For Volume #6 Inderpaul Johar wrote 'Neo-money', a piece about the shift in the architects’ role: from designers to facility managers where ‘affordably’ in the lifetime management of a building become essential for its sustainability. Is (invested) money management the most important design factor now?

'Deconstructivism' is one of the writings included in Pathways through the Jungle, a book gathering Hans van Dijk's most significant articles leading the architecture debate in the Netherlands for decades, during the years he was writing on NRC, Wonen-TABK and Archis. The book is edited by Arjen Oosterman, Bart Lootsma and Christine de Baan and published by Archis.

In a time of geopolitical instability in Europe, the European Union is realigning itself into a post-Brexit Atlantic balance, we find out, with little surprise, how English took over the institutions in Brussel as an unocial lingua franca. For Czech type designer Radek Sidun, this is not a new problem: the focus on English kept languages from the central and eastern regions of the continent, and their abundant diacritics, at the margins. Starting from his Manual of Diacritics1 we talked with Radek about being condemned to using Arial typeface, the nerdiness of his discipline, and inclusivity in language through type design.

The last contribution of The Writings on the Wall is an edited version of the editorial of ARCH+: The Property Issue, curated by Arno Brandlhuber and Olaf Grawert. The text reflects on the political agency that architects can have today: starting from the often neglected questions, “Who owns the land? Who regulates it?” the authors propose a shift from “architecture” to “architecting” as an action outside the construction of buildings, thus capable of addressing a broader set of concerns.

The current mayor of Barcelona Ada Colau is not an architect, but she has done for architecture more than what is thinkable for some practitioners in our field. Founder of Plataforma de Afectados por la Hipoteca [PAH], a Spanish grassroots organization that campaigns for the right to a home, in January 2013 PAH was awarded the European Citizens’ Prize. In this interview, Quaderns' editors talk with her about how to confront the law in order to find feasible solutions and legal ways to improve our current housing situation.

Liam Ross had exposed the paradoxical nature of building codes over and over, in exhibitions and publications. This essay deals with the tragic fire of London’s Grenfell Tower, and more precisely, with the (ongoing) inquiries with which the responsible ones are supposed to be identified. A difficult task, Liam argues: because of the ambiguities written into British building standards, and because of their excessive number, which make them available to be intentionally “gamed”.

A border is not a line, but a three-dimensional space. And while the rules are clear as to what happens on either side of it, what happens within a border isn’t so straightforward. Architecture is complicit in this – by making legible which side of the line you’re on; but also in creating the ambiguous space of the line itself. Architecture thus becomes a legal diagram, telling you if you’re in or if you’re out – or worse, in a space where the rules no longer apply. The fourth pair of The Writings on the Wall features this article by Léopold Lambert, part of Volume 38 - The Shape of Law.

One of the most critical elements in flying for pilots is having situational awareness. Situational awareness means having visual contact with the outside world with a sense of a horizon, knowing position, speed, altitude, fuel levels, and the status of the aircraft itself. If one of these are lost, this doesn’t necessarily create immediate peril. All the other elements are outside of the plane, the ground radar coordinating other traffic, weather input predicting turbulence, the airport’s ILS automated glide path that pulls the aircraft in for landing, the GPS system indicates terrain data and warns for crashing into terrain.

For more than a decade Andrés Jaque has been researching the intertwined relationship between digital communication technologies and the urban: Grind Archiurbanism explores how, since 2008, gay dating app Grindr has created a new kind of hybrid place – a “zone” – where LGBTQ realities are both constructed and threatened. The text resonates with some of the works exhibited in Another Breach in the Wall (such as Queering the Map, the Uncensored Library, and Liberate Hong Kong) that expand the notion of "reality" beyond the outdated dichotomy online/offline.

With 64 guides spread throughout the 68 pages of the issue, 'The Ultimate Guide to Guides' helps architects and designers to navigate the immediate future of their profession and reflect on the role of guides, manuals and tutorials today.