Archis Publishers
December, 2014
In today’s rapidly changing world, the role of real estate has been affected deeply. To such a degree that the Center for Urban Real Estate at Columbia University sees an opportunity to transform the profession from within, stressing its creative potential and introducing an ethical code. This issue of Volume is dedicated to CURE’s ambition to create a continuum between architecture and real estate, as part of the design disciplines.
More Info
October, 2014
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.
More Info
July, 2014
Four years ago we published Volume #26: Architecture of Peace to explore the agency of architecture in post-conflict environments. It was clear we had only scratched the surface of a tense and complex issue. So now we’ve tightened our focus and zoomed in on the period directly after peacekeeping forces have arrived. Our goal: to see what a ‘reconstruction mission’ actually is, how peacekeeping can anticipate its legacy, and how different cultures come with quite different solutions to build or maintain peace. Re-building after war, it would seem, is another battle altogether.
More Info
January, 2014
'It’s legal, but is it legitimate?' and 'It’s legitimate, but is it legal?' These are questions rarely discussed in public concerning architecture and urban design. Yet architects have to deal with rules and regulations, and architecture is to a large extent defined by them. So the question is: how to deal with the law? Throughout the pages of this issue, we’ve explored different strategies for dealing with legal problems, whether that be through a direct fight or indirect action, through avoiding, subverting or changing the law. Because in the end law is too important to be left to lawyers.
More Info
November, 2013
We cannot beat Banham, but we can update you on what happened since 1972, when Rayner Banham published his seminal The Architecture of the Well Tempered Environment. C-Lab did extensive new research on the relation between installations, buildings and architecture…
More Info
July, 2013
The critic is dead. Long live the network! So it goes in our world of diffuse and shared knowledge. But if criticism has evolved into criticisms, how can we interpret and learn from the babble of opinions? This dilemma comes in tandem with another: the crisis of publishing. With declining print sales and slashed subsidies, many critics are out of work. Two fundamental tasks lie ahead: reviving the productive value of criticism, and finding new profitable ways to broadcast it to the world.
More Info