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The MIT Press Launches New Open Access Collection of 34 Classic Architecture and Urban Studies Titles
An unprecedented digitization program makes out-of-print works byGeorge L. Hersey, Richard Freedman, Mark Jarzombek, Moshe Safdie,
Peter Rowe, Galen Cranz, Arthur Pulos, Gilbert Hubert, and others available as ebooks for the first time.
March 31, 2021 (Cambridge, MA)--Today, the MIT Press launched MIT Press Open Architecture and Urban Studies [1], a robust digital
collection of classic and previously out-of-print architecture and urban studies books, on their digital book platform MIT Press Direct.
The collection was funded by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation as part of the Humanities Open Book Program, which they
co-sponsored with the National Endowment for the Humanities.
For years, the MIT Press has fielded requests for ebook editions of classic, out-of-print works, like the two volumes of _The Staircase_
by John Templer,
On Leon Battista Alberti: His Literary and Aesthetic Theories_ by Mark Jarzombek, _
Possible Palladian Villas: (Plus a Few Instructively Impossible Ones) by George L. Hersey
and Richard Freedman, and _
Making a Middle Landscape_ by Peter G.Rowe.
Many of these foundational texts were published before the advent of ebooks and remained undigitized because of complex design
requirements and the prohibitive cost of image permissions.
Now, with funding from the Mellon Foundation and the efforts of an open-access-savvy digitization team, the MIT Press was able to not
only secure image permissions, but also to solicit fresh prefaces that bring new insights to bear on many of these classic texts. Many of the
titles will also be made available on the open access platform PubPub where readers will be able to interact with and annotate the works
with contemporary context and related readings.
Representing the breadth and depth of the MIT Press's architecture and urban studies publishing program, the collection is a quintessential
blend of theory, practice, history, and technology.
"The books in this collection are drawn from an absolutely formative period in the discourse of architectural and urban history and
theory," explains Timothy Hyde, Associate Professor, MIT Department of Architecture "These are essential publications to have available
again, as they represent to some degree the founding of an independent discipline."
Explicitly global and timeless, the collection features texts like: Constantinos A. Doxiadis's _Architectural Space in Ancient Greece_
Jean Gottman's _Megalopolis: The Urbanized Northeastern Seaboard of the United States, Architecture in the Scandinavian Countries by Mari an C. Donnelly.
And the major figures and movements that have shaped the modern built world are well represented by books like Donald Leslie Johnson's _Frank Lloyd Wright vs. America: The 1930s
Gilbert Herbert's _The Dream of the Factory-Made House by Walter Gropius and Konrad Wachsmann,and Moshe Safdie's _Beyond Habitat_.
This initiative combines two of the Press's core strengths--its legacy of publishing titles of the greatest importance and highest quality in
architecture and urban studies and its long-standing support for open access publishing--according to MIT Press director Amy Brand.
"The MIT Press is committed to reimagining daily what academic publishing can be," says Brand. "This partnership with the Humanities
Open Book Program not only gives these important works a second-life and introduces them to new generations of scholars and readers, it
also reaffirms our commitment to making scholarship available as widely and openly as possible."
You may access the collection here:
https://mitpress.mit.edu/MIT-Press-Open-Architecture-and-Urban-Studies
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