Hello, you probably know me, not necessarily me (Edwin Gardner), but at least you’ve been confronted with me one way or another. Through the Archis/Volume newsletter, posts on the Volume blog, bookmarks, tweets and facebook updates, in other words the whole social media arsenal which is at every web-editor’s disposal these days.

But alas, it is also Goodbye. In 2005 I started at Archis/Volume with a summer internship, and by making my first contribution to the Broadcasting Architecture issue (#3), and surely that won’t be my last contribution to the magazine, I’ll stay on the team as editorial consultant, I’ll stay blogging on the Action! blog (together with mr. Hyde), and dumping the occasional link through one of the before mentioned channels. Beside that you can follow my ongoings @edwingardner.

Then there is another Hello! A hello i’m proud and pleased to give. I would like to introduce you to Jeroen Beekmans and Joop de Boer from Golfstromen who will take over the helm of the Archis/Volume web-machine. Perhaps you know them from their blog prolific blog The Pop-Up City or Amsterdam’s Pecha Kucha night, If not you will become very ambiently aware and digitally intimate with them soon enough.

For now, adieu!

Just in time before Christmas we launched Volume 22, The Guide and Beyroutes at the Athenaeum magazine shop. There were ‘bitterballen’, sparkles, booze and a spectacular last minute arrival of the issue straight from the printer. Enjoy the photo’s together with the warm wishes from the entire Volume crew for a happy christmas, good parties, and a incredible new year.

Signed; Lilet, Arjen, Valerie (who made the pictures) Rory, Timothy, Jonathan, Christian and Edwin

Vast urbanizations in developed, developing and under-development countries have one common denominator: an immediate need for quality housing. Housing the billions: never before were those involved in architecture and construction confronted with such a challenge. A one-fits-all solution seems unthinkable since most mass housing schemes in the past failed and originated in dictatorship or total absence of power. Based on an analysis of one of the housing experiments of the past, the Soviet Microrayon, Volume proposes a new prototype. A housing block, which is custom-made but mass-produced and conceived via open source standards.

Saturday, 19 September, 7-9 pm
Studio-X, New York

Please join us for the launch of “Volume 20: Storytelling,” edited by C-Lab on Saturday, 9/19 from 7-9pm at Studio-X. Mark Wigley will offer an introduction and comments on the occasion of Volume’s milestone 20th issue. Drinks and music to follow. Sponsored by Studio-X.

With Contributions by: Lewis Lapham, Tom McCarthy, Bjarke Ingels, Neil Denari, Nicholas Lemann, Roger Dean
Catherine Hardwicke, Smiljan Radic and more…

Studio-X
180 Varick Street, Suite 1610
Between King and Charleton Streets
1 train to Houston Street
212 989 2398

23 to 25 September, Westergasfabriek, Amsterdam
PICNIC 2009

PICNIC is a cross-discipline platform for creative conversation and collaboration. It’s a unique festival featuring a strategic conference, complimented by hands-on workshops and matchmaking sessions.

One of the themes sounds especially interesting when considering the built environment: Exploding Media

Exploding Media will showcase the latest changes in media technologies impacting user interaction, engagement, and communications with a special focus on gaming, connectivity and real-time social media.

This is the story of the extraordinary transformation of Media from all the creative and technological aspects. From traditional storytelling to the impact of gaming on education, from city interaction and augmented reality to the Metaverse, this narrative will feature the latest innovations and disruptions that the media industry is facing. We will look at the emerging opportunities and business implications for the creative industry that these changes will bring. Speakers will be the creative geniuses pushing the envelope on these new developments.

For a more elaborate analysis of what this years PICNIC has to offer those interested in the spatial implication of technology check out The Mobile City

1 & 2 October 2009, Westergasfabriek Amsterdam
Tommorrow, International Urban Planning Congress Amsterdam

Metropoles – world cities – are lead players in the global economy. Though they cover just 2 percent of the earth’s surface, cities consume 75 percent of the resources utilized by humankind.

In the early 20th century, when Alderman F.M. ‘Floor’ Wibaut (1859-1936), a pioneering steersman of Amsterdam’s urban development and social housing policy, was politically and professionally active, the growth of major cities around the world seemed to attain an absolute peak.

Endeavouring to steer the city’s ongoing development was therefore an exercise as urgent as it was logical. It was at this time that town and regional planning emerged in a fruitful interchange of knowledge and experience between administrators and specialists.
Half the world’s population now resides in cities. Metropolises are sprouting up in Asia, Africa and South America at an unprecedented rate. Within 20 to 30 years some three quarters of the world’s population will be living in cities, giving rise to new issues. Cities elsewhere will over that same time-span need to find a response to population growth that is levelling off or even shrinking populations. The fields of urban development and spatial planning, now a century old, are faced with new challenges.

