Architects experiment upon the world. Researchers extend outside the laboratory by co-opting existing structures of influence and crafting new techniques of engagement. Even the effects of proving grounds–from Coney Island to emergency drills–leak beyond their boundaries without any official sanction. Impacts are often unpredictable, but no less powerful. The practice of human subject research has yielded the benefits of the polio vaccine and the horrors of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, reminding us that, as a former director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency once remarked, “When we fail, we fail big.” ‘Test Subjects’ focuses on the contended nature of application ...

How does change happen? Who authors design? How does architecture participate in modernization? How does architecture govern? Governing by design, this book suggests, is not simply a matter of monu­mental symbolism and space, state power and authority, imposed control and surveillance. This book instead sets architecture in relation to mundane mat­ters: food, bodies, housing, markets, cities, and culture. How do we regulate basic aspects of our lives through design, such as the consumption of food and shelter? How do we manage the risks of modernization to our bodies and environments? How is culture produced by politics, planning, and architecture? How ...

The two essays of Mammoths, Inc. look into the workings of public debt: a ghostly, spectral technology foundational to the liberal state and modern capitalism alike. These two essays are part of a three-volume study, titled Ancestralities, on the relationship between architecture, public debt, and sovereignty in the last four centuries.

The Adhocracy READER, an e-Book that unfolds the issues that widens up and deepen the theoretical, historical and empirical theme of the exhibition Adhocracy ATHENS. The publication also tries to get rid from the assumption of what a catalog should be. It does not collect or list exhibited projects; but the ideas and texts which have inspired both the curators and practitioners of the selected projects. Adhocracy is a philosophy of action characterized by creative, flexible, purposeful attitude. Unlike bureaucracy and its fixed schemes, Adhocracy is adjustable to different challenges and situations. Adhocracy uses available systems in unimagined ways to face ...