Franca Trubiano is Associate Professor at the Weitzman School of Design of the University of Pennsylvania and a Registered Architect with l'Ordre des Architectes du Québec. She received graduate and post-graduate degrees from McGill University and a doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania. Previous publications include Women [Re]Build; Stories, Polemics, Futures (ORO, 2019) and Design and Construction of High-Performance Homes: Building Envelopes, Renewable Energies and Integrated Practice (Routledge Press 2013). She teaches and conducts research on forced labor in construction, emerging materials and human health, tectonic theories, integrated design, and architectural ecologies

This book explores significant and timely topics for both the design and construction of contemporary architecture by challenging its very practice of theory. It proposes an alternative definition of architectural theory; one that is able and willing to confront the many contradictions now faced by designers, architects, engineers, and builders who negotiate often overwhelming technological imperatives. It valorises the, as yet, untapped potential of thinking through building, preparing the foundations for a critical return to the art of making that is architecture .