‘The future governance of Amsterdam will be focused on the material prosperity and mental welfare of the great mass of workers. Tomorrow the meaning of the word “prosperity” will be something quite different to what this word meant to Amsterdam in bygone times as chronicled by our historians and eulogized by our poets …. The advancement of prosperity as a responsibility of governments will in future entail the implementation of governmental provision of collective amenities across an ever-broader range of that great multitude’s collective needs, in every domain where collective services prove to be more efficient than individual provision. …

‘We are seeing the emergence of the view that the promotion of welfare – as far as this can nowadays be a task assumed by government – must be based on the exertion of governmental powers to introduce collective amenities for acknowledged needs wherever social expediency requires it.’

Dr F.M. Wibaut in his ‘Tomorrow’ speech (1925)

With: Ken Livingstone, Maarten Hajer, Hermann Scheer, Tim Lang, Eric Corijn, Dieter Läpple, LaDonna Redmond, Michael Madison, Kees Christiaanse, Irina Ivashkina, P.K. Das, Edi Rama

more info can be found here and in this PDF

This is the first of the FWD series, which summarizes hand picked content I find elsewhere on the web and would like to share with you.

from the In the Shadow of Progress a picture show on the GOOD website.

The stark reality of this moment in time is that many people are losing their jobs, their homes, and their ways of life. Yet amid what can seem like ceaseless news of loss, there are those who refuse to surrender hope. Nowhere is this more apparent than in Tent City, a temporary encampment below a freeway in Nashville, Tennessee, where hard-pressed and otherwise homeless strangers have come together to form a community.

- see the entire picture show on GOOD

From the harsh reality of Tent Cities we move to how the instruments with which we engage these problems are changing. In his piece The End to Movements on arthurmag.com(via Burak Arikan) Douglas Rushkoff poses a theory that the phenomenon of ‘movements’ as a means of civil activism has reached its limits. (Also check out the recent interview with Ruskhkoff and Kurt Andersen on Design Observer)

(…) Between the 1960s and today, however, the mediaspace through which these causes disseminated ideas and gained momentum has changed. The best techniques for galvanizing a movement have long been co-opted and surpassed by public relations and advertising firms. Whether a movement is real or Astroturf has become almost impossible for even discerning viewers to figure out. The question often becomes the new content of the Sunday morning news panel, taking the place of whatever real issue might have been addressed.

But the problem is not simply that we’ve lost the ability to distinguish between real movements and cynically concocted fake ones. It’s that they are functionally indistinguishable. They may as well be the same thing. (…)

- Douglas Rushkoff

Rushkoff argues that clinging on and promoting ideals or brands disconnects us from the real. “(…) by creating and branding a movement, even the most well-meaning activitsts are disconnecting from terra firma, and instead entering the world of marketing, public opinion, and language selection.”

Besides bringing culture, and the search for meaning back down to earth, also money needs to be connected again to more earthly matters, argues Woody Tasch, author of the new book Slow Money: Investing as if Food, Farms and Fertility Mattered and founder of the burgeoning Slow Money Alliance,

The topic on hand: How to bring money back down to earth. Literally. How to slow money down from its dizzying (and destructive) speed where all it takes is seconds for “collateral” to get parsed into pieces, distributed as “debt” that no one is responsible for, or understands where it actually ends up. The world of finance has been like playing a high-priced game of “Musical Chairs”—with no chairs. And in this world, there is no place that’s “here.” Investing is perplexingly abstract and has little to do with place or relationships. Externalized this way, few grasp the implications of financial dislocation, of a financial system where money is nomadic and wanders un-rooted—until, as we’ve witnessed with the meltdown, the game ends abruptly and we’ve all landed on our butts wondering where the chairs went.

- continue reading on Track Changes

Not everyone appreciates the ‘slowing down’ propaganda. Previously we promoted Michael Pollan the writer of The Omnivores Dilemma. Blake Hurst wrote the article The Omnivore’s Delusion: Against the Agri-intellectuals
being fed up with the farmer bashing and a one-sided view on industrial farming. “Farming has always been messy and painful, and bloody and dirty. It still is. This is something the critics of industrial farming never seem to understand.” Make up your own mind and read the article at The American.

