Consisting of extensive documentation of fifty projects and twelve texts, MASS X is a multigraphic volume organized around the concept of architecture's role as a medium of experimentation that takes its place within the field of all contemporary media. If the marketplaces of global life are conventionally thought to be limited by the minimization of risks of all kinds (cultural, economic, social, etc.), and if architecture labors under this duress as a medium whose expense, weight, and intended permanence make it the most risk averse medium of all, then questions are raised as to how the attributes (new formalisms, new experiences, unwanted functions, etc) of an experimental architecture can redefine both the logic of capital and also the logic of its own system of production. MASS X documents on the one hand the emergence of NMDA's building practice, and on the other, the continuing trajectory of cultural analysis began in Gyroscopic Horizons (Princeton Architectural Pres, 1999).

Neil M. Denari is an architect and principal of Neil M. Denari Architects (NMDA) in Los Angeles. He received his BArch from the University of Houston (1980) and an MArch from Harvard University (1982). From 1982 to 1988, he lived and worked in New York, first working for James Stewart Polshek, then independently. He began exhibiting his work at Storefront in 1984. Denari is a professor of architecture at UCLA and has been a visiting professor at Columbia University, Harvard University, University of California, Berkeley, and Princeton University, among other schools. Among his awards are the Los Angeles AIA Gold Medal (2011), inclusion in the Interior Design Hall of Fame (2010), the USA Artists Fellowship (2009), and the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award (2008). He has written two books, Interrupted Projections (TOTO, 1996) and Gyroscopic Horizons (Princeton, 1999). Denari's work with NMDA has been published and exhibited widely and he has given more than 230 lectures around the world.