Ria Stein once again joined us for our conference to give us an update from the publisher Birkhäuser. Ria works as a freelance editor responsible for part of their program planning, the acquisition as well as the conceptual and editorial supervision of five titles per year, some of them in several language editions.
Together with her colleague Andreas Müller, Ria initiated, conceived and managed the Birkhäuser series “Design Manuals” and developed the typological database Building Types Online. 120 architecture schools around the world are BTO subscribers. It contains more than 1,300 projects, 2,900 photos and most importantly 6,300 drawings. The recent interface update has improved the database’s navigation/search experience and an interactive map for project locations has been added.
Other updates include new categories to filter projects to: cohousing, assisted living, and live/work spaces – with more in the pipeline. For 2025/6 they plan for a focus on rammed earth construction, refurbishment and re-use of buildings, and to surface examples in BTO from under-represented regions in Africa, Asia and Latin America.
The major talking point this year was Birkhäuser’s new database: Modern Construction Online. Again, construction drawings are a major draw, with content built from (initially 5 of) Birkhäuser’s books and authorship of of Andrew Watts, a founding director of Newtecnic. This database will be available October, 2024 and starts with 500 entries and 4,000 illustrations.
It was very appealing to hear that the content focus will be increasingly matching key issues – environmental/sustainable design, wider representation of architecture from around the world, co-living, adaptive re-use etc.
Finally, as in previous years, Birkhäuser were very generous in providing us with a large number of their latest architecture books which we could give away to conference delegates; almost everyone won a book in our tombola – pictured above!
Report: David Stacey | University of Bath
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