"This important collection of works grounds the debate on the capacity of a design to effect change as it performs assigned tasks. The convergence of views in the same volume provides a stimulating tempest of disagreements and contradictions, and therein lays its value. Here, performativity is a function of interdependencies, integration, interaction and responsiveness between tangible and intangible forces and entities. In some essays, the focus is on the natural, the human and the built. In others, it is on the world we create in all of its dimensions, or on abandoning a human-centric view altogether for an interconnected and interdependent systems perspective."Carmina Sánchez-del-Valle, Professor of Architecture, Hampton University, Virginia