M Modeled Works Archive 1972 2022

The work of Pritzker Prize–winning architect Thom Mayne and that of the firm Morphosis at its most pure is best seen in the models that preceded the buildings, masterworks made at scale, for the first time comprehensively gathered—and shown here. Thom Mayne is a deeply theoretical and conceptual architect whose built work and that of the firm Morphosis can be seen worldwide. On the cutting edge of exploration and discovery in design, the architecture is marked by complexity, disruption, ambiguity, and power. In each case, prior to the building came the model, which may serve as a key to understanding and appreciation; models express purely the basis of Mayne’s theory and intention. This volume offers, for the first time ever, an exhaustive look at the models upon which all the rest has been built, and is, as well, an essential history of the work of Mayne and Morphosis. A forty-plus-year office retrospective and a love letter to models, their process and concepts, and those that made them, the book considers at once the evolution of the model and that of the work of the firm. It features small-scale dwellings, such as the early and award-winning Sedlack Residence in Venice, California—a single room and study set atop a one-car garage—to Unicorn Island, a mixed-use master plan including a transit station, university campus, commerical and office buildings, parks, and green space in Chengdu, China. In addition to models never before documented, the book includes outside commentary from architecture historians, critics, and practicing architects, such as Kenneth Frampton, Steven Holl, and Wolf Prix.

For the past forty years Thom Mayne and his firm, Morphosis, have been engaged with projects that exist in the hybrid space between architecture and urban planning. Against this backdrop, Thom Mayne's new book Combinatory Urbanism: The Complex Behavior of Collective Form (Stray Dog Café, 2011) surveys 12 urban projects that range in scale from a 16-acre proposal for rebuilding the World Trade Center site after the 2001 terrorist attacks to a 52 thousand-acre redevelopment proposal for Post-Katrina New Orleans. This book and the proposals found within, posit an alternative to traditional end-state planning solutions, while attempting to not only illuminate but also explicate Mayne's own work and critical processes. Combinatory Urbanism represents a departure from previous Morphosis publications. Both a manifesto on urbanism and a comprehensive presentation of Morphosis urban design projects, many of which have never before been published; this book fills a void in the world of architectural and urban design publications.

Like few others, Louis Kahn cultivated the craft of drawing as a means to architecture. His personal design drawings - seen either as a method of discovery or for themselves - are unique in the twentieth century. Over two hundred - mostly unpublished - drawings by Kahn and his associates are woven together with a lively and informed commentary into an intimate biography of an architectural idea. Unfolding around the iconic project for the Dominican Motherhouse (1965 - 69) the drawings form a narrative which not only reveals the richness and hidden dimensions of this unbuilt masterpiece, but provides compelling insights into Louis Kahn's mature culture of designing. Kahn - long considered an architects' architect" - emerges as a vivid and instructive guide, provoking reflection on questions which continue to remain relevant: on how works are conceived, on how they might be perceived, on how they become part of human experience. Fascinating not only in their beauty, the drawings open a new and stimulating perspective on one of the past century's great architects.

A resounding masterpiece of architectural publishing, this volume, Rizzoli's sixth on Morphosis and its founder, architect Thom Mayne, features the work of the award-winning interdisciplinary architectural and design practice over the past fourteen years. Known for its architecture of complexity, disruption, and ambiguity, Morphosis is on the cutting edge of exploration and discovery in design. Sometimes on the border of controversy with daring vision and provocative large-scale urban projects, the firm continually invites us to question what architecture is and can be while remaining sensitive to its central purpose--to provide safe, sheltering spaces for life, work, and play. This book documents the great variety of the firm's creations across the globe, a new academic building for the Cooper Union in New York, the Perot Museum of Nature and Science in Texas, the Casablanca Finance City Tower in Morocco, and the Sejong M-Bridge, in Sejong City, South Korea. Like the architecture of this trailblazing firm, the book is an exhilarating demonstration of visual excitement, bold graphics, and innovative design.

Wes Jones has defined a new industrial aesthetic for the 21st century.