The escalation in output was especially true for academic institutions. Schools of architecture put more titles into print than ever before. By subsidizing development and production, they enabled a wide range scholarly and experimental material to come onto the market that would have otherwise never seen the light of day. In the late 1990s we hit a high point in quantity. Architecture publications overall and U.S. school-sponsored print runs both hit record highs and have subsequently peaked (see, "Avery Index" and "American Publishing System"). The only thing that continues to rise is amount we charge. According to a study sponsored by the Association of Research Libraries, the Association of American Universities, and the Pew Higher Education Roundtable, the price tag for academic journals in general during the decade increased at a rate more than three times greater than that of the U.S. consumer price index and at twice the growth rate of health care costs. In other words, we supplied a ton of print at inflated prices. The cooling period we’re currently experiencing offers a moment to pause and wonder if publishing should remain the medium we primarily use to make knowledge publicly available. Publishing will not perish. But can it be sustained as the nearly exclusive way we transmit knowledge? For schools of architecture can publishing remain synonymous with meaningful communication?

The conventional wisdom is that mainstream broadcasting is up to its keister in content. To reach valued viewers, the ‘industry’ is narrowing the beam, customizing what it packages to target the interests of coveted demographic niches. Narrowcasting is what the field of architecture does well. But have we become so effective at addressing our core readers that we’ve saturated our market for ideas? A glance at the mainstream media world suggests that while we may be over-stocking our niche we are underselling ourselves in the open market.

Far and wide, images of architecture are being broadcast. Even in the medium of print, architecture circulates in the public domain more than any architecture publishing mogul has envisioned, or has at least dared to mention in print. New forms of architecture (logo, money shot, head shot, sound-bite, backdrop) are appearing everywhere. Advertisements, newspapers, big-time magazines, postage stamps, all make use of these forms for material and meaning. Architecture even appears prominently on money. For example, the euro is one of the highest circulating forms of printed matter to use images of architecture to substantiate its value (see, "Selling Money"). And as the presence of architecture increases in other media, as it hits the airwaves from public radio to MTV and it travels through digital environments, in what way will we be involved in the transmission, rhetorical management, and licensing of its use? Take Frank Gehry’s architecture as a case in point. A look at his work in this regard might warrant a re-coining of the term, "The Bilbao Effect," to something that refers to the identifiable imagery of his work, like simply, "The Gehry Effect." While "The Bilbao Effect" profits a city that commissions a building, "The Gehry Effect" refers to the benefit any authorized or unauthorized broadcaster receives from the use of an image of a Gehry building or its design facsimile. His buildings frequently appear in ads and music videos – all without compensation to the architect. Gehry’s work is so widely recognized, appreciated and freely broadcast that it has garnered the ultimate form of street respect, the Gehry re-dux. His projects are being re-mixed, his exteriors are being mirrored, sampled into interiors, scaled, and composed into new upbeat or down-tempo forms for the purposes of backdrop value (see, "The Two Franks"). As architecture gets broadcast, how can we influence, inspire and program the architecture of broadcasting?

The essays here explore how architects and designers are negotiating the expanded media exposure of their disciplines. For "Architecture Goes Public" David Stark and Monique Girard have documented architects’ media performances during the urban design process for the WTC site. They argue that the architect’s role as a director of presentations is a contemporary form of social and political demonstration. Laura Kurgan’s poster maps of the WTC site then and now serve as a practical public guide to the current state of development. Keller Easterling offers observations on broadcasting inside the field of architecture. In, "Only the Many," she considers architecture’s internal channels of communication, and in particular systems of collaboration developed by younger architects. In her introduction to C-LAB’s, "Timeline of the Timeline," Jeannie Kim comments on the field’s expertise at image production, describing our profession’s skill to parse and explain history through images. Finally, two contributions present broadcasting projects conducted at hybrid academic institutions. Felicity Scott identifies untapped political strategies in her study of Emilio Ambasz’s Universitas project. An allied "production agency," Universitas was to promote design as a strategic instrument ‘for action’ in social and media networks during the late 1960s and early 1970s. Nader Vossoughian interviews Bruce Mau on the Institute Without Boundaries, a contemporary academic enterprise that employs design toward a collective agenda that bridges ‘commerce, ecology and the social realm.’

Together, the features and the C-LAB entries offer news accounts of ways to communicate other than through "narrowcast" printing alone. By subsidizing the develop and production of broadcasting just as they sponsored publications during the 1990s, academic institutions can disseminate scholarly and experimental material to wide audience. In that sense, broadcasting is both the expansion of the current activity of the school into other forms of public communication, and an experiment to redefine the activities of architectural practice. By experimenting with a new medium of communication the academy can develop and define new agendas, new projects for the field. In other words, exploring a new medium can give inspiration to our chosen message. With that in mind, C-LAB will foster new techniques to design beyond the logo, money shot, head shot, etc., and to generate alternative images, structures, sequences, and programs.