ECSTACITY
"Map of Ecstacity" (detail) From A Guide to Ecstacity by Nigel Coates Published by Princeton Architectural Press "Monograph, manifesto, travelog, history, autobiography, novel—A Guide to Ecstacity is a bit of all of these things. The brainchild of British architectural visionary Nigel Coates, it asks us to reimagine the city as a dynamic hybrid of inventive design and cross-cultural political empowerment. Produced in the spirit of Rem Koolhaas's S,M,L,XL, it is a palimpsest of the real and the hypothetical, with fragments of seven cities from around the world—Cairo, London, Mumbai, New York, Rio, Rome, and Tokyo—woven together into one multifaceted urban fabric. In addition to extensive documentation of architecture and product design by Coates's own groundbreaking firm—Branson Coates Architecture—A Guide to Ecstacity features projects by Norman Foster, Future Systems, Frank Gehry, Zaha Hadid, Rem Koolhaas, Daniel Libeskind, Philippe Starck, and Bernard Tschumi. Presented in a remarkable package created by the design firm Why Not Associates in close collaboration with Coates, these varied works form a fascinating kaleidoscope of metropolitan culture and suggest how the city of tomorrow might be transformed by a proactive architectural community that embraces the challenge of designing for a multicultural world. Nigel Coates is a founder and principal of London's ranson Coates Architecture."