Almost every industry in the world has benefited from the invention of plastics, but it is only in the recent past that they have begun to be appreciated as architectural materials in their own right. Plastics are quickly becoming one of the most ubiquitous materials in construction and have the potential to reshape the roles of architects and engineers, as well as the construction industry at large. As a building material, plastic allows for easily molded and formed shapes, leading toincreasingly malleable design processes. Despite being the most deeply engineered building materials today, plastics are still in the nascent stages of understanding in terms of their potential applications and uses. In Permanent Change an interdisciplinary group of architects, historians, theorists, and engineers collectively explore the past, present, and future possibilities of this innovative building material.

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Craig Buckley's profile page

Craig Buckley teaches at the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, where he is also Director of Print Publications. He is coeditor of the forthcoming volumes Clip/Stamp/Fold: The Radical Architecture of the Little Magazines 196X — 197X (ACTAR 2009) and Utopie: Texts and Projects 19681978 (Semiotext(e)/MIT Press). His writing and criticism has appeared in Grey Room, Modern Painters, Archplus, The Architect's Newspaper, An Architektur, and Parachute, amongst others. As a curator his recent exhibitions include the traveling project Clip/Stamp/Fold: The Radical Architecture of Little Magazines 196X — 197X, (cocurator), Several Ways Out (Oslo, 2005), and Adaptations (New York/Kassel, 2003).