Publication

  • Bracket 4 [Takes Action]
    Neeraj Bhatia and Mason White
    Editors
    Pier Vittorio Aureli, Vishaan Chakrabarti, Belinda Tato, and Yoshiharu Tsukamoto
    Contributors
    Applied Research + Design Publishing, 2020
  • GRANTEE
    InfraNet Lab
    GRANT YEAR
    2014

Matthew Mazzotta, Open House, 2013, York, Alabama. Courtesy of the artist.

Bracket is a book series that highlights emerging critical issues at the juncture of architecture, environment, and digital culture. Seeking new voices and design talent, Bracket is structured around an open call for entries. Conceived as an almanac, the series looks at emerging thematics in our global age that are shaping the built environment in radically significant, yet often unexpected ways. Bracket 4: Takes Action examines design work and theoretical papers that offer contemporary models of spatial design that are conscious of their public intent and actively engaged in sociopolitical conditions. Takes Action investigates how design at several scales and within differing disciplines can catalyze a public, as well as forums for that public to act.

Neeraj Bhatia is an urban designer and licensed architect whose work resides at the intersection of politics, infrastructure, and urbanism. He is codirector of the non-profit research collective InfraNet Lab; founder of the design practice the Open Workshop; and assistant professor of architecture at the California College of the Arts, where he is coordinator of the Urban Agency. He is coeditor of the books The Petropolis of Tomorrow, Bracket [Goes Soft], and Arium: Weather + Architecture, as well as coauthor of Pamphlet Architecture 30: Coupling—Strategies for Infrastructural Opportunism.

Mason White is a founding partner of Lateral Office, and a director of InfraNet Lab. Mason is associate professor of the Daniels Faculty at the University of Toronto. His design work and research has received numerous awards and international recognition in publications and exhibitions. Recently, Lateral Office represented Canada at the 2014 Venice Biennale in Architecture.

Editorial board for Bracket 4 [Takes Action]:

Pier Vittorio Aureli studied at the Istituto Universitario di Architettura di Venezia and later at the Berlage Institute in Rottedam. Aureli currently teaches at the AA School of Architecture in London and is visiting professor at Yale University. Along with Martino Tattara, Aureli leads the practice Dogma. He is the author of many essays and several books, including The Project of Autonomy and The Possibility of an Absolute Architecture.

Vishaan Chakrabarti is an architect, urbanist, and author based in New York. Chakrabarti is principal at SHoP Architects, as well as Holliday Professor and the director of CURE, the Center for Urban Real Estate, at Columbia University's Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation. In addition, Chakrabarti was the inaugural Jaquelin T. Robertson Visiting Professor in Architecture at the University of Virginia in 2009. Chakrabarti most recently authored A Country of Cities: A Manifesto for Urban America.

Adam Greenfield is founder and managing director of Urbanscale, and a passionate advocate for the human-centered design of technological systems. Between 2008 and 2010, he was Nokia's head of design direction for service and user interface design; earlier in the decade, he had worked as lead information architect for the Tokyo office of Internet consultancy Razorfish. He is the author of Everyware: The Dawning Age of Ubiquitous Computing (2006), Urban Computing and Its Discontents (2007, with Mark Shepard), and the forthcoming The City is Here for You to Use. In 2014, he was named the inaugural Senior Urban Fellow at LSE Cities in London.

Paul Petrunia is the founder/publisher of Archinect.com (1997); the president/creative director at Extra Medium, Inc., an LA-based web design/development studio; and also acts as a consultant for the design and production of web sites, specializing in those related to architecture and design. Petrunia studied arts and sciences at the University of Victoria, British Columbia. He then moved on to study architecture at the University of Oregon and the Southern California Institute of Architecture.

Belinda Tato is a cofounder of ecosistema urbano, a Madrid-based group of architects and urban designers operating within the fields of urbanism, architecture, engineering, and sociology. Since 2000, ecosistema urbano has received more than thirty awards in national and international architecture design competitions. Tato also teaches at Harvard University's Graduate School of Design, where she serves as design critic in urban planning and design.

Yoshiharu Tsukamoto is cofounder of the Tokyo-based architecture firm Atelier Bow-Wow. The practice's interest lies in diverse fields ranging from architectural design to urban research and the creation of public artworks, which are produced, based on the theory called "behaviorology." Tsukamoto is also associate professor in the Graduate School of Architecture and Building Engineering at Tokyo Institute of Technology.

InfraNet Lab, founded in 2008, is a research collective probing the spatial byproducts of contemporary resource logistics. The laboratory posits the argument that a body of unique built works continues to arise out of the complex negotiation of, and competition for, biotic and abiotic resources. InfraNet Lab is directed by Neeraj Bhatia, Maya Przybylski, Lola Sheppard, and Mason White.