Igmade: Mr. Chomsky, what’s your favorite color? Noam Chomsky (laughs): If I have to pick one it would be blue because blue makes me feel good. Blue is also one of the colors of the color-coded terror-alert system of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). . Could be... It is the color of second lowest threat level.. Really? Okay... You don’t seem to be too interested in this terror alert system... Well, I know that it exists. You hear about orange alerts and so on but I don’t really pay much attention. So you don’t know with which colour you have to live in at the moment? No.

The Biennale hasn’t always been the kind of neutral platform it purports to be today. In the 1970s, under the direction of Carlo Ripa di Meana, it broke off into a radically politicized agenda, explicitly addressing the nationhood and politics of three be-leaguered countries: Chile, Spain, and the former USSR. As Léa-Catherine Szacka and Luca Guido write, the exhibitions were transformed into a political device, a crucial apparatus for public confrontation.

Architecture doesn’t always play the role of nation-builder. But thanks to TV, architecture is often the site where nation-building takes place. In the great domestication of television-watching following Word War Two, our living rooms have become the main receptor for a TV-led nationalism. Andrés Jaque describes its quintessential case: Italy and Berlusconi’s own development of Milano 2.

2016 has been a year of significant and uncelebrated milestones which, whether we have acknowledged them or not, serve as a very real reminder of fundamental shifts each redefining how information is being processed and delivered.

Architectural practice requires a degree of intimacy and insight into complex sets of forces. While building is architecture’s bread and butter, it’s not always the best format to make a statement. It’s sometimes not even the most appropriate language to respond to a brief. Volume spoke with Reinier de Graaf of OMA/AMO about how research and media can become a vessel for political agendas.

In light of recent political events and those to come in the United States and beyond, we've decided to dig into our archive and pull out some uncannily relevant articles. The first, originally published ten years ago in Volume #7: Power Logic (Architecture of Power, Part 3), is a reflection by Gwenda Blair on the rise of Donald Trump and cultures of salesmanship.

Berlusconi’s role in Italian and Global politics had a great influence, to the point that in 2016, during the rise to the US presidency of Donald Trump, he has been described his political ancestor. The Italian politician owns his political success to his real estate and media companies that created, with projects like Milano 2, a new visual and cultural imaginary for the country. In 2001 Luca Molinari wrote for Volume a piece right before Berlusconi was nominated prime minister for the second time after winning the elections in June.