This winter term, Taubman College celebrated the release of Middle_Out, a book edited by Jason Young, associate professor of architecture, that honors the work of the architecture faculty at Taubman College. The book is dedicated to Robin Wilson Carrier and Gordon R. Carrier, B.S.’70, M.Arch.’81. The compilation of Middle_Out is simultaneously a testament to the strength of the faculty and an affirmation of the bond between Taubman College members present and past.

Young describes the book and its goals in his preface to the book:

“The Architecture Program at the University of Michigan is defined, in part, by the creative work done by design faculty through private practice. Inadequate on its own to fully account for the intensity of the school, these practices nevertheless pressurize the collective conversations within the curriculum. [Middle_Out] intends to celebrate and disseminate the design work of our faculty, emanating outward from the middle of Taubman College, of the discipline of architecture, of the country. Much of the work published here speaks to recent contexts of economy and geography in southeastern Michigan through small-scale, design+build projects. Simultaneously, there is a strong collection of projects that openly game with digital organization, fabrication, and assembly as it relates to projects of all scales. Pacing these two strands in the book is a third that exemplifies an intellectual preoccupation with representational methods and diverse conceptions of making. Together, these three strands offer a robust approximation of the near now within the discipline of architecture. The design of the book purposely casts the work of diverse and mostly independent practices together across its pages, allowing for a varied range of work and approaches to manifest itself and in doing so reveal consistencies among projects. Organized in horizontal bands, the projects intermingle and suggest new, diagonal readings of a collectivity that might otherwise remain ambient within the college. In this sense, the book claims a geography for what otherwise might dissipate into the day-in, day-out interactions between faculty and students. – Jason Young, editor”