Richard Schlagman Art Book Awards winners revealed

The winners of the Richard Schlagman Art Book Awards have been unveiled with indie Phaidon Press among the winners. 

Phaidon scooped the award for best book on contemporary designed with Embodiment by Naoto Fukazawa - a monograph on one of Japan's best-known product designers, featuring more than 100 of his latest works. 

Best book on contemporary art went to The Complete Papers by Thomas Demand (MACK) while Toward a Concrete Utopia: Architecture in Yugoslavia 1948-1980 (Museum of Modern Art New York) won best contribution to architectural history. 

Balkrishna Doshi's Architecture for the People (Vitra Design Museum and the Wüstenrot Foundation, in collaboration with the Vastushilpa Foundation) bagged best book on contemporary architecture and Victor Papanek's The Politics of Design (Vitra Design Museum and the Victor J. Papanek Foundation, University of Applied Arts Vienna) took home the best contribution to design history award. 

Outstanding artist’s book went to Arthur Jafa's A Series of Utterly Improbable, Yet Extraordinary Renditions (Serpentine Galleries, the Store X, Julia Stoschek Collection, and Koenig Books). 

Dubuffet and the City: People, Place, and Urban Space (Hauser & Wirth) scooped best contribution to art history and triumphed over the other category winners to scoop the best book design award. 

The winners, who received a trophy designed by internationally renowned designer Björn Dahlström, were announced at a ceremony at Whitechapel Gallery, London tonight (Friday 6th September).

The winning books were selected from a shortlist of 30 books, with more than 300 publications submitted overall by a judging panel featuring Richard Schlagman (chair), Whitechapel Gallery director Iwona Blazwick; architect Adam Caruso; critic, poet and Authors’ Club member Sue Hubbard; Turner Prize nominee artist Dexter Dalwood; art historian, curator and co-director of the Translocal Institute for Contemporary Art, Maja Fowkes; and design historian and writer, Emily King. 

Highlighting the fertile relationship between the art world and publishing, the Richard Schlagman Art Book Awards acknowledge the importance of books in the dissemination of knowledge and learning about art. They also celebrate the innovation and verve of contemporary graphic design and print production.

The Awards are named after Schlagman, who was publisher of Phaidon until October 2012 and are part of an ongoing collaboration between Whitechapel Gallery and the Authors’ Club.