For nearly two decades the architecture firm Weiss/Manfredi has practiced outside the traditional boundaries of architecture. Their work with complex sites and programs benefits from an interdisciplinary approach and a dynamic integration of architecture, art, infrastructure, and landscape design. Surface/Subsurface presents nine major projects that have been completed since their first monograph Site Specific, published in 2000.
Their design process-exemplary of the best contemporary architectural practices-reveals potential in subsurface conditions with the goal of generating an entirely new language for the surface. Projects include the Olympic Sculpture Park in Seattle, which wanders over a highway and train lines; the Museum of the Earth in Ithaca, New York, which manipulates the movement of water, cars, and visitors; and the Smith College Campus Center in Northampton, Massachusetts, which transforms the brick campus into a luminous terracotta surface. Each project is fully documented through project photographs, drawings, details, and texts.