The most recent numbered installment of "Book Briefs," the series of occasional posts featuring short first-hand descriptions of some of the numerous books that publishers send to me for consideration on this blog, was #48, back in December. I wasn't planning on continuing the series this year-of-doing-things-differently (or so I thought), but a couple of weeks ago I brought back the "Briefs" to play around with ChatGPT, which I had been hesitant to dive into but was told by numerous people that I MUST try it. At that time I also mentioned an in-progress "Brief" with eight books ? here they are.
Concrete in Switzerland: Histories from the Recent Past edited by Salvatore Aprea, Nicola Navone, Laurent Stalder and Sarah Nichols, published by EPFL Press in May 2022 (Amazon / Bookshop)Concrete in Switzerland is a companion publication to Beton, the exhibition held at S AM (Swiss Architecture Museum) in Basel from November 2021 to April 2022. In addition to the involvement of S AM, both the exhibition and the book boast three partners: the gta Archiv, ETH Zürich; the Archives de la construction moderne, EPF Lausanne (EPFL); and Archivio del Moderno dell?Academia di Architettura, Università della Svizzera italiana (USI). The editors from each of these three institutions ? Salvatore Aprea (ETH), Nicola Navone (USI), and Laurent Stalder (EPFL) ? also contributed one essay each among the book's thirteen essays: Aprea's contribu...