PRAXIS 11+12

Written by Karen Cilento
Published on February 21, 2011

For their latest PRAXIS, Eleven Architects/Twelve Conversations, the editors moved away from organizing the issue around a single theme to, instead, focusing on a variety of architectural aspects. The result is a rather cohesive reading, as the different ideas are fused into a continuous conversation. The issue still highlights great projects from the featured architects, yet the projects take more of a supporting role, as the real focus is the conversation that jumps from sustainability to design influences and materials to even the broader implications of design on the built environment.

More about the issue after the break.

Organizationally, the issue pairs the eleven firms twice which creates a “provisional mapping of a shared set of concerns, including the notion of material and or conceptual testing; a questioning of the agency afforded by sustainability; and an interest in the relation of digital processes and design outcome.”

The featured architects include MOS, nArchitects, WORKac , PATTERNS, Aranda/Lasch, Productora, Alejandro Aravena, FAR, Ciro Najle, The Living, Howeler +Yoon (many of which we’ve featured previously on AD). The mix of firms offers a great difference in cultural backgrounds and architectural philosophies, and as the firms simply chat an informal and fun dialogue unfolds.

As editor Ashley Schafer explains in the opening conversation, the issue, “uses a moment in time to capture the multiple issues and anxieties facing a certain sector of practitioners in 2009-2010…it is highly specific, and yet this specificity enables other trends and ideas to surface so that, at the level of discouse, this issue is perhaps broader than previous ones.” Because the issue touches upon so many different topics, its broader base can pique readers’ varying interests. The issue is quite an exciting and enjoyable read.