LOT-EK: Objects + Operations by Ada Tolla and Giuseppe Lignano with Thomas de Monchaux
The Monacelli Press, 2017
Hardcover, 400 pages

[Cover via LOT-EK]

If one architecture firm deserves credit for sticking to its guns, it's LOT-EK. The duo of Ada Tolla and Giuseppe Lignano has incorporated industrial detritus ? primarily shipping containers ? into their built and unbuilt projects for around a couple decades. Other architects have exploited the potential of inexpensive shipping containers, but none have done it so thoroughly and repeatedly. Projects like the 2008 Wiener Townhouse in the West Village, which I included in my book Guide to Contemporary New York City Architecture, look to have abandoned the reuse of industrial parts, only to subtly reveal they are built with truck containers and ducts. About ten years later, LOT-EK has just completed Drivelines in Johannesburg, a live-work building made from dozens of "upcycled ISO shipping containers."
[Whitney Studio, 2012 | Photo by John Hill]

Objects + Operations, the duo's second monograph, focuses on works this century, be they "built, unbuilt, and in-progress; polemical, practical, and in-between." One thing I'm always drawn to with monographs is organization. Instead of organizing their projects by date, typology, or geography, LOT-EK opts for color: "Projects are sequenced along a spectrum of color, starting and ending at yellow." The choice of yellow is not ...