306090 opening up architectural discourse from every angle

306090, Inc. is an independent non-profit arts stewardship organization. Since its founding in 2001, 306090 has worked to support architect professionals and students by organizing publications and events geared towards fostering a community of ideas and exchange within the field of design. Exploring contemporary issues in architecture “from every angle,” 306090 is dedicated to opening up architectural discourse by publishing design projects, critical essays, and historic inquiries across a range of places, people and practices. Comprised of new work and untested ideas from around the world, 306090's books are an arena of open criticism, addressing contemporary conditions in political, technological and artistic disciplines on the basis of how architecture can address them.

Founded in 2001 by two architecture students and published twice yearly, 306090's Architecture Journal was an independent series of volumes dedicated to promoting the work and the interests of students of architecture and young designers. The Architecture Journal addresses themes, generating productive dialogue amongst geographically and ideologically diverse students and practitioners.

See Architectural Journal index 2001-2006

We may undeline, for instance, number 6:

"306090 06: Shifting Infrastructures that focuses on the influence of communication systems, data and material distribution, and other new technologies on existing physical and cultural infrastructures. The volume includes work from AUDC, Daniella Fabricius, Gnuform, Emily Eastman, Designlab, and others."

From 2006 there is a new sèrie substituting the Journal:  306090s books

From 306090s most recent books:  the 13th volume  Sustain and Develop,  investigates the contradictory yet potentially productive tension between our drive to develop and our growing knowledge and emerging concern that such unregulated growth is eroding the natural ecology in which we live. We are continually confronted with the knowledge of our own destructive potential and the unknown unquantifiable revenge that nature will undoubtedly seek, while the wonders of modern life gleam on the horizon for a world population of whom for the first time over half live in cities. 

How can architects confront either of these courses within the paradox that any mark in the ground will inevitably disrupt a natural ecology?

306090 13 re-examines the premise of the first definition defining sustainable development as “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” Is such a position tenable? Is the standard it implies sufficient to guide our work? How can developing countries undergoing rapid urbanization processes, particularly in Asia, be brought actively into the debate? How can developed countries with their own post-industrial landscapes and shrinking populations adapt to a redefined global economy?

Rather than take a one-sided position 306090 13 provides a forum to investigate sustainability and development and their relationships to one another from every angle. Eschewing established definitions and polemics in favor of active investigations into current development models, ecological strategies, site specific examples of the tension between development and sustainability, and the philosophical and theoretical context underpinning both terms.  

The series' fourteenth book, Making A Case, features radically new and varied ideas about the future of the North American home.

To reprise this idea today seems appropriate: it is important to ask what the house of our time should look like, do and say — but in a time of continuing crisis, addressing the contemporary house is complex. Faced with post-urban flight, the need to encourage density, a new focus on food production close to home, a glut of cheap, unused housing in some areas while homelessness persists in others, we are looking at shifts in the American way of life (both those already underway as well as those not yet begun but required for long-term survival) so drastic that they can only suggest a new and different future for the North American house.