During summer some of us had the chance to read some of the classics, Jason King read Learning from Las Vegas and reflects on the relevance of the book today. When we go beyond cities being shaped by the automobile, we should take a look at $20 Per Gallon: How The Inevitable Rise in the Price of Oil Will change Our Lives For the Better. Read the review by Jebediah Reed on The Infrastructurist. Finally, if you’re still doubting if you should buy Volume 20 on Storytelling, check out Regine Debatty’s review on WMMNA

From the NL Architects blog: “A long time fantasy: cad drawing in a game arcade: drafting with a joy stick. Now finally Master Gen seems to have succeeded in hooking up a game console to drafting software…”

To wrap up this first FWD, i’d like to shine a light on architecture/design practices who are blogging! It’s great to see architects and designers sharing their inspiration, office pictures, how project evolve on site and of course the occasional promoting of their own lectures and exhibitions. Take a look at the blogs of JAJA Architects, JDS and Bruce Mau Design. But in a category all in its own is NL Architects, where Kamiel Klaasse is personally running the blog and writing original posts, with gritty mobile phone pics, real world inspiration and the occasional office fun. Love it!

editorial to Volume #20 by Jeffrey Inaba

Storytelling communicates facts, but it also builds upon real-life accounts to enrich public expectations and elevate beliefs. To these ends, it is worthwhile to get reacquainted with the children’s story. Although regarded as a vehicle to escape reality, the children’s story, and in particular the fairy tale, could again help to elucidate larger social and political storylines. This issue of Volume responds to the global crisis, continuing a series of inquiries started in Volume 9, Urban China 31, Urban China Bootlegged by C-Lab and Volume 19. Here, we present storytelling as a means of understanding our time and constructing a narrative of response.
Crisis creates confusion. It is a situation in which all avenues of recourse fail. Actions taken to remedy catastrophe have little tangible consequence. There is no discernable correlation between cause and effect, and as a result disorientation arises. In some cases the environment may continue to look the same, yet because its behavior can’t be grasped there is a perplexing disconnect. A crisis is when space can’t be explained.
After the immediate shockwaves, when the unpredictable events ebb and the climate regulates, there is much that is left to be explained. Gathering information and forming it into descriptions is the first step towards regaining bearings. Narratives explain space.
Stories are important to architects because they form the foundation of architectural proposals. It is through these episodes that a project’s general challenges and constraints are outlined and an architectural strategy and formal outcome are determined. For this reason, we need to know how tales are told. Journalism experts Nicholas Lemann and Jay Rosen lend a helping hand by discussing the particular challenges of writing stories about our precarious times. Lemann notes the inherent contradiction involved in analyzing facts and constructing a coherent narrative, while Rosen describes data collection resources and our social obligation to explain. Both encourage us to engage stories with indulgence and scrutiny. They offer practical suggestions for crafting timely stories while remaining skeptical of received reporting and conscious of actions an account may provoke from its readers.
Storytelling could involve writing a new public script about space. In addition to the classic narrative elements that Gustav Freytag observes on page four – including the statement of a problem, an exposition of its context and a proposal of resolution – such a script could make probable complications known through disclosure and qualification. As interest in new infrastructure grows and as cases for its realization take shape, now is a good time to create a planning narrative that borrows lessons from earlier, problematic propositions made in the name of technological advancement and urbanization. With the help of Christopher A. Scott, Stephanie von Stein and Jiang Jun, C-Lab breaks down general claims made for the implementation of large-scale technology.
In professional contexts there is little incentive to disclose a project’s cons along with the pros. Instead, there is almost an expectation that a proposal makes unqualified positive claims. In ‘The Technostrich’ and ‘The Technology Narrative’, we contend that it would not be so bad to make the potential problems of new technologies publicly known. It may behoove proponents to come clean and to build trust by divulging technology’s limitations. Moreover, it would be opportune to write a script that avoids grandiose promises and instead solicits experts to help solve problems that may arise along the way. The disclosure of possible complications, conflicts and the particulars of the decision-making process may in fact contribute to a project’s realization rather than its demise.
In the following pages, C-Lab shows the ability of the children’s story to make sense of hard-to-describe events, given that its format addresses emotionally difficult, morally complicated and ethically charged issues with concision. We argue that such constructions are especially relevant today since simple public narratives set the tone for actions in response to the very events (like crisis) which challenge our ability to distinguish fact from fiction.
While truthfulness has it value, the same can be said for fantasy. The children’s story is well suited to counteract the resignation and incapacitation that often accompanies trauma, since its fantastical plots aim to summon the imaginative potential of the reader’s captive mental state. Rather than try to discern reality from fantasy, contributors like Lewis H. Lapham, Neil Denari, Catherine Hardwicke, Dave McKean, Tom McCarthy, Smiljan Radic, Lucia Allais and Roger Dean would encourage us to cycle between conscious and unconscious states, work-life and dream-time, desire and disappointment, material reality and history because to do so is essential to an enhanced experience of the physical environment. For good reason, people say a story isn’t worth telling if it can’t be told to a child. A simple, distilled story that clarifies the crisis, and that aids the formulation of policies to better understand and animate the physical environment, is definitely worth telling.

