With a title that refers to the development of ideas through one's own initiative, Marble Fairbanks: Bootstrapping is an examination of the techniques of pattern and performance in the speculative and built work of the New York architecture firm. This book approaches those organizational issues with pictorial and written documentation of three recent architectural projects: Marble Fairbanks' proposal for the Fashion Institute of Technology Campus Extension in New York, Housing Ecologies, an urban housing scheme, and their award-winning entry for the Chicago Public Schools Competition. The complexity of these issues is also examined in a thought-provoking conversation with Marble Fairbanks and Reinhold Martin, editor of the journal Grey Room and author of The Organizational Complex. Bootstrapping concludes with architect Michael Bell's essay on subjectivity, urbanism and architecture in Marble Fairbanks' work, and is the latest addition to the prestigious Michigan Architecture Papers publication series of Charles and Ray Eames lectures given by noted contemporary architects.