Mimi Zeiger

Critic, editor, curator and instigator.

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

As a civic figure, the architect has the privilege and responsibility to articulate and translate the collective aspirations of society, and specifically of those not able to sit at the decision-making tables.

Throughout history, architects have engaged with this responsibility and the structures of economic, political and cultural power in different ways and with varying degrees of success. With the rise of globalization and the homogenization of the contemporary city, the role of the architect in the political arena has often been relegated to answering questions that others have asked. While designing the next economically driven cultural-iconic-touristic object, an increasing amount of both architects and with them, politicians, have forgotten the ethics that should be associated with architectural practice and the potential of design in the construction of public life.  Read More …

Dear Mayor Garcetti,

“The best place to view Los Angeles of the next millennium is from the ruins of its alternative future.”
—Mike Davis, City of Quartz (1990)

“L.A. WANTS 2 HELP U”
—Billboard Oracle, L.A. Story (1991)

What is the future of Los Angeles? This is the question everyone is asking. And it is the perennial question posed by everyone from William Mulholland to Walt Disney to Frank Gehry. In each casting of the runes, the city is both subject and object. It is a place where the wind rustling the bougainvillea is a siren song and the Santa Ana’s blowing down palm fronds is an omen. But you know this, my fellow Angelino. Just as you know that The Los Angeles 2020 Commission wrinkles its collective brow with concern as it evaluates the next six years and that the LA2050 initiative (funded by the Goldhirsh Foundation) foresees an optimistic, crowdsourced metropolis. Read More …

For the launch of the publication of InfraNet Lab/Lateral Office’s Pamphlet Architecture 30+, Coupling: Infrastructural Opportunism, Storefront staged Manifesto Series 02: Infrastructural Opportunism.

Many thanks to Mason, Lola, and Eva for inviting me to participate.

The awesome infrastructural lineup was:
MIMI ZEIGER on manifestos
INTERBORO on exclusion
DIANA BALMORI on realignments
JASON VIGNERI-BEANE on stripping down
LYDIA KALLIPOLITI on remedies
ANDREW BLUM on tubes
JOYCE HWANG on interventions
MAMMOTH on expanding fields Read More …

OVER BLACK

Sounds of the inner spaces rushing forward.

Then a splinter of blue light in the center of the picture.
It breaks wide, showing the top and bottom a silhouetted curtain of razor sharp teeth suggesting that we are inside of a tremendous gullet, looking out at the onrushing under-sea world at night. HEAR a symphony of underwater sounds:
landslide, metabolic sounds, the rare and secret noises that certain undersea species share with each other. Read More …

“In old days books were written by men of letters and read by the public. Now books are written by the public and read by nobody.”—Oscar Wilde

The popularity of the aphorism, a short, memorable, often pithy statement, goes hand in hand with the invention of printing. Throughout the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries, aphorisms and maxims were published globally in thick, bound collections. Although print remains precarious in a digital age, the aphoristic statement lives on.

For the Book Launch Cabaret at Storefront for Art and Architecture to celebrate Studio-X’s release, The Studio-X NY Guide to Liberating New Forms of Conversation (GSAPP Books, 2010), edited by Gavin Browning, Mimi Zeiger presented Maximum Maxim MMX a zine maximized with maxims germane to architecture and publishing.

Traveling the world as part of Archizines.