Permutations of Descriptive Geometry
(forthcoming book)

This book examines the history, theory and practice of parallel (orthographic) and central (perspective) projection. The objective is to provide the tools to imagine and represent with precision, dexterity, and virtuosity, a continually expanding repertoire of three-dimensional architectural form. The focus is twofold: first, to trace key historical developments of projection in architecture from the Renaissance through the Enlightenment into the twentieth century and second, to explain the comprehensive codification of Descriptive Geometry as defined by Gaspard Monge at the end of the eighteenth century and the means by which it is practiced. The projective systems of Girard Desargues and Monge are revealed to have altered contemporaneous relationships between masons, carpenters, engineers, mathematicians, cartographers, painters and architects.

The impact of the computer on architecture's perennial oscillation between the three and two dimensions of projection is reviewed. Important theoretical texts on geometry, representation, and historically situated examples of buildings wherein tectonic and formal configurations are explicitly linked to their projection, are examined.

A series of excursuses are dedicated to perspective and stereotomy. The proceeding sections, having provided a survey of the origins and fundamental bases of central projection and their effects on orthography, are developed further as variations on techniques are demonstrated and compared. In particular, the role of the distance point and the deft avoidance of the vanishing point are shown to be capable of linking the representation of perception and the description of objects, two tasks that are conventionally distinguished in architectural drawing but have been unwittingly, in many respects, mutually determined and transformed.

Contested Symmetries and Other Predicaments in Architecture,
Princeton Architectural Press, 2001

Architect Preston Scott Cohen combines the use of the most advanced digital modeling technologies with a fascination for 17th-century descriptive geometry. He uses familiar forms distorted by oblique projections and similar devices to create complex designs that challenge our preconceptions about the nature of order in architecture.

Contested Symmetries and Other Predicaments in Architecture features Cohen's intricate abstract geometries and lucidly describes both the mechanics and the theory behind their application. A wealth of projects, including the widely acclaimed Torus House, are represented through drawings, models, and computer-generated images.

Eric Owen Moss: The Box,
Princeton Architectural Press, 1995
Edited by Preston Scott Cohen and Brooke Hodge

The Box presents a detailed examination of a new building by architect Eric Owen Moss. Recently constructed in Culver City, California, this commercial office building, a large, tilted cube dramatically cantilevered on curved steel trusses from a reconfigured 1920s warehouse, has been described by New York Times architecture critic Herbert Muschamp as "a poem of precariousness."

The Box traces the design and construction of this remarkable building. It contains a portfolio of commissioned photographs by Andrew Bush, reproductions of Moss's conceptual sketches, as well as construction photographs and working drawings. It also includes a foreword by Mack Scogin, an interview with Moss by Scott Cohen, an essay by Peter G. Rowe, and a postscript by Brooke Hodge.

Preston Scott Cohen
1997

A series of pamphlets featuring texts, drawings, and photographs of eight projects: House on Longboat Key, House on Siesta Key, Cornered House, Muss House, Stereotomic Permutations, Stilicho Duplex, Patterns for Head Start Facilities, and Addition to the Prado. The projects from this series were previously published in various journals including Architectural Design, AA Files, Assemblage, Appendx, and The Harvard Architecture Review. They have been shown in numerous exhibitions including the 1985 and 1996 Venice Biennale, The Architectural League of New York, and The Architectural Association of London.

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