Our newest publication, CATALYST recently made it's debut.

Designed and printed in partnership with Actar Publishers (Barcelona and New York), CATALYST is the product of the School of Architecture and Paper Matters, a research seminar that examines and deconstructs the notion of printed material in contemporary architectural debate, education, and practice.

CATALYST explores the work of multiple disciplines, many peoples, and a multitude of approaches, all operating under the umbrella of one institution

The editorial team, lead by Ghazal Abbasy-Asbagh, developed the conceptual framework, and collected and organized the content. The work featured in CATALYST was selected from student and faculty projects engaged in research and pedagogy on the conditions of the built environment from the academic year 2012-2013, and is aligned relative to three states: flux, stasis, and crisis.

The questions the teams asked were:

What is the impact of design on the forces that shape our contemporary reality?
To what extent do contingencies of time and place shape our response?
How does the discursive character of design education contribute to this feedback loop?
While the cyclical nature of the academic setting demands short-term projects, which remain unresolved and are judged in only a few minutes by a panel of experts, these projects become the seeds of an interest in the topics and approaches that are at the core of design pedagogy.

This edited volume gathers a range of formats, project types, scales, and representation styles within the framework of various disciplinary processes, research agendas, and pedagogical approaches, under the rubric of one institution. The thread that ties all the work together is a decided investment in responding to the forces that shape our contemporary reality.

This volume should be considered as a litmus test to measure whether environmental conditions—sociopolitical or climatic, notwithstanding their cultural, technological and disciplinary contexts—are catalysts for new modes of practice and pedagogy.

You can purchase Catalyst online here.