MORPHING: A Guide to Mathematical Transformations for Architects and Designers is not your high school math coursebook. Authored by Design Topology Lab founder Joseph Choma, Morphing is a pedagogical guide that can help architects, designers, students, and whoever is interested in the topic to understand in greater depth the trigonometric transformations and functions behind the digital design tools they use.

Since its release in January by Laurence King Publishing, Morphing has garnered positive reception. "I am particularly curious to see how readers of Morphing may identify alternative approaches to the inquiry, " Choma shared via email. "After all, Morphing can be seen as a guide through my own thought process into mathematics."

With that said, Archinect is giving away Morphing to three of our readers! To enter the book giveaway, fill out this survey by Wednesday, March 18, end of day. Winners will be chosen at random. Good luck!

Scroll down further for more insight into the book from Choma:

ARCHINECT: How did the idea for creating the Morphing book come about? 

JOSEPH CHOMA: "While a student at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, I became very interested in the inner computational workings behind digital tools. I started to realize how tools inherently constrain the way individuals design and how designers are often unaware of their tools’ influences and biases. Digital tools in particular are becoming increasingly complex and filled with hierarchical symbolic heuristics, creating a black box in which designers do not understand what is ‘under the hood’ of the tools they ‘drive’. As a result, I began researching mathematics, as a means to demystify the inner computational workings of digital tools. 

As a designer, my approach to researching mathematics was unorthodox. Initially, the causal relationships between mathematical equations and resulting shapes were inexplicable, but tacitly through trial and error, an understanding of which operations causes a particular transformation slowly developed. As I incrementally established a fundamental set of rules, I began asking more questions. Eventually, creating a framework to convey mathematical transformations as design tools. This directly lead to the development of Morphing." 

ARCHINECT: Did the concepts in Morphing derive from your own creative processes that you have applied to your own projects?

JC: "Morphing series and taxonomies are the primary communicative devices within Morphing. Well before I ever designed with mathematics, I designed with these systematic frameworks. The morphing series acted as a lens to reflect on a generative process. While the taxonomies provided a means to simultaneously design an array of variations with multiple parameters. These structured design experiments have been embedded within my process for a long time. However, they are not new; having been utilized in scientific recordings for over a hundred years."

To enter the book giveaway, fill out this survey by Wednesday, March 18, end of day. Winners will be chosen at random. Good luck!