Andreas Papadakis
Encyclopedia
Publishing
Publishing is the process of production and dissemination of literature or information—the activity of making information available to the general public...
. He opened the Academy Bookshop in Holland Street, Kensington in 1964 and moved into publishing as Academy Editions in 1968. From then until 1990, when he sold the company to VCH Germany (now part of John Wiley
John Wiley & Sons
John Wiley & Sons, Inc., also referred to as Wiley, is a global publishing company that specializes in academic publishing and markets its products to professionals and consumers, students and instructors in higher education, and researchers and practitioners in scientific, technical, medical, and...
) he published more than a thousand titles mainly on art, architecture and the decorative arts. He was the first to publish (in USA - Rizzoli
RCS MediaGroup
RCS MediaGroup S.p.A. , based in Milan and listed on the Italian Stock Exchange, is an international multimedia publishing group that operates in daily newspapers, magazines and books, radio broadcasting, new media and digital and satellite TV...
and latter St. Martin's Press
St. Martin's Press
St. Martin's Press is a book publisher headquartered in the Flatiron Building in New York City. Currently, St. Martin's Press is one of the United States' largest publishers, bringing to the public some 700 titles a year under eight imprints, which include St. Martin's Press , St...
) many international architects in the http://www.amazon.com/gp/search/ref=sr_adv_b/?search-alias=stripbooks&unfiltered=1&field-keywords=&field-author=&field-title=Architectural+Monographs+No&field-isbn=&field-publisher=&node=&url=&field-feature_browse-bin=&field-binding_browse-bin=&field-subject=&field-language=&field-dateop=&field-datemod=&field-dateyear=&sort=price&Adv-Srch-Books-Submit.x=26&Adv-Srch-Books-Submit.y=16Architectural Monographs No...] series, which included Alvar Aalto
Alvar Aalto
Hugo Alvar Henrik Aalto was a Finnish architect and designer. His work includes architecture, furniture, textiles and glassware...
(No 4), Michael Graves
Michael Graves
Michael Graves is an American architect. Identified as one of The New York Five, Graves has become a household name with his designs for domestic products sold at Target stores in the United States....
(No 5), Edwin Lutyens
Edwin Lutyens
Sir Edwin Landseer Lutyens, OM, KCIE, PRA, FRIBA was a British architect who is known for imaginatively adapting traditional architectural styles to the requirements of his era...
(No 6), John Soane
John Soane
Sir John Soane, RA was an English architect who specialised in the Neo-Classical style. His architectural works are distinguished by their clean lines, massing of simple form, decisive detailing, careful proportions and skilful use of light sources...
(No 8), Terry Farrell
Terry Farrell (architect)
Sir Terry Farrell, CBE, RIBA, FRSA, FCSD, MRTPI is a British architect.-Life and career:Farrell was born in Sale, Cheshire. As a youth he moved to Newcastle upon Tyne, where he attended St Cuthbert's High School. He graduated with a degree from Newcastle University, followed by a Masters in urban...
(No 9), Richard Rogers
Richard Rogers
Richard George Rogers, Baron Rogers of Riverside CH Kt FRIBA FCSD is a British architect noted for his modernist and functionalist designs....
(No 10, Mies van der Rohe (No 11), Hassan Fathy
Hassan Fathy
Hassan Fathy was a noted Egyptian architect who pioneered appropriate technology for building in Egypt, especially by working to re-establish the use of mud brick and traditional as opposed to western building designs and lay-outs...
(No 13), Tadao Ando
Tadao Ando
is a Japanese architect whose approach to architecture was once categorized by Francesco Dal Co as critical regionalism. Ando has led a storied life, working as a truck driver and boxer prior to settling on the profession of architecture, despite never having taken formal training in the field...
(No 14), Daniel Libeskind
Daniel Libeskind
Daniel Libeskind, is an American architect, artist, and set designer of Polish-Jewish descent. Libeskind founded Studio Daniel Libeskind in 1989 with his wife, Nina, and is its principal design architect...
(No 16), etc.; and Victor Arwas’s Art Deco, first published in 1980 remains the standard work on the subject.
Early life
Papadakis was born in NicosiaNicosia
Nicosia from , known locally as Lefkosia , is the capital and largest city in Cyprus, as well as its main business center. Nicosia is the only divided capital in the world, with the southern and the northern portions divided by a Green Line...
