Anyhow

How, in relation to process, infrastructure, money, information, and program, is architecture in fact done today? How do we operate beyond and sometimes even at odds with policies and official regulations, local interests, and global demands? How might architecture analyze or diagram these zones of operation in order to intervene in them?

Twelve architects, including Arata Isozaki, Paul Andreu, Rem Koolhaas, Peter Eisenman, and Bernard Tschumi, join critics Fredric Jameson, Hubert Damisch, Elizabeth Grosz, Beatriz Colomina, Kojin Karatani, and others in addressing the questions of "anyhow," of how architecture operates and is perceived today. The twenty-four illustrated essays are organized around themes ranging from the architectural office to the urban landscape to the philosophy of pragmatism.

Anyhow is the seventh book in the ongoing series that began in 1991 with Anyone and was followed by Anywhere, Anyway, Anyplace, Anywise, and Anybody. Each volume is based on a conference in which architects, philosophers, historians, theoreticians, artists, and intellectuals come together to present papers and discuss a particular theme from a multicultural and multidisciplinary perspective. The conference upon which Anyhow is based took place in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, in June 1997. Anyhow will be followed by Anytime, Anymore, and Anything.

Cynthia Davidson is the editor of ANY Magazine, the director of Anyone Corporation, and a member of the editorial board of the Writing Architecture series.