In its latest issue, Conditioning, the groundbreaking and visually engaging architecture "boogazine" (It's a book and a magazine!) Verb investigates the ramifications of architectural signification. As our ability to control the production of form and the creation of environments begin to parallel that of natural processes, architecture is not only conceived as a platform for the development of human activity, but more and more as its generator and possibly also its limiting framework. To investigate these bracing notions, Verb spans the globe, exploring the entertainment recreations of a Las Vegas casino and the hermetic communities of Biosphere 2 and Grimshaw's Eden project as well as the experimental environments of Enric Ruiz-Geli (Villa Nurbs) and Makoto Yokomizo's soap bubble inspired Tomihiro Hoshino Museum, a square containing 20-odd cylindrical spaces. As in other industries ranging from computer applications to car manufacturing, mass-customized theming in architecture infiltrates the way buildings are conceived and used. If this trend is inevitably linked to commercial success, how will that affect the discipline? The thoughtful, cutting-edge Verb Conditioning will keep you on your architectural toes.

Parametric and algorithmic design are two of the fastest emerging, most radical technologies reshaping architecture today. This book presents six independent practices that explore current applications of parametric and algorithmic design techniques in architectural production. If the first generation of digital modeling programs allowed designers to conceive new forms and processes, a new breed of digital techniques is being discussed to control and realize these forms. How are these techniques affecting architectural practice and what potentials do they offer ? This is a compilation of projects from leading practitioners across the fields of parametric and algorithmic design. A compelling, multi-perspective debate on the future of design. Featuring: Mutsuro Sasaki, AGU (Arup), Aranda-Lasch, Michael Meredith (mos), P.art (AKT), Designtoproduction, with a conversation between Sanford Kwinter and Jason Payne.

"What is fascinating is the inability to separate the real from the digital, because they already form part of the same nature." So we said in the last issue of Verb. Here we explore how this fusion takes place. Buildings and cities grow, are transformed, and dissolve. How can this evolution be generated, controlled, enhanced or imagined? Is our environment programmable? How does the fusion of natural and artificial matter produce new architectural organisms, new environments, new natures? How does technology animate space, and how do users and programs animate matter? The fifth volume of Actar's boogazine looks for a new definition of the organic.Projects by: Terraswarm, Aranda/Lasch, Shohei Matsukawa / 000studio, Kram/Weisshaar, Michael Meredith, mos, Foster + Partners, George L. Legendre, IJP Corporation, PTW Architects + Arup Australia + CSCEC, ON-A, Hitoshi Abe, Manuel Gausa Asociados, Vicente Guallart, Mick Pearce, Yusuke Obuchi, R&Sie(n), Cristina Diaz, AMID, INI, ONL...

The third issue of Verb boogazine is about the changing status of the city in the electronic era. Connection looks at the impact of electronic technology on new forms of urban reality, which are generated by new phenomena that affect all aspects of space and the experience of living in these new urbanisms. Faced with an increased blurring of the distinctions between the physical and the informational dimension of cities, we explore the relation between virtual connections - the effect of digital networks on the spaces and uses of the city - and the persistent role of architecture in creating physical connections between people, programs and uses. Featured works and texts: OMA, Atelier Bow-Wow, AUDC, PLOT. Featuring the Palast der Republik story in Berlin, Chip City by Shinobu Hashimoto and Rients Dijkstra, and Sim City, which contrasts the real city (the product of virtual processes) with virtual cities (created by real people, via computer-based simulations).

The shift from ''modern'' to digital systems of design and production opens up a material work to a much more profound interaction between author and audience. This change represents a new stage in the development of the relationship that a work--or, in another sense, a message--establishes between the author--or sender--and the reader--or receiver. From the classical work, with its "a priori," essentialist model of appreciation, to the modernist object, with its subjective model of aesthetics, to the emerging cybernetic model, the interface between author and ''user'' has become closer, more direct, and more open. The first issue of the new "boogazine" Verb looks closely at these questions regarding the present relationship between information and authorship in cultural practice, asking: how does the increasing complicity between author and audience affect architectural practice? And how can architecture be conceived more fluidly in terms of information? Handsomely designed and richly illustrated, this combination of book and magazine is the first installment in what is sure to be a groundbreaking journey through architecture and design.