, Cyprus
Cyprus
Cyprus , officially the Republic of Cyprus , is a Eurasian island country, member of the European Union, in the Eastern Mediterranean, east of Greece, south of Turkey, west of Syria and north of Egypt. It is the third largest island in the Mediterranean Sea.The earliest known human activity on the...
on 17 June 1938 and relocated to London in 1956. He obtained a DIC from Imperial College
Imperial College London
Imperial College London is a public research university located in London, United Kingdom, specialising in science, engineering, business and medicine...
and a PhD from Brunel University
Brunel University
Brunel University is a public research university located in Uxbridge, London, United Kingdom. The university is named after the Victorian engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel....
. In 1964 he bought a house in Holland Street, Kensington
Kensington
Kensington is a district of west and central London, England within the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. An affluent and densely-populated area, its commercial heart is Kensington High Street, and it contains the well-known museum district of South Kensington.To the north, Kensington is...
without realising that the shop (then a dry cleaners) on the ground floor could not be used for residential purposes. He decided to open a bookshop. The Academy Bookshop began as a general bookshop. His first publications were finely bound limited editions of other publishers’ books but he soon decided that he would prefer to make his own and began in 1967 with a large format paperback of Aubrey Beardsley
Aubrey Beardsley
Aubrey Vincent Beardsley was an English illustrator and author. His drawings, done in black ink and influenced by the style of Japanese woodcuts, emphasized the grotesque, the decadent, and the erotic. He was a leading figure in the Aesthetic movement which also included Oscar Wilde and James A....
’s prints, an ideal title to attract the customers of Biba
Biba
Biba was an iconic and popular London fashion store of the 1960s and 1970s. It was started and primarily run by the Polish-born Barbara Hulanicki with help of her husband Stephen Fitz-Simon.-Early years:...
, who had recently opened her shop just round the corner in Kensington Church Street. The Beardsley book was still in print when Academy was sold in 1990.
Academy Editions & Architectural Design
In 1971 Papadakis expanded his fast-growing business with the acquisition of the Tiranti publishing company and the London Art Bookshop. He moved the shop to No. 8 Holland Street, just opposite the Academy Bookshop and set about expanding the combined Academy/Tiranti list. Early publications included Jim Burns’s Arthropods, Roger Bilcliffe’s Charles Rennie Mackintosh, RudofskyBernard Rudofsky
Bernard Rudofsky was an Moravian-born American writer, architect, collector, teacher, designer, and social historian....
’s Architecture without Architects
Architecture Without Architects
thumb|right|200px|Architecture Without Architects coverArchitecture Without Architects: A Short Introduction to Non-pedigreed Architecture is a book by Bernard Rudofsky originally published in 1964. It provides a demonstration of the artistic, functional, and cultural richness of vernacular...
, Reyner Banham
Reyner Banham
Peter Reyner Banham was a prolific architectural critic and writer best known for his 1960 theoretical treatise Theory and Design in the First Machine Age and for his 1971 book Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies...
’s Design by Choice, Alphonse Mucha, Complete Graphic Works, and Wittkower
Rudolf Wittkower
Rudolf Wittkower was a German art historian.-Biography:He was born in Berlin and moved to London in 1934. He taught at the Warburg Institute, University of London from 1934 to 1956 and then at Columbia University from 1956 to 1969 where he was chairman of the Department of Art History and...
’s Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism.
In 1975 Papadakis bought the financially troubled Architectural Design magazine. This created some controversy because of his non-architectural background and his unwillingness to give his unconditional support to one particular architectural style. The controversy increased with the publication of Charles Jencks
Charles Jencks
Charles Alexander Jencks is an American architectural theorist, landscape architect and designer. His books on the history and criticism of Modernism and Postmodernism were widely read in architectural circles and beyond....
’s The Language of Post-Modern Architecture in 1977, which was in its sixth edition by the time he sold Academy in 1990.
Both Architectural Design and Academy Editions continued to publish Post-Modern
Postmodern architecture
Postmodern architecture began as an international style the first examples of which are generally cited as being from the 1950s, but did not become a movement until the late 1970s and continues to influence present-day architecture...
