Over the course of twenty years, acclaimed studio Miró Rivera Architects has produced an innovative, refined, and imaginative body of work—both modern and respectful of time-honored building traditions—that embodies the particularities of place and blurs the line between art and architecture. The firm’s diverse practice weaves together a commitment to craftsmanship with a honed sense of materiality and space to create structures at once elegant, controlled, and pleasant to inhabit. In all, Miró Rivera Architects has won more than one hundred design awards and represented American architecture at exhibitions worldwide.

The first from the firm, this volume provides critical insight into the studio’s creative process through texts, 95 drawings, and 231 photographs, exploring two decades of work that has helped bring Texas architecture onto the international stage. Featuring essays by Michael Sorkin, Nina Rappaport, Juan Luis de las Rivas Sanz, and Carlos Jiménez—prominent thinkers in urban design and architecture—and new images by renowned photographers Iwan Baan and Sebastian Schutyser, this book examines Miró Rivera’s approach to Austin as a “landscape city” and situates the firm’s work in a global context related to concepts of nature, urbanism, sustainability, and history.

"Juan Miró and Miguel Rivera, along with other writers, tell about their ideas and design journeys in page after page that foreground gorgeous photography and helpful floor plans...I could spend hours paging through this ravishing book." - Austin American Statesman

"A thoughtfully conceived volume, 'Building a New Arcadia' offers a terrific overview of Miró Rivera’s oeuvre that also, by highlighting examples, widens an understanding of urbanism in Texas, and elsewhere." - Sightlines

"What sets this monograph apart from others is the documentation, especially the drawings...These drawings, which must have been specially made for the book, highlight particular assemblies worthy of the reader's attention and, in the case of exploded axons, peel away the facades and other layers to reveal the spaces within. These twenty buildings spanning twenty years make me eager to see what the next twenty years hold for Miró Rivers Architects." - A Daily Dose of Architecture