Book Launch & Reception: Andrew Holder: Inscriptions: Architecture Before Speech

Andrew Holder is a designer and a theorist of contemporary architecture. He co-principal of The LADG, an architectural practice based in Los Angeles, and an Associate Professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, where he is also Program Director for the MArch I degree track. Andrew’s built and speculative work propose buildings as actors in the built environment almost akin to human subjects, while his writing similarly connects architecture’s form and physical presence to its participation in a larger terrain of ideas.

Inscriptions: Architecture Before Speech is a theory of contemporary architecture surveying 112 practices in 750 images, with 10 critical essays by leading thinkers in the field. Against the popular characterization of contemporary architecture as a centerless field where anything goes and everything is possible, Inscriptions argues that much recent work belongs to a collective undertaking. Underneath the impression of kaleidoscopic difference produced by the rapid circulation of design images, there is a shared mechanism, an agreement about how architectural objects emerge from the procedures of design. SCI-Arc faculty featured in the book include Matthew Au, Kristy Balliet, Jackilin Hah Bloom, David Freeland, Jia Gu, Mira Henry, Zeina Koreitem, Anna Neimark, Florencia Pita, Maxi Spina, and Marrikka Trotter.