DAM ARCHITECTURAL BOOK AWARD 2015

Informal Market Worlds Atlas on Shortlist

Bringing into focus the contested spaces at the bottom of the world economy, the Informal Market Worlds Atlas presents 72 case studies of informal marketplaces around the world – from Kabul’s post-conflict Bush Bazaar to Casablanca’s counterfeit markets, from street vending in Bangkok’s “red zones” to cross-border trade between Haiti and the Dominican Republic, and from the 7th Kilometre container market in Odessa to New York’s booming hipster markets. The Informal Market Worlds Reader was published together with the Atlas.

For the seventh time, in 2015 the Frankfurt Book Fair and Deutsches Architekturmuseum (DAM) jointly bestowed the International DAM Architectural Book Award. Now highly respected, the prize, the only one of its kind, honors the ten best architecture books in a year. A total of 63 architecture and art book publishers from all over the world accepted the joint invitation to submit entries.

On 30 September 2015 a jury made up of external experts and representatives of DAM met to select the year’s ten best architectural books from among the 178 entries. They based their decision on criteria such as design, content, quality of material and finishing, innovation, and topicality. The wide range of topics and the high standard of the entries presented the jury with an enormous challenge. For this reason the jurors once again decided to pick ten prize winners, but also to select a further ten entries for the Shortlist of the DAM Architectural Book Awards 2015.