Seven Partly Underground Rooms and Buildings

The latest in the Pamphlet Architecture series, Seven Partly Underground Rooms and Buildings investigates unusual spaces in Italy, ranging from a honeycombed and mazelike series of rooms and stairs for midgets, to the dining chambers of a Pompeiian estate, to a half-buried sphere that serves as a place for ice storage. Ray reveals these quixotic spaces through constructed drawings, collaged photographs, and insightful text.

Mary-Ann Ray is a principal, with Robert Mangurian, of the architecture firm Studio Works in Los Angeles. A fellow of the American Academy in Rome, she is also a professor at the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc). Her projects have received various awards, including the Progressive Architecture Urban Design Award (1991). Her work also appears in "Re: American Dream".

Pamphlet Architecture, begun in 1978 by William Stout and Steven Holl, has become a popular venue for publishing the works and thoughts of a younger generation of architects. Small in scale, low in price, but large in impact, these books present and disseminate new and innovative theories.