Cycles aims to track and forecast a paradigm shift currently underway across design disciplines; one which marks a significant departure from the ever-dichotomous depiction of landscape architecture as a dynamic series of regenerative processes and architecture as a static accumulation of constructive phases. New formats for interdependency between organicism and syntheticism have emerged since the establishment of landscape urbanist theory, in part due to advancements in visualization of ephemeral conditions, in addition to a greater degree of dexterity within computational environments. Cycles examines the architectural implications of concepts such as temporality, dynamicism, process-orientation, recurrence, and differentiated repetition—concepts well-developed under the auspices of landscape urbanism and computation, but not nearly wrung of their potential in the context of architectural design. Cycles frames a spectrum of perspectives with a collection of twenty-five essays and a miscellany of visual artifacts that offer transdisciplinary interpretations of ideas presented by authors.

William O'Brien Jr. is assistant professor of architecture at the MIT School of Architecture and Planning and is principal of an independent design practice in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He was recently named one of this year's winners of the Architectural League Prize for Young Architects and Designers. Last year his practice was a finalist for the MoMA/ PS1 Young Architects Program and his work was recognized as an inaugural winner of the Design Biennial Boston Award. O'Brien has taught previously at the University of California, Berkeley, as a Bernard Maybeck Fellow, and was the LeFevre Emerging Practitioner Fellow at the Ohio State University. He was also assistant professor at the University of Texas at Austin where he taught theory seminars and design studios. He has been named a MacDowell Fellow by the MacDowell Colony in New Hampshire. Recent publications include essays in ACADIA re:Form and Log.