Based on the eponymous symposium and exhibition, this book considers the role of architecture in a culture shaped by the excessive manufacture and assuagement of desire. Featuring contributions from a diverse group of architects and scholars, Fulfilled: Architecture, Excess, and Desire examines the architecture of fulfillment organized around three themes: logistical, material, and cultural fulfillment. “Logistical Fulfillment,” the first section of the book, presents designs informed by global networks and distribution environments. Furthering these arguments, “Material Fulfillment” explores the use of materials as elements of global capital, finite resources and aesthetic artifacts. And finally, “Cultural Fulfillment” examines the architecture of desire through the proliferation of designed objects from spoons to cities. Through essays and images of contemporary design projects, this book highlights the physical aspects of material production and the ineffable satisfaction of personal desire, proposing that design is a necessary intangible in an increasingly tangible world.

Ashley Bigham is codirector of Outpost Office and an assistant professor at the Knowlton School of Architecture. She has been a Fulbright Fellow in Ukraine, a MacDowell Fellow, and a Walter B. Sanders Fellow at the University of Michigan’s Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning. At The Ohio State University, she is an affiliate faculty member of the Center for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. In addition, she is a collaborative partner and visiting faculty at the Kharkiv School of Architecture in Ukraine. Bigham’s creative work and writing engage architecture through a study of consumption and domesticity, focusing on architecture’s entanglement with the production and fulfillment of consumer desire. She is the editor of Fulfilled: Architecture, Excess, and Desire (Applied Research + Design, 2022). Her writing and work has appeared in publications such as MAS Context, Dialectic, The Architect’s Newspaper, Metropolis, Mark, CLOG, and Surface.