Testing to Failure: Design and Research in MIT's Department of Architecture

Testing to Failure contains a wide selection of research and work from the MIT Department of Architecture, produced between 2009 and 2011. Including student work, the work of professors' own practices, contributions from visiting critics, transcripts from the MIT150 Celebration Symposia, and more, what is presented in this book is a sequence of 'forums,' knots of discussion where the various threads that run through the department reach asymptotically towards definition. Chapter headings include Strategy; Extra Large; Numerics; Global; Archive; Survival; Misuse; and Support. Inspecting our work to find truths is a project of fiction, and it results in a kind of architectural hypochondria. Are we this? Are we that? Is this an infection? What's this bug that we can't shake? But better a hypochondria of productivity, of curiosity, and of possibility than a shortsighted clamoring for false unity.