The triumphant return of a book that gave us permission to throw out the rulebook, in activities ranging from play to architecture to revolution. When this book first appeared in 1972, it was part of the spirit that would define a new architecture and design era-a new way of thinking ready to move beyond the purist doctrines and formal models of modernism. Charles Jencks and Nathan Silver's book was a manifesto for a generation that took pleasure in doing things ad hoc, using materials at hand to solve real-world problems. The implications were subversive. Turned-off citizens of the 1970s immediately adopted the book as a DIY guide. The word "adhocism" entered the vocabulary, the concept of adhocism became part of the designer's toolkit, and Adhocism became a cult classic. Now Adhocism is available again, with new texts by Jencks and Silver reflecting on the past forty years of adhocism and new illustrations demonstrating adhocism's continuing relevance. Adhocism has always been around. (Think Robinson Crusoe, making a raft and then a shelter from the wreck of his ship.) As a design principle, adhocism starts with everyday improvisations: a bottle as a candleholder, a dictionary as a doorstop, a tractor seat on wheels as a dining room chair. But it is also an undeveloped force within the way we approach almost every activity, from play to architecture to city planning to political revolution. Engagingly written, filled with pictures and examples from areas as diverse as auto mechanics and biology, Adhocism urges us to pay less attention to the rulebook and more to the real principle of how we actually do things. It declares that problems are not necessarily solved in a genius's "eureka!" moment but by trial and error, adjustment and readjustment.

Imagine having the most wonderful mother, the most caring father, a perfect house and a best friend who is always there for you and never lets you down. Imagine that this world turns upside down, your mother dies, your father remarries into another family and your new sisters bully you. Welcome to the life of Rachel Albinian. Join us in this musical adventure of Love, Truth and Reality.

This is the story of how France's famed cultural icon, one of the most controversial and public buildings of the century, was designed and built. Nathan Silver's detailed account of the Centre Pompidou - still called Beaubourg by its designers, and by Parisians - takes the form of a "building biography." Not just a book about a building but also about the making of a building, this means of inquiry is a holistic reading of the intricate process of creating architecture in contemporary society that brings to light its human story, encompassing its stylistic, historical, technical and social aspects. Beaubourg was unlike anything that had ever been built. A realization of ideals and aspirations of an architectural generation, a rethinking of fundamental precepts of design and construction, it took nothing for granted, and it has since become one of the most popular tourist attractions in Europe - flaunting new principles with which other architects have had to come to terms. The text's discovery of this building is never separated from the process, politics, crises and controversies of its making. Based on interviews conducted at the time with all of the key players, Silver presents a behind-the-scenes narrative of design process and decision making that he weighs with bold critical scrutiny. Silver explores the saga of the designers' battles, over a period of five and a half years, to maintain control and build within budget. He starts from the beginning when the British/Italian/Anglo-Danish design team, including architects Richard Rogers and Renzo Piano and engineers Peter Rice and Ted Happold of Ove Arup, took a long-shot gamble on an international competition. Silver then details the design team's conception of a building with flexible plans and adjustable elevations, describes the development of a structural system as inventive as that of the Eiffel Tower and equally as public in its urban rhetoric, and concludes with the triumph of Beaubourg's popular and critical reception.