Goat rodeo: practicing built environments

“Architecture” seems to be failing everywhere but its extremities. Goat Rodeo: Practicing Built Environments is a 110-page pamphlet comprised of 54 critical vignettes written by eight distinguished contributors—Phillip G. Bernstein, Carol Burns, Joseph G. Burns, Renee Cheng, Carrie Sturts Dossick, Billie Faircloth, Kiel Moe, and Michael J. Monti. This august group met periodically over five years to explore the nature of the problems facing allied professions in the building industry. Midway through their efforts to structure a joint writing enterprise, they chanced upon “The Goat Rodeo Sessions,” a Grammy Award-winning album produced by Yo Yo Ma, in collaboration with bluegrass masters Stuart Duncan, Edgar Meyer, and Chris Thile. The writing group immediately seized on both the concept and name of Ma and company’s project, defined in the Urban Dictionary as “a chaotic situation, often one that involves …