The internet gets blamed for a lot of things, our current crisis of criticism being just one of its victims. The explosion of free content, the rise of unpaid bloggers, a diffuse democracy of likes and retweets, has surely weakened the authority of traditional critics. But in this new landscape Mimi Zeiger sees a host of new possibilities for architectural debate. Explaining her notion of ‘collective criticism’, she shows how platforms like Twitter can help build momentum on critical issues that often fall through the cracks of the pressroom floor.

Italy has long been a powerhouse of architectural criticism and publications, with an intimate relationship to production. Never criticism for its own sake, the architectural publishing complex of Italy has a tradition of stance-taking, actively shaping the direction of the profession. But the glory days of Casabella and other noteworthy publications has faded, leaving a void to be filled. Luca Molinari paints a portrait of the country’s new critical landscape.

It is rare that people spend a whole day discussing their own happiness, but in Houten they did. Houten? Yes, Houten, a town of 50,000 inhabitants in the center of the Netherlands – a suburb of the city of Utrecht really, but a very successful one. During the seventies this agricultural village was planned to receive a serious portion of the additional housing needed at the time in the Netherlands and during the nineties another national housing expansion program transformed it into the town it is today. The most remarkable thing about Houten is that we don't hear about it. It never hits the news with riots, political scandals, alarming unemployment figures, vacant office buildings, or cultural clashes. It is a quiet town.

On Thursday July 11, the Vitra Design Museum organizes a public event where Archizines curator Elias Redstone and Archis director and Volume publisher Lilet Breddels will discuss the new culture of young and experimental architectural magazines.

Volume's 36th issue will shed a light on architecture criticism. While the architecture discipline is changing slightly, also the way the discipline should be criticized changes...

Here’s your chance to have your photographs featured in Volume. For our upcoming issue we’re re-evaluating the role of criticism in architectural production. For a feature called ‘Likes and Dislikes: The New Critical Economy’ we’re reducing ourselves to a Facebook-style crowdsourcing of likes and dislikes among Volume readers; and we’re asking for your contribution.

We’ve seen art works changing hard objects into soft ones (soft washing basin, Claes Oldenburg) or personal and vulnerable objects into suffocating environments (teddy bear, Mike Kelley), but this is the first time as far as we know that household technology is being applied to personalize and pimp a car...