In his 50-plus years in the book trade, publisher Gianfranco Monacelli has had a huge impact on the books architects and designers create. He rose from working the late shift at the Rizzoli bookshop on New York’s Fifth Avenue to heading up that company’s North American division to establishing his own house, the Monacelli Press, 26 years ago.
An air of glamour has followed him throughout his career. Rizzoli’s big windows showcased beautiful books from around the world, and the space often served as a location for films and photo shoots. When it was forced to move from its original Fifth Avenue location around the corner to an equally magnificent new space on West 57th Street in 1985, the opening night party was deemed worthy of a write-up in the New York Times. No wonder when guests included such literary and art world heavyweights as Joan Didion and Francesco Scavullo.
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Since its founding in 1994, the Monacelli Press has published more than 400 books, including works by and about architects and firms like Henry N. Cobb, Peter Eisenman, Rem Koolhaas, Daniel Libeskind, Rafael Moneo, Renzo Piano, SHoP, SOM, Robert A.M. Stern, and Bernard Tschumi; interior designers Ellie Cullman, Thomas Jayne, Matthew Patrick Smyth, and Suzanne Tucker; landscape designers Edmund Hollander, Raymond Jungles, Kate Orff, Piet Oudolf, and Michael van Valkenburgh; and critics and historians such as Arthur Danto, Paul Goldberger, Charles Jencks, Victoria Newhouse, and Michael Sorkin. Forthcoming titles include new tomes by interior designers James Huniford and Matthew Patrick Smyth and a monograph on landscape architects Hocker Design Group. The roster is a who’s who of design world practitioners and thinkers—dare we say influencers?—stretching back decades.
In January, when Phaidon announced that it had just acquired the Monacelli Press with plans to keep it a separate imprint under the Phaidon umbrella, AD PRO thought it was a good time to sit down with the 80-year-old publisher and ask him about the market for design books he helped create.
You’ve spent your entire career in the book business—having started at the Rizzoli bookshop in 1965. What was your first job there? And how did you rise to become head of Rizzoli’s North American operations and then go on to establish your own publishing house?
I was trained as a musician, a concert pianist, and I came to New York to study at the Mannes School of Music. When I was told that it would be wise to get a degree that would help me in academia, I went to Columbia and started work on a PhD in musicology. I hated it. In 1965 I started working at the Rizzoli bookshop on Fifth Avenue as a night manager. The store was open until midnight, so I could work the night shift and study during the day. I got to know Mr. Rizzoli, the famous tycoon, movie producer, and all that, and he took a liking to me. After I decided that I couldn't stand musicology any longer, I became a full-time employee at the store and worked my way up with the company. I ended up being there for 27 years.
When did Rizzoli go beyond selling books to publishing them? And why?
It happened in about 1980. At the beginning it was really more of an extension of the bookstore. Even though it was located on the “wrong” side of Fifth at the time—many people from the Upper East Side just wouldn’t cross the avenue to go west—the bookstore attracted a great clientele. It was a place for anyone who was interested in culture or knowing what was going on in Europe—Jacqueline Kennedy was a very, very good customer. We were open late, and at night you could walk in and spend some time. We had a gallery that exhibited artwork and sold prints. We had a very good music department. It was very cozy. By the time I left, we had about 13 stores around the country. So, we had a built-in constituency. Publishing our own books was kind of a logical way to branch out beyond the store, to reach more people.
What made you settle on architecture, design, and art as your niche?
At the time, architecture books were the domain of Praeger and MIT. It was really a branch of academic publishing, and in bookstores you would find architecture in the technical section. The pictures were published in black-and-white because it was not considered appropriate to use color. So we noticed an opening. We started distributing some books imported from publishers in Italy and Great Britain, and even from Japan. And after two or three years, people asked me, “Why don't you publish too?”
That moment was really the beginning of postmodernism. The younger architects had very little work to show, but they were very, very eager to publish. So we signed up [Robert A.M.] Stern, [Peter] Eisenman, [Charles] Gwathmey—you name it, they all came to Rizzoli, because MIT was a bit stiff. The glamour was really with Rizzoli. We had the big windows on Fifth Avenue and we would highlight our books there.
After nearly 30 years there, what inspired you to leave?
I left in 1993 because Rizzoli Italy had been acquired by Fiat, and I found discussing book publishing with the managers of an automobile company…difficult. I made friends, but I decided to start my own company.
What defines a Monacelli book?
From the beginning, we published books that were relatively expensive. They were large-format and full of color. That first year, we published just three books, I think. Now we put out about between 15 and 20 books a year. It's difficult to describe our approach to book publishing. We publish illustrated books with text, but the illustration is paramount. We pay an inordinate amount of attention to the design. We do not design in-house, because we want to have each book designed by a sympathetic artist. We focus on the States—that's our scene. We do not do much in the way of what used to be called “co-editions,” where we would do the English version and pair with a French or German or Italian publisher.
