November 2020

33.3 This Point In Time: An Opacity Monograph

In Pursuit of Design Excellence

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The title of our first Opacity monograph: 33.3 This Point In Time, marks the completion of our first Opacity cycle. It is a sweeping publication rich with content, from beautiful imagery and compelling infographics to thought-provoking essays by esteemed writers and critics: Mimi Zeiger on Context; Alissa Walker on Form; Susan Szenasy on Materials; Aaron Betsky on Program; Katie Gerfen on Space; and Chrysanthe Broikos on Sustainability.

Edited by Jenna M. McKnight, this monograph looks to both the past and the future; it also looks inward by exploring the people who make up the firm’s vast architectural practice. As this book makes evident, we are composed of many distinct threads that are woven together to form a powerful collective. The Opacity program celebrates the diversity of this collective, while underscoring the shared goal of design excellence.

September 2018

Clocks and Clouds

The Architecture of Escher GuneWardena

Birkhauser

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Architecture, Barbara Lamprecht, Books, Escher GuneWardena, Lilian Pfaff, Martino Stierli, Nicholas Olsberg, Sabine Eckmann

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Editor: Lilian Pfaff

Clocks and Clouds: The Architecture of Escher GuneWardena, a monograph covering about 30 selected projects – unbuilt and completed – spanning a period of 20 years. The work includes, in addition to expected building types of residential, commercial and institutional categories, projects outside of the architects’ usual realm: Escher, an expert on John Lautner (1911-1994), has edited/co-authored two books on this architect and the firm has restored the Chemosphere and the Eames House. Further, stemming from the principals’ interest in contemporary art, the firm has collaborated with artists such as Olafur Eliasson, Sharon Lockhart, Steven Prina, Mike Kelley and others, and has designed spaces for art and museum exhibitions nationally and internationally.

The book will include an introductory text and essays by various writers familiar with their work (Martino Stierli, Barbara Lamprecht, Nicholas Olsberg, Lilian Pfaff, Sabine Eckmann, Mimi Zeiger and Paulette Singley). The essays will convey recurring concepts in the architects’ work ranging from ideas of “order” and “system”, to “accidental form”, and the subtle manipulations that lie between these positions, or what philosopher Karl Raimund Poppers categorizes as “clocks and clouds”: that which can be measured exactly (clocks); and that which has indefinite occurrences (clouds).

September 2018

Standard Architecture Design

Artiface

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Architecture, Books, Standard

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Jeffrey Allsbrook and Silvia Kuhle
Introduction: Mimi Zeiger

Through an in-depth exploration of nine projects ranging from retail to residential design, Standard Architecture Design highlights the practice of Los Angeles-based interdisciplinary studio Standard while it deconstructs traditional conceptions of interior and exterior space.

By honing in on the malleability of the storefront and its transformative role across varying sectors of architecture and design, Standard presents an alternative understanding of the facade. The public/private divide becomes permeable, and cultural narratives can be written from the inside out—flowing from fundamental elements like space and light to the contextual meaning of place. In Standard’s world, transitional spaces such as doors, windows and openings come to define and bring meaning to our collective experience of place.

September 2018

LA Forum Reader

From the Archives of the Los Angeles Forum for Architecture and Urban Design

Actar Publishers

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Architecture, Books, Urbanism

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Editors: Rob Berry, Victor Jones, Michael Sweeney, Mimi Zeiger, Chava Danielson, Joe Day, Thurman Grant, Duane McLemore

Design: Still Room Studio

The LA Forum Reader brings together three decades of discursive writings and publications on architecture, urbanism, and Los Angeles culled from the archives of the Los Angeles Forum for Architecture and Urban Design. Published under thematic sections: Experiments, Detours, Hunches, and Santa Anas, with interludes dedicated to Art and Architecture, Downtown, and the long-running LA Forum Newsletter, the collected essays and interviews track an uneven and lesser-known history of experimental architecture, postmodern geographies, and alternative urbanism in L.A. as told by the city’s key designers and thinkers.

Today, Los Angeles is a major architectural and urban player, but for decades the city was dismissed suburban and centerless. In republishing three decades of material on architecture and design in Los Angeles, the LA Forum Reader reclaims and reconsiders the city’s architectural and discursive histories. It establishes, or reestablishes, a textual context for critical experimentation and urban investigation. This anthological volume includes essays, interviews, and reproductions of publications that have long been out of print, including pamphlets by Craig Hodgetts and Margaret Crawford, as well as early writings by Aaron Betsky and John Chase.

