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.

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.

Official maps are instruments of power, benefitting some while impoverishing others. Inscribed in the law, they fortify the territorial interests of a select few. This is especially apparent in places where the pressures of resource extraction collide with land claims by disenfranchised indigenous groups. In Papua, where capital-rich mining and logging operations rule, local groups are attempting to stem the tide of environmental destruction by creating their own maps; counter-maps that demonstrate ancestral domain. The third week of The Writings on the Wall opens with Nabil Ahmed exploring how to fight a map with a map.

One of the main topics of Another Breach in the Wall is the phenomenon of micronations: fictional spatial entities declared to claim autonomy from existing governments by exploiting loopholes and grey areas in their laws. The co-founder of De Facto, an Amsterdam-based platform studying contested territories, journalist Jorie Horsthuis explores the curious case of Eurostaete, a country of seven billion “outhabitants” declared in 2006 in an industrial area of Coevorden (the Netherlands).

The second couple of articles of the editorial project The Writings on the Wall kicks off with Matt Johnson's guide on the recent proliferation of extraterritorial sites outside conventional laws and borders, from Special Economic Zones to physical/digital hybrid infrastructures.

Expanding on her article published in Volume38 - The Shape of Law, Dubravka Sekulic here deals with informality in Belgrade’s spatial development from the 1930s until the present, putting the issue in relation to the radical changes that Serbian society has undergone over the last seventy years. The text questions the preconception that informal housing construction was a manifestation of poverty or ignorance of the law, unfolding the complex network of entangled causes behind the phenomenon.

The Writings on the Wall is an editorial project developed in collaboration by Volume and Beta – Timișoara Architecture Biennial, about the capacity of loopholes to create exceptional experiences among the laws that produce our urban spaces. The first pair of texts (Paula V. Álvarez & Dubravka Sekulić) is dedicated to extra-legal practices.