[Update] Architecture Professor Markus Breitschmid’s best-selling book "Non-Referential Architecture" is now available in an Italian edition titled "Architettura Non-Referenziale". Breitschmid’s book is authored in collaboration with internationally-acclaimed architect Valerio Olgiati. The book was previously issued in English and German editions also. The book was initially published in 2018 and became Amazon’s best-selling architecture book. The book has received international accolades. For example, it was included in The Financial Times of London’s Reading List. The Italian edition of the book is published by Park Books. In North America, it is distributed by the University of Chicago Press. Breitschmid’s and Olgiati's manifesto for a new approach in architecture in a world free of ideologies and, therefore, references: a must-read for anyone interested in architecture today.

Professor Dr. Markus Breitschmid is internationally active theoretician and author. He has been teaching at Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University since 2004. He has lectured at universities, museums, and professional organization in the Americas, Asia, and Europe. Breitschmid is the author of six books, as well as of many articles in the world’s leading architecture journals such as El Croquis, A+U, and Casabella.

09.24.2019 - Breitschmid’s Bestseller Book “Non-Referential Architecture” Available Again
Architecture Professor Markus Breitschmid’s Non-Referential Architecture, the best-selling book authored in collaboration with internationally-known Swiss architect Valerio Olgiati, has been made available in a second edition. After reaching the distinction of being Amazon’s best-selling architecture book, the book was sold out for several months. The second edition has been published in its original English edition and the translated German edition by Park Books. The new revised edition of Breitschmid’s and Olgiati's widely acclaimed manifesto for a new approach in architecture in a world free of ideologies and, therefore, references: a must-read for anyone interested in architecture today.

The University of Chicago Press, who distributes the book in North America, is describing the book as follows:

“More than ever, architecture is in need of provocation, a new path beyond the traditional notion that buildings must serve as vessels, or symbols of something outside themselves.

 Non-Referential Architecture is nothing less than a manifesto for a new architecture. It brings together two leading thinkers, architect Valerio Olgiati and theorist Markus Breitschmid, who have grappled with this problem since their first encounter in 2005. In a world that itself increasingly rejects ideologies of any kind, Olgiati and Breitschmid offer Non-Referential Architecture as a radical, new approach free from rigid ideologies. Non-referential buildings, they argue, are entities that are themselves meaningful outside a vocabulary of fixed symbols and images and their historical connotations.

For more than a decade, Olgiati and Breitschmid’s thinking has placed them at the forefront of architectural theory. Indispensable for understanding what the future might hold for architecture, Non-Referential Architecture will become a new classic.”

Professor Dr. Markus Breitschmid is internationally active theoretician and author. He has been teaching at Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University since 2004. Breitschmid’s scholarship focuses on the aesthetic mentality of modernism and postmodernity, in particular its promulgations in architecture and philosophical aesthetics. Breitschmid has published six books, as well as many articles in the world’s leading architecture journals such as El Croquis, A+U, and Casabella.