With support from the Carnegie Institute and the Heinz Architectural Center, Rodolfo Machado and Rodolphe el-Khoury present a collection of contemporary projects which share what is best described as a strategy of large, singular shapes: monoliths. Monolithic Architecture does not attempt to become a defining "ism", "pre" or "post," but more likely picks-up the issue at a fork in the road of modernism.

The reader is introduced to ideas governing shape, surface qualities, scale, and contrast that implement strategies toward designing innovative architectural solutions. Based upon intrinsic aesthetic principles, these strategies are not "new." Many of the projects in the book clearly "stand upon the shoulders" of other Architects and Artists, but are strong steps forward from the current language of fragmentation.

Jean Nouvel's New National Theater in Tokyo and Rem Koolhaas' Bibliothe'que Nationale de France (both unbuilt) seem to most clearly illustrate the strong defining qualities of this collection. These two works offer a timeless vault-like enigma of things valued and things stored away. Both possess an almost scaleless vast presence that defies any architectural reading yet makes architectural place--a kind of anchor around which the city could swirl. It is within this simple volume that one must then explore to rediscover, to find and learn. A complex labyrinth of floating interior spaces stands in sharp contrast to the exterior volume, a feature only hinted to by evening light, as the translucent surface dissolves the monolith.

Entry to the library reveals complex zones and spaces, and it is the range of this architectural space that seduces. To be amongst these assembled volumes would be akin to standing in a studio of giant Brancusi sculptures. Nouvel's theater, in contrast, reveals spaces that are more reminiscent of the exterior mass: soft volumes floating inside a mother form. It is the 'ether' space that offers the complexity here. Mertins' argument seems to suggest that an architecture which finds its base in principles of science and art can better preserve the elements of enigma and surprise that its users require. To this end, Detlef Mertins' writings are rich in examples that extract the clues of aesthetic origin.

Philip Starck constructed the surface of his Baron Vert as if it had been cut by a knife. Appearing to bend in reaction to the acting stimulus, Starck's project evokes Lucio Fontana's slicing of tautly stretched painted canvas--releasing the space within the canvas, and conveying the violence of an attempt to delimit a painting in space.

The idea that these artistic works are translatable into an Architectural form is an important lesson today. Mertins reminds us that broader types of exploration will offer us richer building solutions. The challenge these architects have assumed is clear, though some points of the critique go unaddressed: in favor of writings that "read into the projects," rather than observations that are read "from the projects." This criticism, however, does not diminish an outstanding effort to highlight a body of work that shares a remarkably inventive aesthetic base.

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