Elected the architectural book of the year by the International Artbook and Film Festival in Perpignan, France, Frederic Chaubin's Cosmic Communist Constructions Photographed explores 90 buildings in 14 former Soviet Republics. Each of these structures expresses what Chaubin considers the fourth age of Soviet architecture, an unknown burgeoning that took place from 1970 until 1990. Contrary to the 1920s and 1950s, no "school" or main trend emerges here. These buildings represent a chaotic impulse brought about by a decaying system. Taking advantage of the collapsing monolithic structure, architects went far beyond modernism, going back to the roots or freely innovating. Some of the daring ones completed projects that the Constructivists would have dreamt of (Druzhba Sanatorium, Yalta), others expressed their imagination in an expressionist way (Palace of Weddings, Tbilisi). A summer camp, inspired by sketches of a prototype lunar base, lays claim to Suprematist influence (Prometheus youth camp, Bogatyr). Then comes the "speaking architecture" widespread in the last years of the USSR: a crematorium adorned with concrete flames (Crematorium, Kiev), a technological institute with a flying saucer crashed on the roof (Institute of Scientific Research, Kiev), a political center watching you like Big Brother (House of Soviets, Kaliningrad). In their puzzle of styles, their outlandish strategies, these buildings are extraordinary remnants of a collapsing system.In their diversity and local exoticism, they testify both to the vast geography of the USSR and its encroaching end of the Soviet Union, the holes in a widening net. At the same time, they immortalize many of the ideological dreams of the country and its time, from an obsession with the cosmos to the rebirth of identity. About the series TASCHEN is 40! Since we started our work as cultural archaeologists in 1980, TASCHEN has become synonymous with accessible publishing, helping bookworms around the world curate their own library of art, anthropology, and aphrodisia at an unbeatable price. Today we celebrate 40 years of incredible books by staying true to our company credo. The 40 series presents new editions of some of the stars of our program-now more compact, friendly in price, and still realized with the same commitment to impeccable production.

Ottoman Architecture is the first modern history of Ottoman architecture written by Ottomans themselves, yet it is little known outside the field of late Ottoman studies. This magnificently-illustrated volume codifies the empire’s architectural history into a series of preliminary stages culminating in the efflorescence of the Ottoman classical tradition in the 16th century. At the same time, the text positions this imperial architectural legacy in relation to modernising projects in the late Ottoman Empire; in particular, the 'Ottoman architectural Renaissance' sponsored by Sultan Abdülaziz (r. 1861 face=Calibri>–1876). Moreover, as has been argued in other research, architecture is a prism through which the authors offer a larger analysis of modernity in the Ottoman Empire; an analysis where built heritage serves 'as an index for various stages in the transformation of the Ottoman state and civilization'.

After Suburbia presents a cross-section of state-of-the-art scholarship in critical global suburban research and provides an in-depth study of the planet's urban peripheries to grasp the forms of urbanization in the twenty-first century. Based on cutting-edge conceptual thought and steeped in richly detailed empirical work conducted over the past decade, After Suburbia draws on research from Asia, Africa, Australia, Europe, and the Americas to showcase comprehensive global scholarship on the urban periphery. Contributors explicitly reject the traditional centre-periphery dichotomy and the prioritization of epistemologies that favour the Global North, especially North American cases, over other experiences. In doing so, the book strongly advances the notion of a post-suburban reality in which traditional dynamics of urban extension outward from the centre are replaced by a set of complex contradictory developments. After Suburbia examines multiple centralities and diverse peripheries which mesh to produce a surprisingly contradictory and diverse metropolitan landscape.