Morphosis: Connected Isolation (Architectural Monographs No. 23)
Thom Mayne
Academy Editions, 1993

Paperback | 10 x 12 inches | 144 pages | English | ISBN: 9781854901514 | $30.00

PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION:
International recognition and commissions world-wide have not altered the need of Morphosis to draw polemical strength from the complexity of Los Angeles. Each new work continues to reflect an evolving response to the contextual issues first encountered there. As Morphosis principal Thom Mayne has said, it is a city in which 'the question of diversity becomes even more confusing because any interest in an idiosyncratic event simply repeats the status quo. In the midst of isolation, true diversity occurs in a connective middle ground. The expression of conflict thus becomes the most optimistic statement of what we can be as a culture, and is the most challenging stance to take.' Such awareness of place and its global extensions are revealed in this Monograph as a continuous concern linking earlier work, such as the Sixth Street and Venice III houses, with the recently completed Crawford house and Salick Healthcare Building in Los Angeles, as well as the Higashi, Nara, and Chiba projects across the Pacific. All of these serve to extend a contemporary redefinition of the meaning of social conditions. Morphosis ? Connected Isolation features an essay by Thom Mayne as well as a collection of projects, many of which are presented here for the first time, in order to provid...