SITE : Architecture as Art

SITE, a "multidisciplinary architecture and environmental organization", designed large scale commercial buildings that combine architecture, art, and technology with contemporary issues such as "ritual, irony, humor, entropy, disorder, and social/political statement. 112 pages, with a list of SITES projects, a bibliography, and 14 "Selected Projects" , briefly described and summarized in a black/white section, then more fully displayed in 79 pages of mostly color plates. An example? The Forest Building, a large Best catalog outlet, planned for a previously forested area, is fronted by the regulation sprawling parking lot placed in a natural clearing, but trees surround and almost obscure the edges of the building, and pop up through the roof as well; a nearby bank has a roof designed of about 35% trees rather than 100% asphalt. Fun and fascinating, but also thought-provoking architecture.