By Peter Wilson

The title is that of an early essay describing two cities whose ground surface had momentarily become paradigmatic. Mass in the Age of Media is the theme around which many texts thematically hinge, the status of architecture —the physical object— in relation to post digital perception. This selection of writings s pans from the avant guard culture of the 1970's AA school —the Indian Summer of the hand drawn in which he was a leading exponent— to more recent architectural tropes such as 'the diagram' or 'the evaporating city'. With sideways glances in the direction of Bachelard, lifestyle modernism in the southern hemispher and the Picturesque, this panoramic anthology expounds an empirical narrative style that also characterizes the much published architecture of BOLLES+WILSON.