LINA Book Fair
The LINA Library and Book Fair is a transnational virtual space dedicated to publishing and divulgation of architecture and its intersection with politics, technology, economy, and social issues. It gathers together a community of international independent publishers in order to create connections and intellectual exchange with the editorial production of the LINA platform members. The fair also counts with a programme of events, such as book launches, conferences, readings, and activities to reach out and to engage with the audience.
The curator of the book fair was selected from the LINA Open Call and had the mission to choose and classify a collection of books that promote and disseminate works and ideas in the field of architecture and beyond that responds to the yearly LINA main theme.
LINA Architecture Book Fair Selection process
The curators of the LINA Book Fair were selected among 9 applicants that responded to LINA Open Call specifically interested in the project. dpr-barcelona evaluated the entries and selected one winner. The applicants evaluated by dpr-barcelona are shown in the Table 2 below. For the selection there were considered the following aspects:
- Alignment of the proposal to LINA categories.
- Interest in books as critical tools for architecture thinking
- Potential to engage LINA platform members and publishers abroad.
Collaboration with LINA fellows
The selected fellows were Urban Copyleft, a project promoted by Lemonot: Lorenzo Perri and Sabrina Moreale. They graduated together at the AA and since 2016 have been teaching multiple workshops in different places: Rome, Venice for the AA Summer School, Vienna, Bangkok, Antwerp. Lemonot teaches ADS7 at the RCA in London. Alongside teaching, they also work together on site-specific projects in public spaces, combining architecture with performance, to investigate creative forms of social engagement and to construct the spatial supporting structure for things to happen.
Curators’ statement – OTHER THAN ITSELF.
Let’s talk about architecture grounded in culture. How is the world we build formed by the world we see—or better yet, by how we see the world? Architecture shapes, while also drawing from the multiple worlds around us: from literature, social sciences, and philosophy to economic policy, relational practices, and state agendas. Architecture is porous.
For the 2023 Architecture Book Fair, we are seeking books that explore the exchange, making it mutual: is there an architecture that acts as a tangible medium for others and not just as a concrete outcome unto itself? And how might such an architecture incorporate (read: interpret, echo, honour, question, test, provoke, reveal, deconstruct, or subvert) the ecology of forces at play?
Guiding our curiosity are books that explore an architecture less for its own sake, for the reputation of the architect, or the marvel of building something extraordinary, and more for how it is used, how it is adopted or co-opted by inhabitants who live among it, and how such interactions might change over time.
Architecture is neither the beginning nor the end of the books sought here. Rather, it is the filtering framework to animate the realities - or the fictions - that pervade it.
Curatorial Advisor
The ABF curators counted with the curatorial advice of an experienced independent publisher to assist them in the selection process and the statement development. Nicholas Grosso is from Queens, New York, currently based in Italy. Born at the crossroads of italianità and cubanidad. He is the managing editor of ‘VIA: Voices in Italian Americana’, founder of Literaturhaus, and is a PhD candidate at Oxford Brookes, exploring parallels between information landscapes and the built environment.
The advisor provided experience and also supported the LINA fellows in the communication with publishers and editors.
LINA Architecture Book Fair 2023 Curatorial Books Selection
1. How to Blow Up a Pipeline, Andreas Malm, Verso Books, 2021
2. Inhabiting the Negative Space, Jenny Odell, Harvard University Graduate School of Design, 2021
3. Welcome my Friend, Testo Michel Agier, Marielle Macé, Gilles Raynaldy, Spector books, 2022
4. UNIDENTIFIED FLYING OBJECT FOR CONTEMPORARY ARCHITECTURE (ENG ED.), Beatrice Lampariello, Andrea Anselmo, Boris Hamzeian, Actar Publishers, 2020
5. Collective Processes, Counterpractices in European Architecture, Natalie Donat-Cattin, Birkhauser Architecture, 2021
6. Smiljan Radic: Every So Often a Talking Dog Appears, Smiljan Radic, Moises Puente (Ed.) Patricio Mardones (Forword), Koenig Books, 2019
7. The Time of Discretion, Lisa Mara Batacchi, Silvana editorials, 2020
8. Weaving Language I: Lexicon, Francesca Capone, Essay Press, 2022
9. Architecture as a Way of Seeing and Learning, Nerea Amorós Elorduy, UCL Press, 2021
10. Emergent Tokyo, Jorge Almazán and Joe McReynolds, Oro Editions, 2022
11. The Femicide Machine, Sergio González Rodríguez, Semiotext(e), 2012
12. Reasons for Knocking at an Empty House, Bill Viola, MIT Press, 1995
13. The Gospel of Regicide, Eunsong Kim, Noemi Press, 2017
14. THE HEIRESS/GHOST ACRES, Lightsey Darst, Coffee House Press, 2023
15. Poetechnics, Yaxkin Melchy, Cardboard House Press, 2023
