William Whyte would be proud that talents like Mason White and Lola Sheppard of Lateral Office are taking on the largest interconnected problems in our discipline. In many respects Coupling defines an architectural vision (or one architectural vision) of the 21st century, merging an expanded view of the architects role with the increased scope and opportunities that new data provides design practice.

The forward by Waldheim and the article by Easterling provide Coupling's theoretical parenthood. Waldheim describes an engaging shifted development of architecture, one that opens the minutia of design to landscapes of data, systems, and an expanded discipline. Easterlings ever thoughtful explanation of the business worlds merging of the built environment into the "parameters of global urbanism," codifies the methods for Coupling.

The book itself is an exploration of architecture and its largest and smallest scale. Lateral Office seems at times too facile with the shift. I'm left asking about community. Their last project, a redevelopment of a runway in Iceland, provides the opportunities for their next steps. The porous 'bloc typologies' are undercooked and underexplained. This however would be where I see opportunities to balance Lateral's notion of expanding our discipline with the classical problem of largescale architecture; housing. 

Coupling has four precise essays that focus what at times has been an unfocused blurry argument. It has a number of architecturally expceptional, graphically exciting and well researched design proposals that are dramatically linked to the most contemporary thinking.

In a time when Daniel Burnham's addage of "make no small plans" seems almost naive in the wake of economic collapse, Coupling argues that going big or going home is the only way forward in a new landscape of information driven architecture.