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Being and Making Architecture: Ecological Thinking Across Scales book cover

1st Edition

Being and Making Architecture Ecological Thinking Across Scales

By Ophélia Mantz Copyright 2027
212 Pages 70 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

Far removed from techno-heroic narratives, Being and Making Architecture demonstrates how ecological consciousness in architecture is built "within reach." The themes organizing its content—matter, garden, workshop, kitchen, pedagogy, and collective practices—unfold across various scales through a transdisciplinary lens, linking materials and domestic spaces to planetary ecological systems.... Read more

List of figures

Acknowledgements

Introduction: From Being to Making Architecture

1. From Matter to Society: The Art of Doing More with Less

2. From the Garden to the Forest: Praise for Temporal and Technical Ecologies

3. From the Workshop to the City: The Construction of a Design Thinker

4. From the Kitchen to the Territory: The Metaphysics of Flows

5. From Aula to Landscapes: Matterscapes for a Material Ethics

6. From the Flâneur to the Ecological Class: On Idling, Cartography, and Commoning as Modes of Resistance

Last Journey: Ecological Thinking across Scales

Index

Biography

Ophélia Mantz is co-principal of Z4A Architects, and Assistant Professor and Director of the Material Research Collaborative at the Gerald D. Hines College of Architecture and Design, University of Houston. She holds an Architect DPLG from the École Nationale Supérieure d'Architecture de Paris-Belleville and a Master in Bioclimatic Architecture and Sustainability from the Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Madrid. Her research on the construction of ecological thinking in architecture and the city has appeared in JAE, Assembly, Materia Arquitectura, SAJ, PPA, ARQ, and RA, among others. Together with Rafael Beneytez-Duran, she leads Z4Z4/Z4A Architects, an architecture and design practice based in Houston/Madrid. Z4A/Z4Z4 understands architecture at the intersection of disciplines and scales. Their practice work received the 2025 and 2023 Texas Society of Architects Award, the ACSA Design Faculty Award Honorable Mention in 2026 and Winner in 2019, the S.ARC H Award in 2018, and was a finalist for the Architectural Review Award in 2016.

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