As synthetic materials and mutant and hybrid concoctions attain prominence in our daily lives—in our handheld devices, cooking utensils, vehicles, even things as simple as our shopping bags—the design and construction industries have instead re-embraced the familiar, the conventional—wood, which has regained prominence through innovations in engineering and construction methodologies. Technology is now commonly used—and often (though not always) affordably used—to cut, perforate, assemble, erect, and even fabricate materials in a manner not previously possible. Wood is one such material, and Timber in the City documents both the imaginings of those in the nascence of their education and practice and the executed work of design professionals at the leading edge of architecture. These designers, regardless of the duration of their immersion in the field, have imaginatively rethought the means by which we build and the methods by which we define space merely through differing deployments of a familiar building material.

This scathing satire and parable transposes the rise of Hitler to gangland Chicago and continues to have relevance wherever totalitarianism appears today.

The past decade has witnessed - especially among younger architects - a resurging interest in building with wood. The discourse has in no small measure been influenced by Konrad Wachmanns' classic Holzhausbau. And yet, this standard work (originally published in 1930) was out of print for many years. Now Holzhausbau is again available and appears here for the first time in an English language edition. Wachsmann demonstrates how new forms can be achieved when modern manufacturing processes are adapted to the traditional building material wood. He presents three totally different building techniques: the wood frame, the panel, and the log house methods and illustrates then their wide range of application possibilities by analysing plans and photographs of works of some of the century's most renowned architects. Two introductory essays enable the reader to take new hold of the book and a biographical sketch offers an impression of the times in which Wachsmann worked and lived.