Architecture as an Instruction-Based Art, authored by Farshid Moussavi highlights architecture as the grandest form of instruction-based art. The book explores the unique role of architects in contemporary practice and their role as distinct from all the specialists involved in the design process, while also recognizing construction coordination drawings as conceptual tools. The publication’s texts and drawings highlight the unique role of architects as conceptual thinkers who, like instruction-based artists, use detailed drawings and instructions to bring their visions to life. While the execution of these visions requires collaboration across many disciplines, architects must navigate a far more complex process, balancing a multitude of factors to synthesize a cohesive design. Through this work, readers and practitioners both appreciate the intricate and demanding nature of architectural work, celebrating it as a uniquely challenging form of art that requires both vision and precision.

Farshid Moussavi is an internationally acclaimed architect and professor in practice of architecture at Harvard University Graduate School of Design. Moussavi’s approach is characterized by an openness to change and a commitment to the intellectual and cultural life of architecture. Alongside leading her practice Farshid Moussavi Architecture (FMA), she lectures regularly at arts institutions and architecture schools worldwide. Moussavi was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 2018. She was elected a Royal Academician in 2015. Moussavi’s ideas and work are at the forefront of critical debate about architecture. Through the influential The Function of…, series of books, she has explored the theory and built history of ornament, form, and style. In 2022 she authored Architecture and Micropolitics (Park Books), seeking to dispel the misconceptions that architects are no longer central to the making of buildings and that design is a linear process.