In this contribution to the ongoing debates over theorizing state power, the author draws on her fieldwork in Mexico to examine the ways in which local agrarian communities negotiate with the state and with local bureaucracies in an apparently hopeless round of mismanagement and corruption - which yet contains a self-correcting stability. While the ethnography focuses on a particular community at a time of transition, the author draws out the wider implications in ways that should be of interest not only to anthropologists concerned with Mexican ethnography, but also to students of political anthropology, more generally, and development studies.

Presenting their new and recent projects, Lake|Flato Architects demonstrate the inexhaustible potential of the modern house to enter into a dialogue with nature. Lake|Flato Architects, based in San Antonio and Austin, believe first and foremost that architecture should be rooted in its particular place, responding in a meaningful way to the natural or built environment. Using local materials and partnering with the best local craftsmen, Lake|Flato seek to create buildings that are tactile and modern, environmentally responsible and authentic, artful and crafted. Now more than thirty years since its founding, the firm has grown along with the range and complexity of its projects, yet it still considers the desire to build in partnership with the land to be an approach that remains valid and increasingly resonant. Lake|Flato’s first projects were houses, and these projects excite the firm still. By exploring the intimate relationship between family, place, and building, Lake|Flato create unique living environments that possess a compelling authenticity and beauty.

Few design firms are as celebrated as San Antonio–based Lake|Flato Architects, the winners of more than three hundred international, national, and regional awards, including the American Institute of Architects’ Firm of the Year Award. This book features the firm’s large-scale pursuits: arresting, airy, and sustainable public buildings. Featuring more than three hundred stunning color photographs, Lake|Flato explores sixteen recent projects from across the United States. The images—of Mississippi’s rustic-modern and ecologically resilient Gulf Coast Research Laboratory, the crystalline Witte Museum, the sinuous Confluence Park structures in San Antonio, and other spaces—are grouped by themes reflecting the designers’ ethos: nature, place, craft, and restraint. Architects Kengo Kuma, David Miller, Warren Byrd, Stefanos Polyzoides, Vivian Loftness, and Lance Hosey provide guest commentary, delving into the works and themes and connecting them to Lake|Flato’s larger mission of creating a meaningful architecture that brings people into contact with the natural environment while facilitating culture and community.

Though much of Robert Marino's work takes the form of additions to existing houses, the stunning rhythmic structure of these addenda infuses new life and energy into the existing structures. Trained both as an architect and an engineer, Marino is a master builder with an acute sense of space and structure. His distinctive use of materials, such as timber-framed or boxed elements as masonry components or lightweight steel bars, is a signature element in his work. This beautiful monograph explores his work, from residential additions to conversion of large commercial buildings.

For Arthur Andersson and Chris Wise, the fundamental elements that give buildings meaning are found in nature.Imbuing day-to-day activities with poetry and awe, their designs address both pragmatic needs and the psychological yearning for refuge and contemplation, centering and escape, joy and comfort. Their work is best experienced through the senses. Tactility, expressed through an eloquence of craft, the use of textured materials, and the logical design of structural systems, gives their buildings a rightness within the landscape. In their hands, daylight becomes a building material. Small wall apertures, three-sided dormers, clerestories, and other details grab, bend, and thread sunlight from one end of their houses to the other. Full of light and atmosphere, the houses are the physical embodiment of the great Charles Moore's influential tenet that architecture is about enhancing a sense of place. Natural Houses presents seven of the Austin, Texas-based firm's exquisitely crafted projects. Precise and cool, with forms often derived from the American vernacular of barns and cottages, these are painstakingly crafted houses made from regionally appropriate and aesthetically timeless materials. Natural Houses presents a range of sites and residences—from a small cabin in the woods to a multibuilding camp. Sited on a cliff, the House Above Lake Austin uses terraces to descend its steeply hilly site. The building's simple materials celebrate thesite and climate not by drawing attention to themselves, but by blending in. The stone foundation is similarly tied to the natural stone of the mountain. Smooth plaster walls above the stone foundation appear to have been chiseled from the rock itself. In a deceptively simple boathouse the walls fold down to become impromptu diving platforms. Exceptional photography captures the light and atmosphere of each project setting and illustrates how the firm rigorously expresses the design concept through detailing and construction. An introduction by Rick Sundberg of Olson Sundberg Kundig Allen Architects and essays by Jen Renzi and Frederick Steiner chart the firm's evolution and influences.

Corrugated Iron: Building on the Frontier.