Interpretations, distorting, bending with alternatives, lies, lying, liar. The multi-faceted nature of contemporary discourse in architecture can be conceived as a field of partial and subjective truths evidenced by its mediums and conventions. Questioning traditional notions of representation as a principal means for exchange, we ask what relation contemporary work must bear to a referent to acquire meaning.

From orthographic projections and perspectival distortions to rendering curated views, optical aberrations, and texturing, our discipline offers specific forms of effect-production. Granting that architectural representations are in themselves a form of truth, what do they actually represent? What is the nature of their plural truths? To what degrees do falsehood, deceit, fiction, and lies play in this analysis? These are some of the questions Offramp 9 sets out to ask at offramp.sciarc.edu.

Offramp is the academic journal published by SCI-Arc in Los Angeles. Between 1987 and 2000, SCI-Arc produced seven editions of Offramp, before the title was retired for a number of years. In July 2014, the school reintroduced the journal as part of the Design of Theory Fellowship.

The first issue to be published online, Offramp Issue #09 features essays by Roxy Paine, Pita + Bloom, Perry Kulper, Uri Wegman, Joe Day (M.Arch '94), Michael Young, Brauna Mori, Ramiro Diaz-Granados (B.Arch '96), Debbie Garcia, John Southern (M.Arch '02), Laurel Broughton (M.Arch '06) and Kyle Miller, among others. The issue is edited by Benjamin J. Smith, Stefano Passeri (M.Arch '13) and Benjamin Farnsworth (M.Arch '13), who served as SCI-Arc Design of Theory fellows within the past two years.

A launch reception for Offramp will be hosted at SCI-Arc on April 10.