This masterclass session, Ar. Ariadna A. Garreta, CEO and founder of Altrim Publishers, shares a compelling perspective on architecture through the lens of writing and book publication. She takes us through her journey—from architect to author to publisher—highlighting the challenges, insights, and creative transitions along the way.
In our fast-moving creative world, the divisions between traditional professions are blurring. Ariadna has established a niche in architectural publishing and has professionally impacted a field she cares about deeply, converting a personal passion into meaningful work. Her story is not just about books, but about persistence, transformation, and discovering unheard stories in architecture.
Adriana’s path to publishing and content production emerged from her own personal and economic turmoil. When her father, also an architect, passed away and Spain’s real estate market began to falter, she felt the pressure to “reinvent herself.” What was initially her passion for writing and travel became a planned career shift. Her trip to India provided comfort and inspiration, which culminated in a firm path to her next stage, away from practicing as an architect and doing authorship and content creation.
Adriana believes that architects are inherently content creators. When you produce a book about architecture, and even when you write about architecture, you are working with words, images, drawings, and layout as a way to tell a story. As she pointed out, unlike fiction, architecture books need to carefully balance photography, text, diagraming, and materiality. Ultimately, every book is a designed experience, and content creation becomes an integrated process of writing and design.
Ariadna also shared realistic aspects of publishing from the peer review process to the more nebulous issues surrounding self-publishing versus traditional publishing. While design and writing are gratifying, distribution, visibility, and reach are usually the most difficult challenges. Many new authors don’t factor in the financial and logistical aspects of publishing. There will always need to be fully realized expectations and realistic timelines.
Her catalog covers monographs, guidebooks, theories, and visual books. Inherently collaborative, she has worked with Indian and Vietnamese architects and published collections like Architectures of Transition. Ultimately, Ariadna represents a multiplicity of contemporary architectural ideas in South Asia. Each project represents a different narrative—some commissioned, some were affirmed by personal experiences, and others made visible voices invisible in the design discussion.
Adriana Garreta’s practice demonstrates a capacity for storytelling through architecture, not just through buildings but also through books that archive, create, and provoke. The transition from architect to publisher reflects how we can theorize our personal stories to enable re-invention and professionalism. Adriana values the written word in a world dominated by images, urging us to write, read, and create about matters. Her journey is all about courage, craft, and trusting in writing, publishing, and remembering architecture.
Brutalism is an architectural style from the 50s and 60s that began in the United Kingdom. Brutalist Architecture can be elaborated as raw with no ornamentation and exposed building materials used in a monolithic way. Majorly showcasing the concrete in its raw beauty employed in various geometric shapes. Since the beginning of the revolutionary composite […]