Select Press:
Archinect, The LA Forum Reader Traces 30 Years of LA’s Architectural Discourse

May 2018

Dimensions of Citizenship

Architecture and Belonging from the Body to the Cosmos

Inventory Press

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Architecture, Books

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Dimensions of Citizenship
US Pavilion, Venice Architecture Biennale 2018
4 1/4 × 7 inches, 256 pages, softcover
ISBN 978-1-941753-19-4
Edited by Nick Axel, Nikolaus Hirsch, Ann Lui, and Mimi Zeiger
Design by IN-FO.CO

Texts also available at e-Flux Architecture

Globalization, technology, and politics have altered the definition and expectations of citizenship and the right to place. Dimensions of Citizenship documents contributions from the seven firms selected to represent the United States in the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale. This paperback volume profiles and illustrates each of the US Pavilion contributions and contextualizes them in terms of scale.

Made Up

Design's Fictions

Art Center Media Design Practices

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Anne Burdick, Architecture, Benjamin H. Bratton, Books, Bruce Sterling, China Miéville, Emmet Byrne, Fiona Raby, Geoff Manaugh, Julian Bleecker, Keith Mitnick, m-a-u-s-e-r, Metahaven, MOS, Norman M. Klein, Peter Lunenfeld, Stuart Candy, Susanna Schouweiler, Tim Durfee, Tim Durfee, Tom Marble

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Tim Durfee, Mimi Zeiger, editors

At a time when “fake news” is part of our daily cultural lexicon, Made Up: Design’s Fictions explores lies, fantasies, and other un-real scenarios as tools of design.

Through essays, interviews, and narratives by Bruce Sterling, Fiona Raby, Sam Jacob and other significant voices in the field, this volume questions the initial discourses around “design fiction”—a broad category of critical design that includes overlapping interests in science fiction, world building, speculation, and futuring. Made Up: Design’s Fictions advances contemporary analysis and enactment of narrative and speculation as an important part of practice today.

Essays, interviews, and narratives by: Julian Bleecker, Benjamin H. Bratton, Anne Burdick, Emmet Byrne, Stuart Candy, Fiona Raby, Tim Durfee, Sam Jacob, Norman M. Klein, Peter Lunenfeld, Geoff Manaugh, Tom Marble, m-a-u-s-e-r, Metahaven, China Miéville, Keith Mitnick, MOS, Susanna Schouweiler, Bruce Sterling, Mimi Zeiger.

Size: 6.25 × 9.25 in. / 16 × 23.5 cm.
Pages: 108
Illustrations: One-Color
Cover: Softcover
Publication date: December 2017
Published By: Actar Publishers / Art Center Graduate Press
ISBN: English 978-1- 5323-4788- 7
Price: 13.50 € / $16 / £12

2018

Co-machines: Mobile Disruptive Architecture

A Book of Mobile Disruptive Architecture

TAGS

Architecture, Books, Design, ON/OFF, Urbanism

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Inspired by the recent tendency among architects and designers to opt out of traditional office work in favour of creating self-initiated interventions in public space, ‘Co-Machines’ map out a new architectural movement motivated by practices of place-making, occupying and squatting, and alternative economies. Ecological or technological in scope, all the interventions are mobile and nearly all of them are performed without permission from city planners. Presenting a selection of international projects by emerging designers, ‘Co-machines: Mobile Disruptive Architecture’ shows the life of the alternative, grassroots and DIY with an independent spirit. It seeks out approaches and strategies to complement established urban planning and city-building, and show the beauty and fun in the initiative. In a range of ways, ‘Co-Machines’ raises questions about the function of architectural permanence, the opportunities for social, ecological, ethical or dynamics otherwise in urban planning and the scope of architecture at large.

ON/OFF (Dan Dorocic, Mimi Zeiger, Kim Dovey, Alan Smart, Nick Green, Fiona Shipwright, Michael Maginness, Alison Hugill, Diane Barbé, Benni Foerster- Baldenius, Carole Lung, Sam Carvalho )

November 7, 2017

Office US Manual

Storefront for Art and Architecture

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Architecture, Books

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Office US Manual is a critical, occasionally humorous, and sometimes stupefying guide to the architectural workplace. The third publication of OfficeUS, this book presents office policies and guidelines spanning the last one hundred years alongside commissioned statements by contemporary contributors, original graphic analysis, and images from The Architects by Amie Siegel. The Manual is a resource for understanding—and reimagining—the nature and design of architectural practice.

