Preston Scott Cohen

Architect Preston Scott Cohen combines the use of the most advanced digital modeling technologies with a fascination for 17th century descriptive geometry. He uses familiar forms distorted by oblique projections and similar devices to create complex designs that challenge our preconceptions about the nature of order in architecture."Contested Symmetries and Other Predicaments in Architecture" features Cohen's intricate abstract geometries and lucidly describes both the mechanics and the theory behind their application. A wealth of projects, including the widely acclaimed Torus House, are represented through drawings, models, and computer-generated images.

Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) program. Furthermore, he illustrates how the Sustainable Sites Initiative (SITES) and the Living Building Challenge present more holistic green design systems than LEED. SITES in particular is built on advancing ecosystem services through design. The writing strengths of both books are also their weaknesses. Muller is more poetic but is rather colloquial in places. Fleming focuses on pragmatic changes but gets rather pedantic in spots. The writing in both books would be better by avoiding “etc.” and “paradigm.” The latter term has become so overused that it has grown trite. Key names are misspelled: Donald Schön in Muller; Leslie Sauer and John Chase (not Saunders, his middle name, not his last) in Fleming. Fleming offers concrete suggestions for improving design education. He discusses the merits and shortcomings of “the woven curriculum,” “the dedicated sustainability studio,” and “integral theory,” making a strong case for the dedicated studio as a good starting place. If so, and if an ecology course was required as well, what are other building blocks for better environmentally oriented architecture education? Architects historically receive considerable grounding in climate, knowledge that is crucial to understand ecology and to design sustainably, even regeneratively. As a result of NAAB and ARE, site design is already a requirement. Such courses would be enhanced by including exposure to SITES. Both Fleming and Muller present enthusiastic cases for their perspectives. They seek to be “disruptive” (according to Fleming). Ecology is a subversive science. Its application to design education and practice would indeed fundamentally disrupt the status quo. These books contribute to why and how architects should understand ecology and consider sustainability in their design. Design decisions, for instance, the placement of a window, have ecological consequences: outside for birds and other animals, inside for people and plants. The window’s placement can contribute to energy conservation or deplete ecosystem services. These two books help us understand such relationships. As a result, they have value to architectural students, faculty, and practitioners. Both books would be good readings for studios as well as courses in sustainable design. Muller and Fleming have made inspiring and useful contributions to the expanding green design literature.

In order to analyze architecture as a medium today, one must critically assess the relationship between two seemingly disparate matters, each of which has had a profound impact on the production of buildings and their reception for more than a century: the legitimation of architecture as a cultural project by the attribution of its form to sources other than authorship, and the pervasive paradigm of spatial organization that I call vertical succession, or stacking.