, Classical
Classical architecture
Classical architecture is a mode of architecture employing vocabulary derived in part from the Greek and Roman architecture of classical antiquity, enriched by classicizing architectural practice in Europe since the Renaissance...
and Deconstructivist
Deconstructivism
Deconstructivism is a development of postmodern architecture that began in the late 1980s. It is characterized by ideas of fragmentation, an interest in manipulating ideas of a structure's surface or skin, non-rectilinear shapes which serve to distort and dislocate some of the elements of...
projects throughout the 1980s while Papadakis himself actively fostered the pluralist debate through seminars, conferences and exhibitions at the Polytechnic of Central London
University of Westminster
The University of Westminster is a public research university located in London, United Kingdom. Its origins go back to the foundation of the Royal Polytechnic Institution in 1838, and it was awarded university status in 1992.The university's headquarters and original campus are based on Regent...
, the Architectural Association, the RIBA
Royal Institute of British Architects
The Royal Institute of British Architects is a professional body for architects primarily in the United Kingdom, but also internationally.-History:...
, the German Architecture Museum
German Architecture Museum
The German Architecture Museum is located on the Museumsufer in Frankfurt, Germany. Housed in an 18th-century building, the interior has been re-designed by Oswald Mathias Ungers in 1984 as a set of "elemental Platonic buildings within elemental Platonic buildings".The museum organises several...
in Frankfurt
Frankfurt
Frankfurt am Main , commonly known simply as Frankfurt, is the largest city in the German state of Hesse and the fifth-largest city in Germany, with a 2010 population of 688,249. The urban area had an estimated population of 2,300,000 in 2010...
, and through his Academy Forums at the Tate Gallery
Tate
-Places:*Tate, Georgia, a town in the United States*Tate County, Mississippi, a county in the United States*Táté, the Hungarian name for Totoi village, Sântimbru Commune, Alba County, Romania*Tate, Filipino word for States...
and the Royal Academy of Arts
Royal Academy
The Royal Academy of Arts is an art institution based in Burlington House on Piccadilly, London. The Royal Academy of Arts has a unique position in being an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects whose purpose is to promote the creation, enjoyment and...
, where he also founded the annual Architecture Lecture.
In 1990, Papadakis sold what was by now the Academy Group Ltd. with Architectural Design and the journals he had founded: Architectural Monographs, Art and Design and the Journal of Philosophy and the Visual Arts. He left the group at the end of 1992 and was banned by a non-competition clause from publishing for five years.
Papadakis Publisher and Restoration Projects
In 1997, Papadakis founded a new publishing house, Papadakis Publisher, with his daughter Alexandra. In addition to books on architecture and the decorative arts the company broadened its scope to include books on natural science, including the acclaimed series Pollen, Seeds and Fruit in association with the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, leading to his election as a Fellow of the Linnean SocietyLinnean Society of London
The Linnean Society of London is the world's premier society for the study and dissemination of taxonomy and natural history. It publishes a zoological journal, as well as botanical and biological journals...
. Pollen and Seeds were awarded a joint gold medal by the American Independent Publishers’ Association in 2006 as Outstanding Books of the Year, and his first science book Why the Lion Grew its Mane was long-listed by the Royal Society
Royal Society
The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, known simply as the Royal Society, is a learned society for science, and is possibly the oldest such society in existence. Founded in November 1660, it was granted a Royal Charter by King Charles II as the "Royal Society of London"...
in 2007.
As Papadakis’s business ventures were increasingly successful, he purchased several properties for restoration, including the medieval Kilbees Farm in Winkfield, Berkshire
Winkfield
Winkfield is a village and civil parish in the Bracknell Forest unitary authority of Berkshire, England.-Geography:According to the 2001 census, the parish had a population of 15,271...
and Dauntsey Park House in Wiltshire
Wiltshire
Wiltshire is a ceremonial county in South West England. It is landlocked and borders the counties of Dorset, Somerset, Hampshire, Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire and Berkshire. It contains the unitary authority of Swindon and covers...
, although the latter project ended in 2005 when planning permission was refused. In 2007 he purchased Monkey Island Hotel
Monkey Island, Bray
Monkey Island is a small island in the River Thames in England, on the reach above Boveney Lock near the village of Bray, Berkshire. It is now occupied by a hotel, but sports an interesting history involving grotesquely painted monkeys and the Duke of Marlborough.- Origins :Although painted monkeys...
in Bray, Berkshire
Bray
Bray is a town in north County Wicklow, Ireland. It is a busy urban centre and seaside resort, with a population of 31,901 making it the fourth largest in Ireland as of the 2006 census...
but died a few months afterwards.