Against the Grain, features the work of three studios of the Louis I. Kahn Visiting Assistant Professors at Yale. Marcelo Spina and Georgina Huljich in "Brutal Beauty: Piles, Monoliths and the Incongruous Whole" explored ways to make mute icons through monolithic form so that the buildings were foreign to their context and difficult to read formally for a film center in Los Angeles. Dan Wood in "Boulevard Triumphant: ecological infrastructure, architecture, modernization, and the image of the city" a studio for a civic center in Gabon that challenged the architectural language in Africa beyond the clichés and nostalgia to create an architecture that embodied a new ambition. Lisa Gray and Alan Organschi in "Timber Innovation District: new timber technologies and contemporary high performance wood architecture" researched wood as a material for larger-scale projects for a site on New Haven's working waterfront, with projects ranging from bridges to manufacturing facilities and multi-family housing.