"Trace elements" are minerals that exist in minute quantities necessary for the growth and development of cells. Exposure to excessive quantities is toxic, but without them our bodies would atrophy. They are the crystalline structures that support life. Over the past decade, Aranda\Lasch has focused obsessively on these structures as a form of both organization and expression for architecture. Their projects explore the interplay between rule-based systems and human ritual. In scale, this work lies somewhere between furniture and building, so that what is built, drawn, and projected gives human measure to procedural thinking. Published on the occasion of the studio's exhibition "Meeting the Clouds Halfway" at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) Tucson, this book is a collection of recent explorations into modularity, craft, pattern, rhythm, material, and memory. Trace Elements documents a wide-ranging and yet sharply focused body of work from an office dedicated both to intellectual exploration and the honing of a distinct design sensibility.

Situated at the interaction of art, architecture, music, mathematics, cosmology and science, Matthew Ritchie's "The Morning Line" is a 33-foot high sound pavilion, constructed in aluminum and conceived in part as a successor to Edgard Varese and Le Corbusier's pavilion for the 1958 World's Fair, and Fritz Bornemann's Expo '70 Pavilion. Designed in collaboration with New York-based architects Aranda Lasch, the Arup Advanced Geometry Unit and the Music Research Centre of York University, the structure was inspired by the cosmological theories of Paul Steinhardt and Neil Turok, and offered a sonic environment in which newly commissioned works by well-known musicians were performed. This survey of the project includes a book containing Todd Eberle's photographs of the structure, a poster, a newspaper and a red vinyl LP with music by contemporary electronica musicians such as Alexej Borisov, Tommi Gronlund, Petteri Nisunen, Christian Fennesz, Carsten Nicolai, Zsolt Olejnik, Finnbogi Petursson, Franz Pomassl, Terre Thaemlitz and Zavoloka.