Julian de Smedt Architects
Actar Publishers (2010)
Rating: 5 stars
Written on the cusp of the global financial downfall, AGENDA prompts the question, what can architecture learn from crisis? What threads and strategies lie within this modality that can sustain a new means of architectural practice? At 544 pages, this book is ample; comprised of a running dialogue of interviews, images of project progress and deadlines, providing voyeuristic insight into JDS architects. The narrative of projects, a format likely borrowed from de Smedt's mentor Rem Koolhaas (Content, 2004) is harrowingly engaging. Teetering on the ambitious, AGENDA never glibly offers solutions making this stellar read, a smart new generation of monograph.