Andreas Papadakis was a pivotal figure on the London architectural scene who not only changed the face of architectural publishing but was the first to recognise and promote many leading talents, giving Zaha Hadid her first architectural award, a gold medal issued by his magazine Architectural Design.

Born in Nicosia to a father who traded in pharmaceuticals he came to London in 1956 to study science at Imperial College and Brunel University, spending increasing time going to art lectures at the Tate. While studying he bought a house in Holland Street in Kensington without fully appreciating he had a obligation to maintain a shop on the ground floor. Rather than continue with a dry cleaners or seeking to rent it he decided to sell the occasional scientific book. When Christmas came people kept asking for books on Aubrey Beardsley so Papadakis assembled images and went to a local printer who had a stock of outsize paper at a very good price. A large paperback resulted, with illustrations but no text. When people complained the pages were falling out he inserted a notice saying the prints could be framed. When VAT was imposed on posters he added a brief introduction and the book was still in print 20 years later.

Entrepreneurial by nature he soon had a fast growing business in distributing educational journals. In 1971 he acquired Tiranti, the art bookshop and publisher moving on to establish his own Academy imprint, under which he published more than 1,000 titles on architecture, art and decorative arts. Early Academy titles included Jim Burns’s Anthropods and Nigel Cross’s Design Participation (both 1972), Fiona Clark’s William Morris, Pugin’s True Principles and Charles Spencer’s The Aesthetic Movement (all 1973), and Jonathan Scott’s Piranesi (both 1975), Helen Rosenau on Boullée and Marise Besset on Le Corbusier (both 1976), Roger Bilcliffe’s Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Frank Lloyd Wright Drawings (both 1977).

In 1976 he took over Architectural Design, a lively but financially ailing magazine, acquiring in his own words 200 new enemies, mainly in Modernist circles where he was seen as a usurper and an upstart. Controversy increased with the publication of Charles Jencks’s The Language of Post-Modern Architecture. Jencks served as the entrée to a wealth of architectural talent in America and Japan as well as Britain. Both were pluralists and Architectural Design and Academy showcased all the isms of the 80s not only Post-Modernism but revived Classicism and later Deconstructionism.

Academy monographs included all the rising stars such as Foster, Rogers and Libeskind as well as architects espoused by the Prince of Wales such as Leon Krier and Demetri Porphyrios. Much of Papadakis’s success lay in assembling a huge portfolio of illustrations, both photographs and drawings, which he could use at little cost in lavishly illustrated books and magazines.

When the RIBA was faced with cancelling a major exhibition on British Architecture Today in 1982 for lack of funds Papadakis offered to do it for free, calling up leading architects and offering them space to fill at their own expense.

Papadakis admired the ways in which architects, such as Venturi, Graves, Stern, Hollein, Leon Krier and others had risked their careers by challenging the “monotheistic” view of architecture and published pioneering monographs on them.

In the mid-1970s Papadakis acquired a large stucco house in Leinster Gardens in Bayswater which became an architectural salon with a gallery and editorial offices above, used frequently for receptions and lectures. He fostered the pluralist debate through seminars and conferences at Architectural Association, the Polytechnic of Central London and then his own Academy Forums first at the Tate and the Royal Academy. He also organised major lectures at the RA by Norman Foster, Jean Nouvel, Frank Gehry and others.

In 1990 Papadakis sold Academy Editions to VCH, a large German academic conglomerate, for a reported £3-4m, a move which stunned many of his poorly paid authors. The new owners saw his forums as an extravagance, and they didn’t trust his antennae on what to publish when. Two years later he arrived at the office one day to find that his services were no longer required.

Forbidden by contract to publish for five years, Papadakis spent seven years carefully restoring the Grade II* listed Kilbees Farm of medieval origin at Winkfield in Berkshire which he sold in 1997. A second country house venture at Dauntsey Park House in Wiltshire ended less happily when local planners refused him permission to replace a missing wing and restore harmony to the façade. He sold it in 2005. Meanwhile he had returned to London, buying first a house in Mayfair; and then another in Grosvenor Square. By this time his daughter, Alexandra, had joined him in publishing and together they produced exquisite books on pollen, seeds, and (next) fruits, as a result of which he was elected Fellow of the Linnean Society. By contrast he was never elected an Hon Fellow of the RIBA.

Last September Papadakis bought the fabled Monkey Island Hotel on the Thames, planning a dream retirement (which would not really have been retirement at all) so he could live in a hotel, entertain friends and eat delicious food whenever he wanted. His publishing company (Papadakis Publisher) was surging ahead with new and revived titles on Zaha Hadid, Lutyens and Art Nouveau. Two of his titles had recently won bronze medals in the US including Why the Lion grew its Mane a miscellany of recent scientific discoveries by Lewis Smith of The Times. He is survived by his daughter Alex.

Andreas Papadakis, publisher, was born on June 17, 1938. He died of cancer on June 10, 2008, aged 69