OASE 120: Quality Settings examines the contested processes through which architectural quality is negotiated — between designers, institutions, commissions, and the political frameworks that increasingly shape built outcomes.
About This Book
This issue of the long-running architectural journal OASE turns its attention to the mechanisms by which the quality of public architecture is assessed, debated, and enforced. From state and city architects to urban quality commissions and design competitions, the editors probe how these institutional settings actually function — and what they reveal about the relationship between architectural culture and political economy. The conversation extends to the roles of mediators, experts, and stakeholders whose negotiations determine which ideas become built form. For architects engaged with procurement, policy, or the broader conditions of practice, this issue maps a territory that is rarely examined with this degree of critical precision.
Key Features
- 128 pages of critical essays and architectural discourse on quality assurance in public architecture
- Edited by Susan Holden, Maarten Liefooghe, Elsbeth Ronner, and Maarten Van Den Driessche
- Published by Nai010
What You'll Discover
- How state and city architects, quality commissions, and design competitions shape the standards applied to regional and urban planning
- The dynamics of negotiation between designers, institutional mediators, and other stakeholders in determining architectural outcomes
- The relationship between architectural quality discourse and the evolving frameworks of urban and infrastructural policy
- How political economy intersects with and conditions the very notion of quality in contemporary public architecture
About the Author
[Details available upon request]
Specifications
- Format: Softcover
- Pages: 128
- Dimensions: 170 x 240 mm
- Language: English
- ISBN: 9789462089105
- Publisher: Nai010
- Publication Date: [Details available upon request]
Perfect For: Architects, urban designers, and policy researchers engaged with architectural procurement, public design quality frameworks, and the institutional conditions of contemporary practice.