Architectural institutions are reviewing modes of learning and practice of architecture to reflect the changing professional landscape. Schools confront the ever-acute tensions between critical thinking and the market. The training of architects who will likely be working in different contexts requires new frames of reference and paradigms. What competencies should the practitioner of architecture possess to bridge technical and managerial specializations in light of competitiveness and nuances of culture? How do the practices and performances of the profession take into account the hybrids and collaborations that define the broad scope of projects? The dilemma of competency lies in the rigorous study of the conditions and processes of architecture, configuring and situating skills and capabilities.

A magickal grimoire documenting, for the first time anywhere, practical methods for obtaining full initiation into the vampire community.

A collection of stories for young Mormon women illustrating the values of faith, divine nature, individual worth, knowledge, choice and accountability, good works, and integrity.

Reforms in Myanmar (formerly Burma) have eased restrictions on citizens' political activities. Yet for most Burmese, Ardeth Maung Thawnghmung shows, eking out a living from day to day leaves little time for civic engagement. Citizens have coped with extreme hardship through great resourcefulness. But by making bad situations more tolerable in the short term, these coping strategies may hinder the emergence of the democratic values needed to sustain the country's transition to a more open political environment. Thawnghmung conducted in-depth interviews and surveys of 372 individuals from all walks of life and across geographical locations in Myanmar between 2008 and 2015. To frame her analysis, she provides context from countries with comparable political and economic situations. Her findings will be welcomed by political scientists and policy analysts, as well by journalists and humanitarian activists looking for substantive, reliable information about everyday life in a country that remains largely in the shadows.

Architecture is an inward looking discipline. Its history conveys the norms of the discipline to an audience composed mostly of architects, who are familiar with the work of their predecessors-from whom they learnt, or for whom they worked. As such, architecture singularises the multiple processes through which space is produced, excluding difference in the pursuit of coherent narratives to sustain its authority, and does so mainly through the figure of the architect. For a long time now, critics have shown how that figure is principally male. However, little has been said about the fact that the figure of the architect is also white; a racial classification that refers not only to epidermal characteristics, but to their national origin, education, and in most cases their class affiliation.

Becoming a vampire was easier than she had ever dreamed. Ardeth Alexander surrendered her mortal life in a night of despair and desire—initiated into a new existence by the five-hundred-year-old vampire, Dimitri Rozokov. Living as a vampire was more complicated than she had ever expected. Fleeing Toronto, Ardeth and Rozokov settle in the tourist town of Banff, Alberta. While she tests her new strength against the mountains by climbing, Rozokov returns to astronomy, the science of his youth. Together they hunt the dark reaches of the park, preying on the animals they find there, upholding an unspoken agreement not to taste human blood. Yet all their activity cannot disguise their restlessness and soon their fragile happiness is shattered by bitter conflict and inevitable betrayal. Angry and unhappy, Ardeth returns to Toronto to try to recatpure the life she believed she had left behind forever. Understanding what it means to be a vampire would prove harder than she had ever imagined. What Ardeth and Rozokov do not know is that they are being hunted. A member of the yakuza, the Japanese underworld, is on their trail, seeking the fulfillment of his most secret ambition. So is his employer, Sademori Fujiwara—a vampire whose extraordinary history is revealed to Rozokov through his diary. From the seductive nights in the imperial court of the eleventh century to the horror and tragedy of the darkest days of the twentieth, Fujiwara’s story is a tale of poetry and violence, of delight and despair. In his life, Ardeth and Rozokov see the promise of the answers to the questions of love, mortality and morality that have torn them apart. Fujiwara’s power draws them back together to face those questions again—but the price that they all have to pay for the answers will be higher than any of them expected. Blood and Chrysanthemums is a tantalizing tale of modern horror, with a twist of Japanese gothic, certain to leave an indelible mark on the imagination.

The discussion of architecture, with all the visibility of its objects, tends to downplay the invisible flows of money that sustain its production. It is as if the dependency on economic forces is too much to face up to; better then to celebrate the catalytic genius of the architectural hero and then the glorious outputs, and try to ignore everything else that goes on in between. This issue intends to probe the in-between space of the operations of architecture, examining the intersection of the projects of architecture with economies, and with it their associated social and political contexts and implications. It is only through a better understanding of the way that contemporary economics cut across architectural operations that one can learn to deal with these dominant forces in a resistive and transformational manner.