This past year numerous dramas have competed for our attention: sub-prime mortgages, banking meltdown, bailout, stimulus, pandemic, bankruptcy. The all-consuming effort to follow these events seldom leaves a moment to contemplate the explanations themselves. What is the stated dilemma, context or motive for any one of these problems? And most importantly, how does a problem’s formulation determine its proposed solution? Volume 20 is dedicated to the art of storytelling. It presents the storylines of current events and architecture to show that while the truth is important, so is the ability of fiction to elevate fact. Perhaps the best way to understand our era is through narratives that distort, pervert and animate reality?

The waning revenue of print-publishing in the arena of newspaper’s and magazine’s would suggest that the future looks grim for architectural journalism on paper, but the magazines and journals that have been launched over the last months would suggest otherwise. Why would one start a new publication when magazines are dying, and advertising revenues are down. Big advertising dependent boys like Domus are surely having a hard time right now. Although when one follows this argument: “When the markets are down and the economic indicators turn south, the architect begins to think, to write, to theorize. When the markets are up we “do” and don’t think much” which makes David Gissen wonder how to actually map this. Some of this seems to make sense, introducing this argument at least makes a good excuse to make a list of the periodicals that have captured my attention lately.

First up is Conditions, a Scandinavian quarterly and perhaps the best to prove the above theory, since it’s founded by three architects and not by historians, academics or full-time theorists.

The driving idea behind beginning a new magazine for them as stated in their manifest:

In opposition to ignorance and superficiality this magazine is conceived in order to search for knowledge and predicaments of our continuously evolving society. It is organized in a fluctuating network of agents reflecting the present globalized state of a dynamic society, economics, politics and culture which are the motivators of architecture. Through a play of thoughts in an open ended forum, predefined “facts” will be unsecured and constantly reinvented. The forum will gather the architect, client, politician and the public, a communion of ideas creating conditions for evolution.

Clearly a reaction against the bubble before it bursted. Their first issue is themed: “A Strategy for Evolution” which already bolsters a contradiction between conscious planning and the unconscious processes unfolding in nature. The issue is not a making a single argument but presents a variety of voices, approaches and interpretations to the theme. Check out the table of contents of issue #1, and their call for submissions for their second issue “Interpretation & Copy”

While Conditions’ existence is dependent upon advertising the next series of publications are supported by institutions.

Bracket is an annual publication with their first issue on Farming coming up this Winter, so we’ll have to wait and see what will be delivered. I’m curious what kind of publication it will be, because it the brainchild of not the smallest names on the web: Archinect and InfraNet Lab. Bracket will cover:

(…) issues overlooked yet central to our cultural milieu that have evolved out of the new disciplinary territory at the intersection of architecture, landscape, urbanism and, now, the internet. It is no coincidence that the professional term architect can also now refer to information architects, and that the word community can also now refer to an online community. [bracket] is a publishing platform for ideas charting the complex overlap of the sphere of architecture and online social spheres.

P.E.A.R, Paper for Emerging Architectural Research is the most recent addition to architectural publishing, they had their launch in London roughly a month ago. I haven’t seen it yet, but they call themselves an architectural fanzine which sounds refreshing: “P.E.A.R. aims to re-establish the fanzine as a primary medium for the dissemination of architectural ideas, musings, research and works.”

New Geographies is a new journal published by Harvard University Press, while I haven’t held one in my hands yet, the first striking encounter was that their first issue had an identical title to one of Volume’s, namely “After Zero.” Besides titeling, New Geographies also seems to be in sync with Volume’s efforts to go beyond the disciplinary boundaries of architecture, and to seek out new terrains which are mostly bigger in scale (‘geographies’) for the application of architectural intelligence.

New Geographies journal aims to examine the emergence of the geographic —a new but for the most part latent paradigm in design today—to articulate it and bring it to bear effectively on the agency of design. After more than two decades of seeing architecture and urbanism as the spatial manifestation of the effects of globalization, it is time to consider the expanded agency of the designer. Designers are increasingly compelled to shape larger scales and contexts, to address questions related to infrastructural problems, urban and ecological systems, and cultural and regional issues. These questions—previously confined to the domains of engineering, ecology, or regional planning—now require articulation through design. Encouraging designers to reexamine their tools and develop strategies to link attributes previously understood to be either separate from each other or external to the design disciplines, those questions have also opened up a range of technical, formal, and social repertoires for architecture and urbanism. Although in the past decade different versions of landscape and infrastructural urbanism have emerged in response to similar challenges, this new condition we call “the geographic” points to more than a shift in scale. (more here … )

Finally there is the already a bit older Footprint, established at TU Delft’s DSD in Fall 2007 (thus a pre-crash publication) is a typical academic journal. What makes it special is that all content is available for free download (pdf), all you need is a free registration.

Of course this is just a list, that happens to end here. I’m curious to know if there are more recently initiated publications worthy of knowing about? Leave a comment!