The Architecture Publishing Summit is a two-day conference at the Van Alen Institute's bookstore and reading room in New York. This international event gathers a group of the most critically engaged publishers, booksellers, authors, architects, media innovators, and nonprofit partners for brainstorming and debate about the future of architecture and design publishing. Themes include what forms content will take in the twenty-first century, how publishers can reach new readers, and what type of philanthropic models best reimagine the bookstore's role in civic life. Following these roundtable discussions, each day the Summit presents a public event where participants discuss the impact of architectural books on the public realm. Ultimately, the Summit seeks proposals for publishing and bookselling models that can be experimental-cultural projects in their own right. The Van Alen Institute will gather these ideas into a publication, the format of which reflects the Summit's conclusions and next steps for the future of the book.

Olympia Kazi, a critic and curator of architecture, is the executive director of the Van Alen Institute (VAI) in New York. A graduate of the Architecture Department at the University of Florence  (Italy), Kazi served as curator at the Milan Triennale before becoming a fellow in  Architecture and Urban Studies at the Whitney Museum of American Art's Independent Study Program. Kazi came to VAI from the Institute for Urban Design, a New York-based nonprofit that she had directed since 2007. Under Kazi's leadership, the Van Alen Institute has re-energized its historic mission to foster dialogue about the role of architecture in the public realm, and has launched an ambitious series of public programs, competitions, and initiatives, including Van Alen Books, a new center for architecture and design publications.

The Van Alen Institute is an independent, nonprofit architectural organization whose mission is to promote inquiry into the processes that shape the design of the public realm. Since its founding in 1894, the Institute has cultivated a community of designers and scholars, awarded excellence in design, and fostered dialogue about architecture as a creative practice with great public consequence. Through more than 2,400 design competitions, hundreds of fellowships and awards, and countless public programs, the VAI has nurtured generations of architects and urban thinkers. Recent initiatives include Parks for the People, a student design competition for the National Park Service; the Lower Mississippi River Delta Design Initiative, a collaboration to create a sustainable future for coastal Louisiana; and the launch of the Institute's Design Archive, which chronicles more than a century of projects in public architecture.