Into the Great Wide Open

Into the Great Wide Open is a book about a search for a form of practice in architecture. Practice here is understood both as a critical reflection of a status quo and its history, as well as forms of (active) intervention through designing and planning. The book is a fragmentary snapshot of an on going, constantly developing and altering process to find a place in the production and reflection of our built environment, and implicitly disputes the question: “What is to be done?”
Andreas Rumpfhuber, Francesco Marullo, Maria Giudici, Jon Goodbun, Elke Krasny, Matthias Moroder, Dubravka Sekulic, Christian Teckert, __ [Blankspace]
Behind the publisher dpr-barcelona is an architectural research practice that has three main activities. Publishing, criticism and curating exhibitions. Their work explores how architecture as a discipline reacts in the intersection with politics, technology, economy and social sense. Dpr books transcend conventional architectural publications and could be considered as dealing with the architecture of the future, attempting to create a live exchange of knowledge and theory. This new book, Into the Great Wide Open, personifies the ideals and ambitions of the publishing house. It is a fragmentary snapshot of an ongoing, constantly developing and altering process to find a place in the production and reflection of our built environment. It is a book about a search for a form of `practice` in architecture. ` Practice` in this instance is understood to be both a critical reflection of a status quo and its history, as well as the potential establishment of forms of active intervention through design and planning. The book revolves around the subjects of contemporary architecture, its problems and its symptoms, implicitly disputing the consistent question `What is to be done?` and implies through its title, and a narrative that is intrinsic of our contemporary liberal society, that there is a world full of chances and opportunities for the architects of today and tomorrow to seize.