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.

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?

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”.