned in 1970. He moved to France on his release.

It is the first of three volumes and should appeal to those seeking a different viewpoint on architecture – from ‘below’ – one that puts the building site and workers at the centre of architectural enquiry. Ferro’s starting point is that architectural culture’s dismissal and neglect of building labour denies labour as the source of value and has made architectural design the servant of capitalism.

Published in Brazil and in France, Serro is barely known in the English-speaking world. Its ten chapters from between 1967 and 2019, kick off with his influential lecture of 2014 to Newcastle University’s Industries of Architecture conference, which set out his theoretical approach. His ideas could be a useful catalyst for today’s generations, targeting broader aims before the onslaught of pragmatism that practice entails. His theories illuminate why we have the architecture we do, rather the architecture we might desire, or need.

Judges: Gillian Darley, Lee Mallett, Eric Parry

Humanise: A maker’s guide to building our world, by Thomas Heatherwick (Viking)

This best-selling polemic is a visual feast, intended to provoke and to stimulate public discussion about our contemporary architectural and urban condition. It has succeeded!

Judges: Chris Williamson, Paul Finch

Enquires: paul.finch@emap.com