A New York City—based magazine focused on the impact of design on contemporary life, Metropolis is launching an imprint to be called Metropolis Books.
The first book to be released will be Design Is... Words, Things, People, Buildings and Places edited by Akiko Busch, a Metropolis contributing editor. Busch told PW that the book collects material published in the magazine over the last 20 years in addition to some newly commissioned articles. "That's why we want to do this imprint," said Busch, "to trace the evolving shape of things and profile the people who make them."
The book features contributions from Paul Goldberger, Steven Heller, Luc Sante, Ben Katchor, Michael Sorkin, Barbara Flanagan and many other designers, artists and writers. The book will be published in conjunction with Princeton Architectural Press, which will also handle distribution; it will be released in October.
Susan Szenasy, editor-in-chief of Metropolis, told PW that future titles would focus on "technology and design. There's so much material in the categories covered by Design Is that we may focus a title on each of them, to further define what design means today."