Contributors:
Rami Abou-Khalil, Sean Anderson, Andrew Atwood, Phil Bernstein, Besler & Sons, Aleksandr Bierig, Gabrielle Brainard, Landon Brown, Felix Burrichter, Savinien Caracostea, Rafael de Cárdenas / Architecture at Large, Choon Choi, Matthew Clarke, Peggy Deamer, Designers Assembly, Caroline O’Donnell, Craig Edward Dykers, Keller Easterling, Family, Pedro Gadanho, Gordon Gill, Liam Gillick, Marc Guberman, Adam Hayes, Juan Herreros, Sarah M. Hirschman, Phu Hoang, Florian Idenburg, Michael Jefferson, George Barnett Johnston, James von Klemperer, Keith Krumwiede, Jimenez Lai, Andrew Laing, Jesse LeCavalier, Leong Leong, Thomas Y. Levin, John May, Kyle May, Nicholas McDermott, Michael Meredith, Sina Najafi, ODA, John Perry, Daniel Pittman, PlayLab, Inc, Charles Renfro, Pierce Reynoldson, Julian Rose, Andrew Ross, Magali Sarfatti-Larson, SHoP Architects, Manuel Shvartzberg, Galia Solomonoff, Erica Stoller, Dan Taeyoung, Nader Tehrani, Troy Conrad Therrien, Nato Thompson, Ada Tolla, Marc Tsurumaki, Julia van den Hout, J.H. Verkerke, Marina Otero Verzier, Ian Volner, Don Weinreich, Marion Weiss, Sarah Whiting, Mabel O. Wilson, Human Wu, Kim Yao, Michael Young, Mimi Zeiger

December 2016

MCHAP: The Americas

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Architecture, Books, Urbanism

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MCHAP: The Americas brings together leading architects and academics in a dialogue exploring the current state of architecture throughout the Americas and analyzes themes raised by the seven finalist projects (designed by Herzog & de Meuron, Álvaro Siza, Steven Holl Architects, OMA/ LMN – Rem Koolhaas and Joshua Prince-Ramus, Smiljan Radić, Cristián Undurraga, Rafael Iglesia) from the inaugural Mies Crown Hall Americas Prize recognizing the best built works in the Americas from 2000 through 2013.

Edited by Fabrizio Gallanti,the book includes contributions from the inaugural MCHAP jury (IITAC Dean Wiel Arets, Kenneth Frampton, Jorge Francisco Liernur, Dominique Perrault, Sarah Whiting) as well as essays by Fabrizio Gallanti, Pedro Alonso, Luis Castañeda, Felipe Correa, Pier Paolo Tamburelli, Horacio Torrent, Molly Wright Steenson, Mimi Zeiger.

March 2016

Tiny Houses in the City

Rizzoli

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Architecture, Books

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Read an interview with Mimi in the Los Angeles Times.

Feature in Dwell Magazine.

A presentation of micro-scaled contemporary residences that demonstrate domesticity can be both compact and beautiful. How we live in cities—smaller, denser, smarter—is at the heart of Tiny Houses in the City. Urban areas across the globe are experiencing a renaissance, with once-forgotten downtowns and neighborhoods becoming increasingly popular for redevelopment. This book looks at the tiny house movement through the lens of metropolitan life. Tiny Houses in the City features an international collection of more than thirty homes that exemplify compact living at its best. The houses, apartments, and multifamily buildings and developments included make great architecture out of challenging locations and narrow sites. Focusing on dwelling spaces all under 1,000 square feet, Tiny Houses in the City illustrates strategies for building tiny in urban areas that include urban infill, adaptive reuse, transforming and flexible living spaces, and micro-unit buildings. The projects range from a 344-square-foot studio apartment in Hong Kong with movable walls, transformable furniture, and hidden storage that can be configured into twenty-four unique scenarios in a single space, to a townhouse-like London residence built in an old alley between two stately homes. Many of the residences chronicled in Tiny Houses in the City are indeed unique in design, but their economical size and ingenious interior spaces are the epitome of practicality and illustrate an acute understanding of compact living and its potential for the urban realm.