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Event

Who Rules the City? Connected Symposium: 6 November, Amsterdam

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Who rules the city? The traditional set of players who determine planning and management of cities has gone through a major shift. The financial crises since 2008 were a major trigger, but also more social and cultural incentives can be indicated as forces in play. Private partners, city urbanists, city governors, housing corporations, developers, and citizens try to redefine their roles in new constellations. Who sets the new rules and what effective regulation helps to facilitate citizens to co-create their environment?

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Article, Volume #41

Architects Take Command: The LCC Architects’ Department

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Map of London: social and functional analysis (1943)

Following Word War Two, London embarked on a highly prolific rebuilding campaign. But it wasn’t simply putting the pieces back together. The ambition of the welfare state combined with new ideas in architecture to produce radical new designs, altering the British landscape. The organization behind this was the London County Council, and in particular the Architects’ Department. Ruth Lang discusses the machinery of the bureaucratic system that enabled one of England’s most innovative periods in design.

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Article, Volume #41

SAR / SEZ / PRD / PRC: Positioning Hong Kong and Macau

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Connection 04

Hong Kong and Macau aren’t independent nations, yet they appear at the Biennale regardless. As recent appendages to China, they are undergoing an often-uncomfortable transition to a new political reality. Thomas Daniell explains how both pavilions give different responses to the unification question. Hong Kong emphasizes its inclusion in a larger regional network, the Pearl River Delta, while Macau places focus on its cultural distinctiveness.

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Article, Volume #41

Critical Globalism: Rem Koolhaas Interviewed by Brendan Cormier and Arjen Oosterman

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With Rem Koolhaas ‘couch surfing’ has acquired a new meaning. Anyone lucky enough to actually get an interview with Koolhaas will most likely end up on his couch. The back seat of his BMW that is. Some private conversation time, wherever the journey takes you, accompanied by the deep hum of the V12 sports engine. Volume became member of this back seat club to discuss some intentions behind Fundamentals and perspectives on architecture it produced.

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Editorial, Volume #41

Land of Hope and Glory

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This year’s Venice Architecture Biennale breaks with two mechanisms that defined its presence over the last fifteen to twenty years. First is the setting of a grand, though conveniently abstract theme that suggests a connection between current development and the state of architecture. The ethics of architecture (or of the architect?), the architect as seismograph, architecture is for people, that kind of stuff. These past themes suggested a critical position of the curator on duty, but hardly succeeded in influencing the debate, let alone affairs. At best they added flavor to the core element of the Biennale: a presentation of who matters in architecture. And that brings us to the second mechanism: no matter the main curatorial theme, every pavilion was totally at liberty to present their best architecture and architects. Some pavilions succeeded in selling an idea more than products and some (rarely) attempted to raise an issue, but the ‘who’s doing what’ element was dominant.

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Volume #41

Volume #41 — Out Now!

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Volume #41: How to Build a Nation

For the first time, a general theme was given to the national pavilions at this year’s Architecture Biennale in Venice. They were to be historical shows, focused on the impact of modernity on a country’s architecture. What it produced was not just a global survey of twentieth century construction, but also heroic stories of nation-building. Yes, architecture can build nations. Today, we seem far from that notion. The nation-state is either giving up on itself, or exploited through tyrannical regimes. Meanwhile architects are hardly taking up the cause.

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