Exactitude: On Precision and Play in Contemporary Architecture

Precision is necessary in the field of architecture, and new technologies have increased demands for accuracy, particularly when the smallest errors can have outsized consequences. However, the importance of precision, or exactitude, has not received the consideration it merits. While themes of sustainability, performance, and formal innovation have been at the forefront of architectural scholarship for the past twenty years, this book moves beyond these concerns to explore the theoretical and practical demands exactitude makes on architecture as a field.

The eleven essays collected here investigate the possibilities and shortcomings of exactitude and delve into current debates about the state of contemporary architecture as both a technological craft and artistic creation. Featuring new work by leading theorists, historians, editors, architects, and scholars, this volume brings theory and practice into insightful and productive conversations. In addition to the editors, contributors include Mark Wigley, Alejandro Zaera-Polo, Eric Höweler, Christopher Benfey, Sunil Bald, Ada Tolla and Giuseppe Lignano with Thomas de Monchaux, Alicia Imperiale, Francesca Hughes, Teresa Stoppani, and Cynthia Davidson.

PARI RIAHI is a registered architect and assistant professor of architecture at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and author of Ars et Ingenium: The Embodiment of Imagination in Francesco di Giorgio Martini’s Drawings.

LAURE KATSAROS is professor of French at Amherst College, where she is also affiliated with the program in architectural studies. Most recently, she is author of New York–Paris: Whitman, Baudelaire, and the Hybrid City.

MICHAEL T. DAVIS is professor emeritus of art history and founder of the program for architectural studies at Mount Holyoke College. He has published extensively on French Gothic architecture.