Author Description

Imagining Architecture Beyond the End Times, captures the reflections of a generation caught between the failures of utopian thought and cynical reason. The book seeks to retool old means in search of new ends; of new stars by which to navigate in an age of dis-aster, literally, an age without stars. The eight essays presented here are the result of a closely shared conversation. They are the revised labor of a week of collective living, discussing the times in which we live and in which the task of practicing architecture is historically situated. They present differing reactions to the state of the present and to the conception of time and history as determinants of architectural imagination. They variously propose critique, provocation, aphorism and manifesto, with sentiments of confidence, anger, retrenchment, modesty, irony and hope. They are imaginative gestures aimed at kick-starting the faltering motor of history, in a world that appears too frequently, as the saying goes, as being blown backwards into the future.