The sources of architecture’s conceptual premises and intents are endless. This collection of drawings and essays by James Wines—American artist, architect, and founder of SITE, an environmental arts organization chartered in New York City in 1970—spans over fifty years of work, including many previously unpublished pieces, and advocates for a broad interpretation of the meanings that buildings and spaces convey. During his time in Italy in the 1960s, for example, he observed that historic structures employed sophisticated iconography to communicate and connect with an ever-evolving public. In the post-truth era, however, a stable repertoire of universally recognized signs and symbols is lacking. By identifying messages that extend beyond the conventional architectural categories of form, space, structure, and function, Wines suggests architects have the opportunity to create a richer, more communicative, and ultimately more humane environment. Through this critical, exploratory, and advocacy-based collection, Wines showcases the diversity of ideas that enhance the communicative messages delivered by buildings and public spaces. Ultimately, Wines contextualizes his work under a basic “economy of means” objective, including the merits of creating public works that involve modest scale, recycled materials, contextually related narratives, adaptive reuse of existing structures, integration with the natural environment, communicative messages in the public domain, and combined visual and physical levels of participation. Drawing on nearly a century of life experience, Wines posits that the challenge for art and architecture today is to infuse public structures and spaces with social, political, environmental, and psychological meaning.

James Wines is the founder of SITE, an environmental arts organization chartered in New York City in 1970. His visual art, architecture, landscape and public space designs are based on a response to surrounding contexts. He has given more than 800 eight hundred lectures in 59 countries and contributed essays to books and magazines in the United States, Europe, and Asia. In 2013, he received the National Design Award for Lifetime Achievement. In 1987, DE-ARCHITECTURE was released by Rizzoli International and, in 2000, Taschen Verlag published Green Architecture. During the past two decades, 22 monographic books and museum catalogues have explored Wines’ work for SITE. He has designed and built more than 150 projects for private and municipal clients in 11 countries. Winner of 25 art and design awards, including the 1995 Chrysler Award for Design Innovation, he is also the recipient of fellowships and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, Kress Foundation, American Academy in Rome, Guggenheim Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, Graham Foundation, and Ford Foundation.

Suzan Wines is an architect and principal of I-Beam Design, an award-winning woman-owned architecture firm. She is also executive director and senior architect at SITE.  Wines recently coedited Transient Spaces (The City College of New York, 2019) with Loukia Tsafoulia and Samantha Ong and has served as New York correspondent to Domus magazine. She has taught at The Cooper Union, Pratt Institute, Parsons School of Design, and is adjunct associate professor at the Bernard and Anne Spitzer School of Architecture, The City College of New York. I-Beam’s projects have been featured in numerous international books and publications and exhibited at the Milan Architecture Triennale; the Venice Biennale; Salone del Mobile, Milan; Prince Charles’ Royal Gardens, London; Grade European Center for Culture, Belgrade; Boston Architectural Center; Storefront for Art and Architecture, New York; and AIA New York’s Center for Architecture.

Phillip Denny is an architectural historian and editor based in New York City. He received his PhD in architectural history at Harvard University, where he was a Frederick Sheldon Traveling Fellow. He holds master’s degrees in architecture and architectural history from Princeton and Harvard Universities. His writing on architecture and design has appeared in Volume, Metropolis, Harvard Design Magazine, The New York Times, Architect's Newspaper, and elsewhere.