Asset Architecture 3 is the latest installment in the Department of Architecture series edited by Ali Rahim, professor of architecture and director of the Master of Science in Design with a concentration in Advanced Architectural Design (MSD-AAD) program. Published by ORO Editions, this issue focuses on the role of technology:

Technological choices give us ways to bridge the gap between the technical and the cultural, immersing one within the other. This immersion creates a platform for innovation. The techniques that people generate through their use of technology exert pressure on technical refinement and enfold those refinements within culture. Technological choices define a world within which specific alternatives of uses emerge, and they define a subject who chooses among those alternatives. In the making of the world through technology, we simultaneously enact great cultural change. In order for architecture to remain relevant in the future and create a critique of the present it must operate within technology, developing technological practices and design methods that become intrinsic to technology as opposed to applying it to a previously conceived design. The scope and significance of this is potentially enormous. Asset Architecture 3 attempts to illustrate some of the concepts, directions, and practices that have taken on this challenge.

The issue features student work from the MSD-AAD studios, including interviews and behind-the-scenes model production. The cover image is from the project "Vertical Mausoleum" by Bosung Jeon, Carrie Rose Frattali, and Xiaoyu Zhao.

The publication also includes essays by Matthew Soules, assistant professor, The University of British Columbia ('Form Against Finance?'); Robert Neumayr, lecturer, PennDesign and assistant professor, University of Applied Arts, Vienna ('The Best Building Money Can Buy'); and Tom Verebes, provost, Turenscape Academy ('The Paradigms of Politics and Privatization - From Raymond Hood to Robin Hood').

Asset is available for purchase from ORO Editions.