a note from the editors

[viewbook http://archis.viewbook.com/xml/archis/8044/6af3f0044fcbf7]
V13 introduces a new format for Volume. Slightly smaller in size and thicker, it connects better to the direction Volume is exploring: research based, experimental and proactive. Easier to hold and handle, improved readability. Still, it won’t be just service and silence. You still can expect the odd insert and a completely different issue every now and then. But for the time being this is the new outfit. Check out and enjoy.

Our field, and perhaps every field, is defined by ambition. to know ourselves we have to know ambition. But ambition is far from simple. It is never straightforward, never the singular drive it appears to be. Rather, it is a set of interacting forces in which often the means are mistaken for ends. This issue of Volume on Ambition offers a preliminary map of what has become a landscape of misguided purpose.

by Matthew Stadler

How does ‘architectural journalism’ extend ‘architectural intelligence’ beyond ‘bricks and mortar’? In one way only, a way that is common to all writing: that is, by structuring space.

All writing structures space. (This is certainly a metaphorical relation, but only insofar as any description of a non-material process is metaphorical. Thoughts fly and love is shy and hate burns and writing shapes space.) There is no distortion that intercedes, for me, between my activity as a writer and the shaping of space that follows immediately from it.

Given this fact, I use many of the same tools an architect uses. I draw spatial plans for my novels. These drawings are indispensable parts of the compositional process. I also test the tolerances and capacities of my materials (words) and then adjust my spatial plans to suit these pragmatic limits. I build for use, constructing my texts in anticipation of readers whose inhabitation of my written space will permanently alter its meanings and function. I often work on commission from a client, as now. Clients, calling themselves ‘editors,’ pressure me to address their needs, and I do. The social skills of an architect � is this a kind of ‘architectural intelligence?’ � are employed whenever I write.

You also ask how ‘journalism, criticism and other forms of reflection can anticipate, contribute and facilitate ”the going beyond” of architecture.’ This is a much larger, more muddled question. Are journalism and criticism ‘forms of reflection?’ And what other forms does reflection take? What does it mean to ‘anticipate, contribute and facilitate?’ I can only set these questions aside and try to answer the general sense of your query, as follows: By writing, we can test architectural possibilities that might be too expensive or dangerous or reviled to test materially.

Writing will be the primary ground on which ‘the going beyond’ of architecture transpires because it is architecture, unfettered by the limitations and costs of the material world.

By Jeffrey Inaba

Maybe it is different in your part of the world, but in the US there is currently an agitation shortage. There is not much work that incites discord with the prevalent views held by the profession. There are few agitators, or figures who rattle the bones of our institutions by challenging established values. And there are few that feel agitated, or irritated, about this as the overall state of today’s situation.

The scarcity of agitation is agitating. In lectures, panel discussions, and academic presentations, there is little impulse to express a view that is unsettling. Not a lot is being said that would indicate disagreement even among peers that embrace clearly differing positions. Constructive commentary and supportive engagement are replacing contention. Painstaking effort is made to arrive at complementary views rather than to spark conflict. The lack of agitation has given way to a state of calm. Overall, one can sense the growing belief that insight is best gained through balanced discussion. Even in schools with reputations for promoting lively disagreements and articulating polarizing views, there’s a feeling that all is quiet on the western front.

This shortage might be because agitation has a bad rap. It has the negative connotation, meaning to incite disruption for ill-founded reasons. An agitator is taken to be a troublemaker, someone who stirs things up to upset the status quo as an end in itself. Or it is used to refer to someone who initiates upheaval for a flawed cause. These reductive usages belie the fact that agitation is more complicated than that. For example, even in its most common sense in reference to political agitation it is misused. ‘Agitator’ is simplistically applied in order to label dissidents who articulate opposing views as nothing more than unruly instigators. Others abuse the term while at the same time renouncing it. As Paul Preissner points out in this issue of Volume, there are leaders in power who actively combat agitation at home that then agitate foreign situations specifically by exercising disruptive force in the name of stability. In light of its current shortage and simplistic use, C-Lab has put together material to demonstrate the depth of possibilities for Agitation. Because agitation in architecture is mistakenly brushed off as either too difficult (impossible to effectively enact) or too easy (inconsequential in its results), we feel now’s a good time to present a range of agitations across the spectrum of architecture and power. You’ll see that agitation is everywhere, and that it is not as rudimentary as squelching positive affirmation with bellicose naysaying. Agitation is disturbing.

