19.5 x 23.5 cm

ISBN 978-3-03860-224-8

Höweler + Yoon Architecture, founded in 2001 and based in Boston, gained early praise for ephemeral and interactive public projects. Today, the studio is recognized for striking works that combine conceptual imagination and technological sophistication. Höweler + Yoon’s impressive body of work has expanded the scope of design beyond traditional disciplinary boundaries and has won them numerous national and international awards.

Verify in Field is Höweler + Yoon’s second book. Its title derives from a notational convention on architectural drawings to indicate that the information is subject to unknown conditions in the field. For both disciplinary and contractual reasons, the instruments of design— drawings, models, and prototypes—operate on the world at a distance. Techniques of prototyping, measurement, feedback, negotiation, and intervention inform the diverse output of the studio. The book highlights verification as an integral part of the design process and demonstrates it as a productive tool to test ideas and act on the world.

Verify in Field features recent designs by Höweler + Yoon, including such projects as the Memorial to Enslaved Laborers at the University of Virginia; a floating outdoor classroom in Philadelphia; the MIT Museum; and a pedestrian bridge in Shanghai’s Expo Park. ­Essays by Eric Höweler and J. Meejin Yoon examine the discipline’s pressing questions as they relate to verification, uncertainty, and agency, addressing topics such as designing the public realm, the construction detail, and social media. These themes are further explored in conversations with collaborators, historians, and theorists: Adam Greeneld, Nader Tehrani, Kate Orff, Daniel Barber, and Ana Miljacki.

Eric Höweler and J. Meejin Yoon are architects and designers and cofounding principals of Boston-based Höweler + Yoon Architecture. Höweler is also associate professor of architecture at Harvard Graduate School of Design, Yoon is professor at and the Gale and Ira Drukier Dean of Cornell University’s College of Architecture, Art, and Planning.