Complex Order was born of a necessity to build a conversation around the work of spmb [São Paulo-Manitoba], in dialogue with other practitioners, artists, architects, theoreticians, and critics, mapping out the regions of understanding of what they do.

spmb often works in the public realm, “in response” to the circumstances and challenges presented. Complex Order generates a public space of sorts, stretching the discussion of public space itself—its poetics and politics, its actions and representations.

Rather than follow the tradition of the monograph, centred in the production of the individual artist, Complex Order rethinks the artist’s book, investigating the relationships of spmb’s work within a larger context. Complex Order presents a collection of spmb’s own works and texts, alongside projects and writings conceived by other artists and architects, generating a network of relationships around common ideas.

Eduardo Aquino and Karen Shanski are partners in spmb [São Paulo-Manitoba], BLDG architecture office, and professors at the Faculty of Architecture, University of Manitoba (Winnipeg). Created in 1998 as a collaborative practice in art, architecture, and design, spmb questions disciplinary traditions through strategies that include design, research, teaching, projects in urban spaces, publishing, and any other means to instigate the public realm. spmb searches for situations where architecture presents itself as an ongoing process of unfolding—where scale, context and materiality are dealt broadly to respond specifically to each found situation. spmb is committed to creating a new understanding of the practice of art/architecture, at once technologically adventurous, politically critical, and socially responsible. As a hybrid collaboration, spmb seeks to subvert the instrumental view of architecture and the disciplinary categorization of art.

Contributors: Floris Alkemade [OMA], Ricardo Basbaum, Jean-Claude Bernardet, Adrian Blackwell, Tony Brown, Catherine Crowston, Detanico Lain, Herb Enns, Robert Enright, Cliff Eyland, Walter Firmo, Jochen Gerz, Erik Göngrich, Arni Haraldsson, Gilles Hébert, Stephen Horne, Philip Jodidio, Anthony Kiendl, Charles Kirschbaum, Rodney LaTourelle, Marie-Paule Macdonald, Rubens Mano, Fernando de Mello Franco, Paulo Mendes da Rocha, Ligia Nobre, Sami Rintala, Ed Ruscha, Karin Sander, Katerina Šedá, Bob Wolfenson, and Theodore Zeldin.