Morphosis: the sequence or manner of development or change in an organism or any of its parts;
Random House Compact Unabridged Dictionary, New York, 1996
Passe-partout
Thom Mayne set up Morphosis in 1972 in an attempt to break free from the limitations of traditional forms and materials and to overcome the hampering modern - postmodern dualism. Some twenty years and several projects later, Jeffrey Kipnis, in a critical review of the work of Morphosis published in 1993 in a special monograph edition of the Spanish magazine, Croquis, explained its rationale in the following way:
…Some critics have treated Morphosis’s deviations from canonic modernism primarily as a stylistic diversion, and there can be little doubt that the attention its work receives derives in large part from the fact that it is unabashedly seductive. I believe, however, that criticism underestimates the extent to which, within the aesthetics of its work, a political argument underwrites its claim to authenticity. (...)