Rooted in a discussion about the essential processes behind the ways in which our physical environment is actually created, this book explores how the firm of Brooks + Scarpa challenges conventional approaches to design today, to more fully enhance the human experience. 

Honored with the 2014 Smithsonian Cooper- Hewitt National Design Award, the firm is a multi-disciplinary practice that includes architecture, landscape architecture, planning, environmental design, materials research, graphic, furniture and interior design services that produces innovative, sustainable iconic buildings and urban environments.

James Steele is the author of more than 50 books and monographs, including Ecological Architecture: Critical History which examines ecological architecture over the past century, and The Architecture of Rasem Badran; Narratives on People and Place, a monograph on the award-winning Jordanian architect. He also wrote the Encyclopedia of Homes through World History which was published in June 2008. In it, his premise is that the house, throughout history, is the three-dimensional record of the cultures that built it and environmental factors that shaped it.   He is also the editor of the recently published Future Perfect: A History of the School of Architecture at the University of Southern California by the USC Guild Press.  His latest book is Contemporary Japanese Architecture: Tracing the Next Generation, published by Routledge & Kegan Paul.