Adhocism, expanded and updated edition The Case for Improvisation

When this book first appeared in 1972, it was part of the spirit that would define anew architecture and design era--a new way of thinking ready to move beyond the purist doctrines andformal models of modernism. Charles Jencks and Nathan Silver's book was a manifesto for a generationthat took pleasure in doing things ad hoc, using materials at hand to solve real-world problems. Theimplications were subversive. Turned-off citizens of the 1970s immediately adopted the book as a DIYguide. The word "adhocism" entered the vocabulary, the concept of adhocism became part ofthe designer's toolkit, and Adhocism became a cult classic. Now Adhocism is available again, with new texts by Jencks and Silver reflecting onthe past forty years of adhocism and new illustrations demonstrating adhocism's continuingrelevance. Adhocism has always been around. (Think Robinson Crusoe, making a raft and then a shelterfrom the wreck of his ship.) As a design principle, adhocism starts with everyday improvisations: abottle as a candleholder, a dictionary as a doorstop, a tractor seat on wheels as a dining roomchair. But it is also an undeveloped force within the way we approach almost every activity, fromplay to architecture to city planning to political revolution. Engagingly written, filled withpictures and examples from areas as diverse as auto mechanics and biology, Adhocism urges us to pay less attention to the rulebook and more to the realprinciple of how we actually do things. It declares that problems are not necessarily solved in agenius's "eureka!" moment but by trial and error, adjustment and readjustment.

Charles Jencks is an architectural theorist, landscape architect, and designer living in Scotland.

Nathan Silver is an architect, writer, and former architecture school head living in London. He is the author of Lost New York, nominated for the National Book Award.