Buckminster Books

As architects tend to easily forget Rem Koolhaas is not the only contemporary architect who is still writing, A. Krista Sykes has bundled some of the most influential architectural essays of the last 15 years to refresh our memory.

This follow-up  to Kate Nesbitt's best-selling anthology Theorizing a New Agenda collects twenty-eight essays that address architecture theory from the mid-1990's, where Nesbitt left off, through the present. Krista Sykes offers an overview of the myriad approaches and attitudes adopted by architects and architectural theorists during this era. Multiple themes-including the impact of digital technologies on processes of architectural design, production, materiality, and representation; the implications of globalization and networks of information; the growing emphasis on sustainable and green architecture; and the phenomenon of "starchitect" and iconic architecture-appear against a background colored by architectural theory, as it existed from the 1960's on, in a period of transition (if not crisis) that centers around the perceived abyss between theory and practice. Theory's transitional state persists today,  rendering its immediate history particularly relevant to contemporary thought and practice. 

While other collections of recent theoretical writings exist none attempt to address the situation as a whole, providing in one place key theoretical texts of the past decade and a half. This book provides a foundation for ongoing discussions surrounding contemporary architectural thought and practice, with iconic essays by Greg Lynn, Deborah Berke, Sanford Kwinter, Samuel Mockbee, Stan Allen, Rem Koolhaas, William Mitchell, Anthony Vidler, Reinhold Martin, Reiser+Umemoto, Glenn Murcutt, William McDonough, Michael Speaks, and many more.   

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