Phylogenesis Foa's Ark

Phylogenesis--wait, we'll explain the title soon--is structured as a reflection on the work that Foreign Office Architects (FOA) has produced during its first 10 years of practice. With its genesis as a primarily speculative and academic endeavor, FOA has recently expended much energy in the development of a technical arsenal for implementing real projects. Such explorations have been undertaken through a series of competitions, speculative commissions, and lately some real projects, some of them already completed, others still under construction. The outcome of these years is seen not just as a series of experiments, defined by the specific conditions of a project, but as a consistent reservoir of architectural species to be proliferate, mutated, and evolved in the near future. With the spirit of a scientific classification, the genesis of the projects is here identified as the evolution of a series of "phylums," actualized--and simultaneously virtualized--in their application to the specific conditions where the projects take place. Phylogenesis also includes an FOA-curated compilation of previously published texts from several critics who analyze "external" topics that relate to different aspects of the firm's discourse.

Excerpts by Bernard Cache, Manuel de Landa,Sanford Kwinter, Farshid Moussavi, Detlef Mertins, Alejandro Zaera-Polo, Sandra Knapp and Mark Wigley.

Hardcover, 6 x 8 in./600 pgs / Illustrated throughout.