Garth Lenz is a photographer who uses his images to communicate larger environmental issues and broadcast clear messages for change. His work on the Athabasca oil sands, in the photo series ‘The True Cost of Oil’, aims at documenting the scale and scope of environmental transformation occurring due to oil extraction. As the title suggests, lenz asks the viewers to ask themselves what cost are they willing to bear, for their oil consumption.

^{This article is part of Volume #31: Guilty Landscapes.}

What design can do for… contact! Breakout session for What Design Can Do, Friday May 11th 2012, 13.45–15.30. Open and free for everyone.

While almost everyone is connected to one another through the internet and social media, real contact seems to be in decline. Virtual time is replacing public time. This breakout session will try to break through this development and find an answer to the question ‘What design can do for public contact’.

^{Detail of work by Philip Beesley at Venice Biennial}

Featuring Axel Timm of the German architectural collective Raumlabor; Francisco van Jole, internationally renowned internet journalist; Younghee Jung, leader of Nokia’s corporate research team in Bangalore; and Ole Bouman, director of the Netherlands Architecture Institute (NAI).

Meet us at 13.45 sharp at Leidse Plein, Amsterdam to experience (the limits of) connectivity. This intervention is brought to you by NAI and Archis/Volume with DUS architects. Limited participation available, please RSVP at the latest by Thursday May 10th to rsvp@archis.org.

In stores soon!

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?

In three sections: revelations, confessions, and atonement, the issue presents a global scan of large-scale guilty landscapes and our design relation to them. A major section is dedicated to the Chernobyl ‘exclusion zone’ as a post nuclear disaster area, with other contributions focusing on landscapes transformed by mining industries, waste, human atrocities and more, as well as ways to atone for these criminal acts.

The content for this issue was developed in collaboration with Unknown Fields Division. Contributions by Liam Young, Kate Davies, Ilkka Halso, Timothy Morton, Brendan Cormier, John Gollings, Michelle Kasprzak, Vincent van Velsen, Kris Verdonck, Neil Berrett, Yan Lu, David Maisel, Will Wiles, Nele Vos, Michael Brenner, Chris Jordan, Greg Barton, Brandon Mosley, Edward Burtynsky, Bas Princen, Mario Petrucci, Tokyo Hackerspace, Safecast, Aram Mooradian, Garth Lenz, Cornelia Hesse-Honegger, William Fox, Make It Right Foundation, 51N4E, Kelly Nelson Doran, Protei, Subhankar Banerjee, Oliviu Lugojan-Ghenciu, Guy Tillim, Susan Berger, Noero Wolff Architects, Jonathan Gales, Captains of Industry, Nicole Koltick, Youarethecity, Regina Peldszus, Bryan Allen. Interviews with Michael Madsen, Peter Swinnen.

Volume #31- Guilty Landscapes
160 pages
Binding: Soft cover
ISBN: 9 789 077 966 310
Price: € 19.50
Release: 4 May, 2012
Editor in chief: Arjen Oosterman

Contributing editors: Ole Bouman, Rem Koolhaas, Mark Wigley
Co-editors for this issue: Liam Young and Kate Davies
Feature editor: Jeffrey Inaba
Design: Irma Boom and Sonja Haller
Publisher: Stichting Archis

We recently had a little lottery draw to win a copy of ‘Project Japan: Metabolism Talks’, signed by the authors, Rem Koolhaas and Hans Ulrich Obrist! Take a look at the draw to find out if you were the lucky one selected.

Jeffrey Inaba, Volume’s feature editor from C-LAB, talks about the convergence by technology, automobile, and higher learning corporations and international policy organizations on the city — and how they are making the City 2.0. The lecture is part of the program of the International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam 2012 and takes place at the Netherlands Architecture Institute (NAi) on Thursday 3 May from 8 pm. Click here for more information!

Volume’s presence at the Storefront For Art And Architecture in New York was well received by a good crowd attending the event. Justin Fowler, editor of the Volume in New York, gave a presentation about his opinion on Crisis, one of the themes of the day.

Fowler’s presentation tackled issues such as the aging population and war survivors, leading to what he calls a ‘Trauma Generation’. The presentation created a link between the trauma generation and urban planning. “Human development corresponds with urban development”, he stated, illustrating his presentation with various projects aiming overcome issues of the aging population.

Volume is present at the last day of symposium on publishing practices at the Storefront for Art and Architecture in New York City. The Storefront hosts a two-day symposium in conjunction with Archizines, an exhibition by Elias Redstone. Volume’s New York editor Justin Fowler will participate in the talk on Crisis at 4 pm, or follow the live stream here.

Japanese photojournalist Kazuma Obara recently released a collection of photographs entitled Reset: Beyond Fukushima. Reset visually explores the disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, one of the most harrowing results of the 11 March 2011 earthquake off the coast of Tōhoku, Japan. The disaster sparked a critical global conversation regarding whether or not nuclear power should be one of the planet’s primary source of energy, including the long-term effects of nuclear waste.

Fukushima Daiichi is now one amongst a growing list of what could be termed ‘guilty landscapes’: Auschwitz, Hiroshima, Bikini Atoll, Chernobyl, Tiananmen Square, and Fukushima Daiichi are all places that continue to carry heavy historical baggage. Such a recent apolitical addition to this list reminds us of our collective duty to balance the emotional weight of such places with the desire to progress beyond previous mistakes.

Kazuma Obara’s Reset: Beyond Fukushima is published by Lars Müller Publishers.

Without resorting to the tired clichés on the advancements of globalisation/consumer technology/social media/creative economies/additive manufacturing, it would be safe to say that the relationship that architectural publications have with the discipline that they cover is undergoing a transformation. ARCHIZINES showcases the globally developing alternative in architectural publishing, featuring sixty architecture publications from over twenty countries. The publications serve as new platforms for practitioners, theorists, students, and anyone with a vested interest in contemporary architecture (NB: that would include all of us) to provide commentary and criticism of the built environment.

Curated by Elias Redstone, ARCHIZINES features publications running from the low-budget fanzine aesthetic (New York’s Evil People in Modernist Homes in Popular Films) to the glossy bound almanac (Toronto’s Bracket) that showcase research (Paris’s Criticat), art (Amsterdam’s foto.zine), and narrative (Beijing’s What About It?) in contributing to the discourse of the spaces and places that we use and inhabit. Having recently visited London and Milan, ARCHIZINES will showcase the diverse and critical platforms in architecture publishing as part of its tour, currently parked in Barcelona until 4 May at Otracosas de Villar-Rosàs. ARCHIZINES world tour will continue, with upcoming visits to, amongst others, New York, Berlin, and Montréal currently scheduled.

ARCHIZINES is on now at Otrascosas de Villar-Rosàs (Via Laietana 64) in Barcelona. The exhibition runs until 4 May.

KRADS is an architectural studio based in Denmark and Iceland. Their Playtime project makes use of Lego to search for new urban concepts and forms. During the first two months studio participants searched for aspects and potentials of the ultimate European skyscraper.

The research phase resulted in the Open Tower exhibition, a form-exhausting collection of 676 models in scale 1:1000, which are presented as a grid of 26 linear iterations. “This extensive catalogue of possibilities will serve as the first step to a more precise parametrization of the process and a deepened design process on modeling 8 European skyscrapers in scale 1:100″, the initiators explain.