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.

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.

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. (Re)publishing two texts a week, for five weeks, will constitute a free compendium of experiments that dealt with the topic

One of the chapter of 50U includes Rem Koolhaas' abridge version of a lecture delivered for the Sharjah Biennal in 2009, in which he explores his relation with the UAE.