Reviewing Design Book Review: Book Launch and Conversation

Join us for the launch of Reviewing Design Book Review: A Counteranthology, which revisits Design Book Review (DBR), the influential journal of architectural ideas founded in Berkeley, California, and published from 1983 to 2001, bringing its questions and critical spirit into the present.

Taking the book review as its primary format, DBR brought together a remarkable community of writers, critics, architects, and designers to explore emerging ideas in architecture, design, urban planning, and beyond. Accessible, independent, and intellectually adventurous, the journal helped shape architectural discourse during the closing decades of the twentieth century.

Published by CCA Architecture Books and AR+D, Reviewing Design Book Review is edited by James Graham and William Littmann, with Keith Krumwiede. Bringing together selected texts reproduced in facsimile alongside an extensive oral history and newly commissioned essays, the book aims to capture the spirit of DBR and the intellectual and creative community that sustained it.

CCA was home to DBR during its final years, making the launch particularly meaningful at this moment. The evening will begin with a brief presentation of the anthology, followed by a conversation with several of the people who shaped the journal over its nearly two-decade history: founders and publishers John Parman and Laurie Snowden; Cathy Lang Ho, who edited the journal from 1992 to 1999; Mitchell Schwarzer, an editor during its final years at CCA (1999–2001); and Lucille Tenazas, who redesigned the journal for its final issues. Moderated by Nancy Levinson, editor and executive director of Places Journal, the conversation will reflect on the journal's history and distinctive editorial culture while considering the meaning of architectural print for design education and critical discourse today.

Publication of Reviewing Design Book Review: A Counteranthology was supported by a grant from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts.