Reviews and media

  • “This sumptuous, evocative book captures the energies of a city in the midst of rapid change. At the same time it is suffused with traces of Yangon’s complex, often troubled, past. I enjoyed the mix of architectural commentary, urban geography, and excellent photography that the authors bring to the book. It will be essential reading for anyone interested in Yangon and Myanmar; it works equally well as a guide for first-time visitors, and as an invitation to those who know the city to see it through fresh eyes.”
    – Sunil Amrith, Professor of South Asian History at Harvard University
  • “This is an excellent book that has something for everyone. Those new to Yangon will appreciate the depth and background of sites and their histories, as well as the fact that the book extends to neighborhoods not usually covered in guidebooks. As someone who has lived in the city for long stretches of time, I loved learning new things about places I regularly passed but never thought twice about. The writing on architectural styles was also very accessible for a non-specialist, just enough to make you feel that you’d learned something meaningful, but not too dense and mostly focused on contextualizing buildings within the city’s rich and diverse history.”
    – Matthew Walton, Aung San Suu Kyi Senior Research Fellow at Oxford University
  • “The book is refreshingly different – in its presentation of history, architecture, photography and current challenges. Its beauty lies in the fact that it is difficult to categorize it as any particular genre. It is poetic and lyrical, as well as gripping. It gives us an idea about the endless creative ways in which one can present a city and opens our hearts and minds into appreciating the latent stories embedded in colossal structures. The book inspires us in not only getting to know our cultural heritage but also involving ourselves in rejuvenating the same with sensibility and sensitivity.”
    – Reshmi Banerjee, Oxford University’s Tea Circle blog (read the whole review here)
  • German architectural magazine Bauwelt has reviewed the book here. A post with some translated passages is here.
  • Coconuts Yangon has also reviewed the book and interviewed Elliott here. “The city that emerges in the Architectural Guide is both living and changing.”
  • We had some coverage in architectural publications such as Curbed and Uncube.
  • Elliott wrote an article about the book for Quartz on the eve of Myanmar’s historic elections in 2015.

You can buy the guide on Amazon (US, UK, Germany, France, Japan), or directly from the publisher.

The back cover text reads:

Architectural Guide Yangon presents around one hundred memorable buildings from Myanmar’s historical capital. Following decades of international isolation, the city’s vast heritage remains largely, surprisingly and spectacularly intact. Rangoon – as it was known under the British – was a melting pot of British India. Vivid traces of this legacy are everywhere, especially in the city’s Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Jewish and Muslim houses of worship that often stand side by side, down town, in Yangon’s tightly-gridded streets. Since the country’s independence from the British in 1948, successive authoritarian regimes have also stamped the cityscape with their legacies. Today Yangon is a bustling and busy city in flux, at the frontier of Myanmar’s rapid opening to the wider world. Yangon’s urban fabric deserves a systematic guide that nourishes every visitor and resident’s shared fascination for the city and its history, offering countless anecdotes and notes on architectural detail.