For this issue we refer to agitation in at least three of its senses: political (to challenge), physical (to mix or shake), and emotional (to be distressed). For example, Architecture and Justice explains Laura Kurgan’s work with Columbia’s Spatial Information Design Lab which challenges some decision-making assumptions about the politics and form of prisons. Archis RSVP events produce another form of political agitation where architects organize group actions in areas of territorial dispute. Neil Denari’s Monster in a Box, and C-Lab’s own Bump, Crease, Fold, show two different aesthetics of agitation developed through designs for physical turbulence. When used to refer to emotion, agitation means a state of restlessness onset by a continuous preoccupation or anxiety. This mental state of agitation can be found in the obsessive fascinations of Richard Massey’s Pressing Buenos Aires Buttons, Sean Dockray’s Bandwidth, Ben Nicholson’s Obsession, and Enrique Walker’s Under Constraint (an obsessively corrected version of its previous erroneous form). By gathering this extended range of agitation, from the seemingly innocuous deposits of gum on sidewalks to the most violent actions of and against governments, we wish to present the category as subtle, complex, and essential.

We hope after viewing this collection that you too will believe that agitation should not diminish further, but that it should be initiated to a greater degree. You might discover that it is not antithetical to making architecture, but is fundamental to it. Without it the final outcome is weaker, compromised by a lack of consistency, and more prone to fragile imperfection. Just as concrete needs agitation before it is poured, architecture needs agitation before it can set. The process of agitation does not literally and figuratively break down architecture through disturbance, but we would say it makes it stronger and more durable in its final form. As you read these pages and click to our website, we hope that you might help to replenish our agitation supply by reacquainting yourself with it as a physical technique, an emotion, and a form of politics.

In the framework of the release of Volume 12: Al Manakh, Ole Bouman, Rem Koolhaas & Mark Wigley will discuss the developments around the Gulf.

Monday, 10 September, 20:00 at the Netherlands Architecture Institute

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“The world is running out of places where it can start over.”
Rem KoolhaasAl Manakh offers a detailed analysis of the history, culture and architecture of The Gulf region including Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Ras Al Khaimah and discusses the implications of the rapid development of these territories for the rest of the world. This is the first time that the unprecedented urban condition of this region has been comprehensively documented from diverse viewpoints and communicated to outside the region. Voices of architects, intellectuals and developers making the Gulf happen are represented in the numerous essays and interviews that accompany this richly illustrated study. Key figures such as, Rem Koolhaas, Ole Bouman, and Thomas Krens give their take on the current situation in The Gulf, along with their predictions for the future of this ‘ultimate tabula rasa’.

It seems an eternal distinction: sometimes people build, sometimes they destroy. However, since we have a concept of modernity, we also understand that building is very often based on sheer destruction. It is ‘the price of progress’. A new insight is now emerging: much destruction also has an agenda. It has a precision that reminds us of architecture. It has a formal dimension that reminds us of design. In this issue: explore the sinister creativity of Cities Unbuilt.

Experience the wholesome effects of agitation in its political, physical and emotional dimensions. Meet agitators René Daalder, François Roche, Peter Cook, Hernan Diaz Alonso, Philippe Parreno, and Cesar Millan; check the realities of Beirut and Prishtina, visit informal Rio de Janeiro, be inspired by ‘Gum Pics architecture’, see the hidden persuaders in car design, discover the history of alternative architecture magazines, read…