One of your earliest books, Rem Koolhaas’s S, M, L, XL, caused quite a splash, and became an unexpected bestseller—a writer in the New York Times credited it with setting off the fashion for architecture books as big physical objects. How did that feel? How did it impact the business?
That was in 1994. Later I also re-issued his Delirious New York, because Oxford had let it go out of print. Every month, Rem would fly over from Holland to meet with [graphic designer] Bruce Mau in Toronto, where Bruce is based, and together they concocted this new object. Rem was a star, he was a fantastic speaker, and people got wind of it even when it was still in production. We launched it at the MoMA, and anyone who was in the circle was there. It was really an event. It's an amazing book. They’ve both stayed in demand and have sold more or less the same number of copies every year for the past 25 years. I was very lucky.
What are some of the other highlights of what you’ve published?
I'm reluctant to tell you any favorites, because some of the ones I may be most fond of are ones that didn't do that well. But I can say Robert Stern’s New York series has definitely been another highlight. I published the first one—New York 1930—when I was at Rizzoli. [Monacelli went on to publish 1880, 1900, 1960, and 2000.] So even though he would like to have all of them with the same company, we are missing that one. But if you take a look at the list, we have covered most of architecture since the early ‘80s. You'll find most everybody listed.
How have things changed over the years?
At the time we began, the polemic between Corbusian Modernism and the Postmodern movement was so fierce that it was a kind of cultural explosion. When we started we got all the rising stars. As I mentioned, they were not yet building that much, but they were able to discuss and write forever. We published, I think, five or six books by Peter Eisenman alone. We did books with Michael Graves, Thom Mayne, Frank Gehry, and so many others and they were all so open and enthusiastic in promoting the books and going out and lecturing. It really helped get their messages and opinions out. I miss that now.
How has the company evolved?
Over the last 26 years we have published more than 400 books, and close to 300 are still in print. That’s a lot. We have always focused on architecture and design, but we have branched out into interior design and landscape design, as well as art and photography. A few years ago, we started a new imprint on applied arts, [Monacelli Studio], and that's doing very well. I think I've spent more time nurturing that effort lately, because we had no experience in publishing books at that price point for that sort of a network—I didn't even know that Michaels existed—and it’s been very successful.
The Monacelli Press was acquired once before, by Random House in 2008.… How did that come about, and what inspired you to buy the company back three years later?
You know how big Random House is. So, even though they put our name up on the building when they acquired us, we were a very small part of the whole. About four months after they acquired us there was a big shake-up of the company, and the people who had been most supportive of the acquisition all left. Then [Random House] found that they really had no experience in the field; it was outside their comfort zone. So I said, “Look, I am quite happy with the culture of the company. I'm happy with the distribution. But I'm not happy with the corporate setup that affects our editorial choices.” So I bought it back.
How did the Phaidon acquisition come about? How do you see the Monacelli Press fitting in there?
We were talking for, I think, close to three years. We are a family affair and so is Phaidon, which is owned by Leon Black. They wanted to maintain the company—the staff, the program, the attitude—independently from Phaidon. If you go now to their offices, they have already put our name up on the building, listed separately: Phaidon, then Artspace, which is a separate company, and then the Monacelli Press. So it's now a group of businesses. It’s not a massive corporation, but they’re big enough not to be stressed out by the acquisition. So I think it's a good combination that feels right for illustrated book publishing now. Hopefully the company will give satisfaction to the employees—we have a very talented group of people—and to the new owner. I'm happy that it's in solid hands.
What advice would you give to architects and designers interested in doing a book?
At a big publisher, you can’t really acquire a book directly from an author. You have to go through an agent. But we don't use agents at all. We just want to have such-and-such author here, sitting, and telling us what we are supposed to do. So in a way, we’ve always been a bit eccentric. How can I explain it, you just know it when you see talent, talent that wants to express itself in writing and lecturing. Someone has got to want to present their ideas. That's a good formula for success, because then you attract an audience of architectural students and dreamers.
What kind of design book would you like to see now?
Hmmm... I don't think that any of the formulas from the past would be helpful on the contemporary scene. You know, I’m a very good friend of Renzo Piano, but I wouldn’t publish a catalogue raisonné in five volumes. Or, now, I understand Frank Gehry's publishing a ten-volume catalogue raisonné of his work. Maybe they think that book publishing is like building, that it has to be big. But I think it’s hard to justify publishing such editions.
The way we publish books has changed dramatically. There used to be fantastic architectural bookshops in many cities—in San Francisco, you still have Stout, and in Seattle, Miller. You could walk into such a shop and a person would convince you that you needed this book, but they don't exist any longer. When you’re buying from Amazon, it's a different game. It's very important now to test each keyword, to use words that will jump out of the computer. When I was starting out, your taste was on display in the window and that’s what drew people in.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and length.
