Perspecta 44

Architecture exists in the public sphere and is the product of collective work andknowledge. Yet the defining boundaries of the discipline are often contested. Architects can andoften must embody a spectrum of characters in their practice: politician, artist, physicist,entrepreneur. Likewise, a building is the nexus of multifaceted economies, legislations, andinformation systems. Since "architecture" has become a metonym for increasinglydistributed persons and practices, how--and for whom--do we establish itsdomain?

To trace the evolving meanings of the term "domain" is to tracethe changing ways that space has been defined, accessed, and constructed: from domain as a territoryof private ownership or legal control; to the egalitarian promise of public domain; to an Internetsite situated within an infinitely dispersed global network. Each of these shifts poses dramaticchanges to how we conceive of boundaries, physically and conceptually. But as we insist on stakingboundaries, we are impelled to search for their limits--however remote ornebulous.

This issue of Perspecta--the oldest and most distinguishedstudent-edited architectural journal in America--offers an initial expedition into the contestedspaces of architecture's domains. Perspecta 44's multidisciplinary scope, with contributors rangingfrom legal scholars to software engineers, asserts a new set of coordinates for mapping the terms ofarchitectural production. By embracing the inherent complexities of Domain, Perspecta 44 seeks toovercome the architect's conventional repertoire--Site, Program, and Client--and propose insteadField, Protocol, and User as an expanded vocabulary for spatial practice, not without boundaries butrather abiding by the shifting logics and contours of public space.

contributors:BekaFilms, R. Howard Bloch, Craig Buckley, Mario Carpo, common room, Peggy Deamer, Neil Denari,Forum for Urban Design, Sophie Houdart, Sam Jacob, Office Kersten Geers David Van Severen, BrunoLatour, Lawrence Lessig, Richard Meier, Ralitza Petit, Nasser Rabbat, Casey Reas and Ben Fry et al.Michael Rock, C. Dana Tomlin, Stuart Wrede.

Tala Gharagozlou, David Sadighian, and Ryan Welch are graduates of the Yale School of Architecture.