Divinity, Creativity, Complexity

The Center for American Architecture and Design at the University of Texas at Austin (http://soa.utexas.edu/CAAD) is proud to announce the 15th volume of its award-winning book series CENTER: Architecture and Design in America.
CENTER 15: DIVINITY CREATIVITY COMPLEXITY, edited and introduced by Michael Benedikt, has chapters by Gordon Kaufman, William Saunders, John Haught, Charles Jencks, Michael Benedikt, Michael Ruse, Richard Becherer, Thomas Fisher, Tom Spector, Wiliam Richards, Sheryl Tucker de Vasquez, Jin Baek, Alvaro Malo, and Stanley Tigerman. For more information and to order, visit http://soa.utexas.edu/CAAD/publications (click on cover image) orhttp://www.amazon.com/CENTER-15-Divinity-Creativity-Complexity/dp/093495111X/

"Architects are rarely invited into the theological debate the way scientists often and artists sometimes are, this despite the obvious analogies between design and Design. Even when they are designing places of worship, the quality of their own faith is given no special place. Nor are the theological presuppositions of what they are doing brought out when designing secular spaces with the ambition to provide (if only here and there) somehow-transcendent experiences. The idea behind this fifteenth volume of CENTER is to think freshly about religion, theology, evolution, and everyday life through the lens of architecture as an art and as a practice. With chapters from academic and practicing architects, biologists, historians, and theologians, CENTER 15 opens new avenues of debate and discussion about the meaning of religious faith in the 21st century, especially in the light of evolution, complexity theory, and creation/creativity with a small and large "C." For not only architects, but also film-makers, writers, composers, painters, scientists, institution-builders, entrepreneurs, and inventors do what they do with similar if not the same constraints, in the knowledge that their creativity has a mysterious source and the hope that it serves a higher purpose.
CENTER 15: Divinity Creativity Complexity sheds new light on the process."