Edited by Stan Allen & Marc McQuade (Lars Müller Publishers 2011) For centuries the discipline of architecture has drawn from the axioms of nature to both provoke and legitimize design. From form generation to structural precedents to ornament and organization, the phenomena and magnetism of the natural world has served dutifully as an inspiration to the many facets of architectural design. This relationship between the natural landscape and architecture is thus not new or at all revolutionary, it was forged long ago, yet it persists today ...

  Author: Herbert Wright (Black Dog Publishing, 2008) The city is perhaps the most compelling achievement of human civilization; now home to more than half the world’s population, the city is more than ever before the subject of debate, controversy and critical discourse. Herbert Wright’s new publication Instant Cities is yet another attempt to discern and evaluate the modern urban metropolis. While the book does not produce any radically new insights into the nature of the city, it does document a rather thorough investigation of the many forces at work. The notion of the ‘Instant City’, an idea popularized through the work of Archigram and Marshall McLuhan in the heady days of the 1960’s, refers to the rapid globalization of urban centers via the technological revolution that has clearly manifested itself over the last few decades. Instant City, Metropolitanism, or McLuhan’s Global Village - call it what you may, they all qualify as a way for us to understand the rapidly transforming landscape of the city.

Author: Blaine Brownell, Princeton Architectural Press (2012) Architecture is the fulfillment of a spatial premise by way of material substance. Throughout history architecture has been shaped by the continual transformation of material technologies and application methods. Its course of development is inseparable from the shifting terrain of technology and the social effects that result. -  Blaine Brownell, Introduction. One can make the argument that materials are fundamental to the expression, performance and experience of buildings. In many ways architecture is an idea of space while materials are the physical expression of that idea. Material Strategies: Innovative Application in Architecture, Blaine Brownell’s latest publication, is a relevant and comprehensive discussion of the ever-changing and significant role of materials in architecture. Brownell, also author of the Transmaterial series from the Princeton Architectural Press, is considered one of the preeminent scholars of advanced materials for architecture and design.