Construction Matters by Georg Windeck, co-edited by Lisa Larson-Walker, Sean Gaffney & Will Shapiro
powerHouse Books, 2016
Hardcover, 230 pages

Right after graduating from architecture school at Kansas State University in 1996 I moved to back to Chicago, getting a job in the firm DeStefano + Partners a few months later. Working for a firm whose partners were formerly employed by SOM, and working alongside many intern architects who had attended the Illinois Institute of Technology, I quickly learned the differences between my education and others. Whereas K-State was strong on conceptual design (basing studio projects on concepts rather than just function), history, drawing, and environment and behavior, the lineage of architects who trained at IIT following Mies van der Rohe excelled in technical considerations. "What material is your building made of"" was a little-heard question during jury reviews at K-State, but projects at IIT started with materials, mainly steel and concrete. In a sense these two ways of design are at either ends of a spectrum: form divorced from material and material determining form.
Given that since 2000 Georg Windeck has been teaching at Cooper Union ? the school of John Hejduk, Elizabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio, and Daniel Libeskind ? I'd figure he must fall into the "conceptual" camp. But that label would be premature, as is evidenced by his studies at Technical University Berlin and Construction Matter...