The relationship between theory and practice has always been tenuous and thus ambiguous or circumstantial at best. Just as Le Corbusier's radical juxtaposition of the automobile with the Parthenon, though provocative, did not lead to a specific prescription for design, the book It by Bit is about the work and ideas of Prescott Muir that demonstrate a similar beguiling and serendipitous relationship between a discursive theoretical interest and its implications for a contemporary practice in architecture. The book includes contributions from Reed Kroloff, the first in the national press to highlight Muir's work and an essay from the insightful, Juhani Pallasmaa. Rather than romancing and thus further exploiting the western landscape, Muir's work utilizes the desiccating scarcity of the high desert and its resistance to habitation to tease out the situational essence of the place. Projects such as the Rose Wagner Performing Arts Center, Kimball Visual Art Center, Bridge Housing, Swaner Nature Preserve, Pleasant Valley Library and Michigan Avenue Residence illustrate his fifth generational coming to grips with the west and investigative reporting from a certain position. The contributors Kroloff and Pallasmaa bracket the conversation with their understanding of first the place in the Western US and second the possibilities of Muir's approach. Muir in his essay, It by Bit illuminates the historical precedent for this practice, calibrated against the theoretical propositions of Carlos Ginzburg and Jurg Habermas. The book represents in varying levels of detail, the initial idea, holistically considered, drawings and photographs of the architecture with special attention to ones physical engagement with the work. AUTHOR: Prescott Muir, FAIA, Master of Science of Architecture and Building Design, Columbia University, is currently the Director of the School of Architecture, Graduate School of Architecture at the University of Utah. Juhani Pallasmaa is one of Finland's most distinguished architects and an architectural theorist. He is a practicing architect in Helsinki, and former Professor of Architecture at the Helsinki University of Technology. Reed Kroloff, director, is a former Architecture Critic for the Phoenix Newspaper, former Editor of Architecture Magazine, former Dean of the School of Architecture at Tulane University, current Director of the Cranbrook Academy of Art, and Fellow of the American Academy in Rome. ILLUSTRATIONS: 200 photographs m50 illustrations
