If a crisis is imminent, we need strong policies to cope with it. If the world is facing a crisis of debt, a crisis of truth, a crisis of sprawl and a crisis of purpose, what can design do? This issue of Volume is your survival kit to take responsability and curb the lie that gives a dream to the millions but will be their predicament when they really need a home.
See how this issue of Volume can help you craft the agenda for Ubiquitous China, Covering: the Confucian-Taoist nexus, Utopianism, the new empire, Google.cn, heritage & preservation, CCTV, publishing industry, education, urban practice, architectural design, architects as businessmen, criticism, chaos as control, and much more (not necessarily in hierarchical order). In China everywhere…
In the previous two issues we emphasized how power takes shape and acquires form. How it can be recognized. We’re now taking it one step further in our Volume research campaign on the architecture of (a countervailing) power. This time we will show you how power is using architecture not simply to express itself, but to organize itself. Power structures and relations think architecturally in order to be successful. And if you hope to challenge these structures and relations, you better do the same. A true Macchiavelli is always an architect.
The Architecture of Power, Part 2 The previous issue of the magazine explored how ‘Power is in the details’. This issue we are widening our perspective and focusing on building schemes. Meanwhile people keep asking us questions…
If the astounding care with which our best designers can detail the way a strip of glass kisses a slab of stone is applied to thinking about the geometries of power, new roles can emerge, new risks that need to be taken. Naivete is no longer an attractive option. To ignore power is to side with it.
Guilt has been effectively used to control and manipulate the masses. But it can also be the start of a change for the better: awareness, concern, action. Engagement and guilt are never far apart. Engagement is sublimated guilt. We can build on guilt, but can we build with guilt? Is guilt a material to design with?
This unique Volume bag was conceptualized by Daniel van der Velden and Maureen Mooren. Though originally conceived as T-shirts, we couldn't resist re-publishing this text now that it is again so actual.
Explore the vast archive of Volume and its predecessor Archis. All the issues since 1993, their covers, full tables of content and a growing amount of articles are online.
