Architecture, Empire and Trade wins at the Architectural Book Awards 2026

Architecture, Empire and Trade: The United Africa Company has won a category prize at this year’s Architectural Book Awards. It was named a joint winner for Best Architectural History Book of 2026. It’s free open access and now available in a paperback as well as hardback.

The awards are run by Booklaunch, the quarterly on books and publishing. Judging is anonymous. The categories change each year to fit what has been submitted and the awards are currently in their fourth year.

The judging took an unusual turn this year. For the first time the panel declined to name an overall Book of the Year. The editor, Stephen Games, said the field was too strong and too varied to rank one title above the rest. The judges took the view that serious criticism follows the evidence rather than forcing a hierarchy. So they named category winners and left it there.

Nine titles won across four categories. Between them they are the work of twenty authors, editors and photographers. Four came from university presses.

Our category, history, had four joint winners. We proudly share it with Women at Work, a study of the Cambridge School of Architecture; The Belgian Friendship Building; and Marvin Trachtenberg’s reassessment of Brunelleschi. Good company.

The book is the work of five of us: Ewan Harrison, Michele Tenzon, Rixt Woudstra, Claire Tunstall and myself. The team spans Liverpool, Manchester, Amsterdam, Delft, and the Unilever Archives. It is published by Bloomsbury Visual Arts – I’d like to thank my co-authors for their hard work, and to James Thompson and Ros O’Cleirigh at Bloomsbury for their ongoing support.

The book is part of the wider AHUWA work on British commercial urbanism in West Africa. That work continues, including current research on the timber trade across Ghana and Nigeria, working with Claire on digitising/AIing the archives, and continuing the Kingsway exhibitions. The prize puts the book in front of readers who might not otherwise come across it. That is reason enough to be pleased, and thanks to the judges for selecting our work.