Phylogenesis: FAO's Ark – Foreign Office Architects

This book has been structured as a reflection on the work that FOA has produced during its first ten years of practice which have been spent in the development of an attitude and the construction of a technical arsenal for its implementation, through a series of competitions, speculative commissions, and lately some real projects. The outcome of these years is seen not just as a series of experiments, but as a consistent reservoir of architectural species to be proliferated, mutated and evolved in the years to come. With the spirit of a scientific classification, the genesis of the projects is identified as the evolution of a series of “phylums”, actualised—and simultaneously virtualised—in their application to the specific conditions where the projects take place. The book also includes a compilation of texts from several critics who analyse “external” topics that relate to different aspects of FOA’s discourse.