Inscriptions


Andrew Holder and K. Michael Hays, Eds. Inscritpions, Architecture Before Speech. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Graduate School of Design (Distributed by Harvard University Press), 2021.


"Against the popular characterization of contemporary architecture as a centerless field where anything goes and everything is possible, this book aims to show that much recent work belongs to a collective undertaking of inscriptions. Yes, at the level of individual projects the work collected here looks mixed, if not willfully, kaleidoscopically disparate. Underneath this, though, there is a shared mechanism, an agreement about how architectural objects emerge from the procedures of design. This conjecture emerged in the last days of 2017 as the editors of this volume collaborated to mount a survey exhibition of contemporary architecture and noticed a pattern. It was not the unearthing of similar forms exactly but rather the insistent flash of recognition itself that gave the discovery of each project a quality of confirmation, of underscoring premonitory knowledge."

- Andrew Holder


Inscriptions: Architecture Before Speech presents a theory of contemporary architecture that spans the work of 112 practices in 750 images. Against the popular characterization of contemporary architecture as a centerless field where anything goes and everything is possible, this book argues that much recent work belongs to a collective undertaking. Underneath the impression of kaleidoscopic difference produced by the rapid circulation of design images is a shared mechanism, an agreement about how architectural objects emerge from the procedures of design. This mechanism, which we call inscription, manages to both offer fundamentally intelligible form to architecture’s audiences and advance the field toward novel outcomes. The ensuing work is nothing less than democratically optimistic in its wide appeal and challenging in its cuts against convention.

Featuring essays by Catherine Ingraham, Lucia Allais, Stan Allen, Phillip Denny, Edward Eigen, Sylvia Lavin, Antoine Picon, and Marrikka Trotter, Inscriptions offers a broad array of critical perspectives on work that defines architecture’s second decade of the twenty-first century.