Billie Faircloth, architect, educator, and research director at Philadelphia-based KieranTimberlake, has contributed an illuminating manuscript that details the historical, technical, and design-based emergence of plastics in architecture. Faircloth reminds us of the modest emergence of this thermally formed matter that was initially applied to small-scale objects, rather than large-scale environments. Derived from meticulous mining of approximately 200 articles published in architecture journals, such as the Architectural Review, Casabella, and House Beautiful, as well as trade sources including pamphlets, conference proceedings, books, and technical specifications, Plastics Now recounts the continually shifting narration of this alluring and ubiquitous material. Bringing to life over eighty years of history, Faircloth curates a series of overlapping histories of plastics, providing the reader with considerable breadth and depth of knowledge of this continually evolving narrative.

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