Against the Grain, features the work of three studios of the Louis I. Kahn Visiting Assistant Professors at Yale. Marcelo Spina and Georgina Huljich in Brutal Beauty: Piles, Monoliths and the Incongruous Whole explored ways to make mute icons through monolithic form so that the buildings were foreign to their context and difficult to read formally for a film center in Los Angeles. Dan Wood in Boulevard Triumphant: ecological infrastructure, architecture, modernization, and the image of the city a studio for a civic center in Gabon that challenged the architectural language in Africa beyond the cliches and nostalgia to create an architecture that embodied a new ambition. Lisa Gray and Alan Organschi in Timber Innovation District: new timber technologies and contemporary high performance wood architecture researched wood as a material for larger-scale projects for a site on New Haven s working waterfront, with projects ranging from bridges to manufacturing facilities and multi-family housing. Edited by Jackie Kow and Nina Rappaport the book is designed by MGMT.design and is distributed by Actar D."