KAPLAN MCLAUGHLIN DIAZ ARCHITECTURE BOOK

It is 5 p.m. on a warm early-autumn Thursday in San Francisco. Two dozen Kaplan McLaughlin Diaz staffers are gathered in the firm's main conference room on the high-ceilinged fourth floor in their converted foot-of-Telegraph-Hill coffee warehouse with its panoramic view of the Bay Bridge and beyond. The conference table has been replaced by chairs for KMD's weekly design review.

Since the firm's founding in 1963, these design reviews have played a significant part in solidifying KMD's core philosophy of innovation and individuality.

Reflecting KMD's reputation for provocative research and design, the meeting is often tumultuous; participants are invited to probe, test and find better solutions to design problems. The result is an exuberant and often sharp-edged architectural conversation. At KMD, the status quo is seen as a hindrance to the belief that it is the uniquely creative solution that is interesting, sought after and important.

Throughout KMD's evolution, design reviews have contributed key ideas to important projects in a diverse range; retail, health care, academic, hotel, government, offices, housing, and renovation. Design reviews have also furthered the involvement of young associates with particular flashes of insight or interest in the extraordinarily wide variety of projects the firm has undertaken in geographical areas as diverse as the United States, Japan, Mexico, Malaysia, Indonesia, China, France, and elsewhere.

In the end, however, everything devolves to a fundamental belief that great architecture is less a matter of pure style-although the reader of this book will come across one stylish building after another-than of function, need and context. If there is a common denominator in every design, photograph and drawing in this book it is this: A building can only be great when it is designed to assist its users, please its neighbor, suit its context, serve its community and, perhaps most importantly, create a unique sense of place. That is, as they say, a mighty tall order. An order clearly and ably filled by KMD