CASE is a new series on architecture and urban design published in collaboration with Harvard University's Graduate School of Design (GSD). By linking different spheres of knowledge and expertise, CASE aims to reinstate architecture and urban design as synthetic practices that respond effectively to changes in a rapidly developing global economy.

Individual volumes focus on case studies--buildings as well as urban-scale projects--viewed from the perspectives of architects, planners, developers, economists, engineers, sociologists, historians, and theorists. Collectively the authors provide a comprehensive reading of a given project's design, construction, and impact.

During the second half of the twentieth century, highly specialized subdisciplines and professions emerged within architecture. The subsequent autonomy of such fields as design, theory, programming, building technology, media studies, urban sociology, and environmental studies, among others, was deemed necessary in light of the growing complexity of architecture's built, cultural, and professional terms. Within our contemporary context, however, the autonomy of these subdisciplines has become increasingly specious. The very isolation of such subdisciplinary spheres, once a virtue, has begun to limit our ability to affect change. Against this balkanization, new cultural and socioeconomic conditions are urgently demanding that architecture assert a synthetic outlook.

CASE embraces synthesis by slicing across architecture's different spheres of knowledge. It invites experts from different domains to reflect collectively on individual projects. Each book in the series focuses on a specific case study-building, landscape, and/or urban development-by compressing multiple perspectives into single, intense volumes. Accordingly, each case is selected for its multifaceted qualities and its relevance to contemporary disciplinary and professional debates.

CASE proffers an intra disciplinary platform for Studying and practicing architecture. It exposes the catalytic ties between architecture's forms and procedures, and ultimately, it expands the scope of theoretical inquiry to shape a more synthetic ambition for architecture.