In 1999 the Architectural Association published a book that treated the new German photography less as a school than as a group of parallel inquiries into the built world. Architectural Association now issues it as an edited volume under the same title, prepared by Michael Mack: paperback, 196 pages, 24 by 27 centimetres — the proportions of an architectural catalogue rather than an exhibition souvenir.

The book has no single author. Its portfolios belong to a roster of photographers — Bernd and Hilla Becher, Andreas Gursky, Candida Höfer, Thomas Ruff, Thomas Demand, Michael Schmidt, Laurenz Berges, Matthias Hoch, Heidi Specker and Ulrich Wüst among them — and the publisher presents that list as indicative rather than complete. Read it as a convergence of positions, not an exhaustive survey.

Its subject is space as it is made, occupied and photographed: how people move through cities, how buildings and industrial structures carry meaning, where the man-made environment starts to feel estranged. A series of essays sets the work in theoretical and historical context, so the pictures are not asked to argue alone. Portfolios and writing alternate, making the case that photography is a way of thinking about architecture and not only a means of recording it.

For a collector, the interest lies in when this book appeared and how it is put together. It sets several practices side by side at an early point in their public lives, and the juxtaposition is the argument. The compact paperback format keeps the material usable; as a document of a shared set of questions, its value rests on the editing and sequencing rather than on any individual plate.