‘Guilty landscape’ is a notion borrowed from the Dutch painter, sculptor, writer, and musician Armando, who wrote about such landscapes more than once. Living in Amersfoort before, during, and after the Second World War, close to a concentration camp situated in the woods, he was very aware that the innocent forest of his youth had witnessed the horrors of war and the Holocaust.

Labelling a martyr is, in a way, an expression of collective guilt. Martyrs are a simultaneous reminder of the hopes and ideals that an individual stood for, and also the oppressive nature of humankind to smother those ideals. Memorializing martyrs then is a way of atoning for this collective guilt and to give renewed hope that the dreams of the fallen can somehow be realized. A popular way of memorializing martyr is to name streets after them – creating a potentially difficult juxtaposition. To what extent can a street, subject to all the pressures of the city, live up to the lofty ideals of an individual? And what does it say of us when a memorialized street itself becomes a symbol of broken dreams? Guy Tillim and Susan Berger have both created photo series that examine this deep irony.

What design can do for… contact! Breakout session for What Design Can Do, Friday May 11th 2012, 13.45–15.30. Open and free for everyone. While almost everyone is connected to one another through the internet and social media, real contact seems to be in decline. Virtual time is replacing public time. This breakout session will try to break through this development and find an answer to the question ‘What design can do for public contact’. Detail of work by Philip Beesley at Venice Biennial Featuring Axel Timm of the German architectural collective Raumlabor; Francisco van Jole, internationally renowned internet journalist; Younghee Jung, leader of Nokia’s corporate research team in Bangalore; and Ole Bouman, director of the Netherlands Architecture Institute (NAI). Meet us at 13.45 sharp at Leidse Plein, Amsterdam to experience (the limits of) connectivity. This intervention is brought to you by NAI and Archis/Volume with DUS architects. Limited participation available, please RSVP at the latest by Thursday May 10th to rsvp@archis.org.

We recently had a little lottery draw to win a copy of 'Project Japan: Metabolism Talks', signed by the authors, Rem Koolhaas and Hans Ulrich Obrist! Take a look at the draw to find out if you were the lucky one selected.

Jeffrey Inaba, Volume's feature editor from C-LAB, talks about the convergence by technology, automobile, and higher learning corporations and international policy organizations on the city — and how they are making the City 2.0. The lecture is part of the program of the International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam 2012 and takes place at the Netherlands Architecture Institute (NAi) on Thursday 3 May from 8 pm. Click here for more information!

Volume’s presence at the Storefront For Art And Architecture in New York was well received by a good crowd attending the event. Justin Fowler, editor of the Volume in New York, gave a presentation about his opinion on Crisis, one of the themes of the day. Fowler's presentation tackled issues such as the aging population and war survivors, leading to what he calls a 'Trauma Generation'. The presentation created a link between the trauma generation and urban planning. “Human development corresponds with urban development”, he stated, illustrating his presentation with various projects aiming overcome issues of the aging population.

Volume is present at the last day of symposium on publishing practices at the Storefront for Art and Architecture in New York City. The Storefront hosts a two-day symposium in conjunction with Archizines, an exhibition by Elias Redstone. Volume's New York editor Justin Fowler will participate in the talk on Crisis at 4 pm, or follow the live stream here.

Japanese photojournalist Kazuma Obara recently released a collection of photographs entitled Reset: Beyond Fukushima. Reset visually explores the disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, one of the most harrowing results of the 11 March 2011 earthquake off the coast of Tōhoku, Japan. The disaster sparked a critical global conversation regarding whether or not nuclear power should be one of the planet’s primary source of energy, including the long-term effects of nuclear waste. Fukushima Daiichi is now one amongst a growing list of what could be termed ‘guilty landscapes’: Auschwitz, Hiroshima, Bikini Atoll, Chernobyl, Tiananmen Square, and Fukushima Daiichi are all places that continue to carry heavy historical baggage. Such a recent apolitical addition to this list reminds us of our collective duty to balance the emotional weight of such places with the desire to progress beyond previous mistakes. Kazuma Obara’s Reset: Beyond Fukushima is published by Lars Müller Publishers.

KRADS is an architectural studio based in Denmark and Iceland. Their Playtime project makes use of Lego to search for new urban concepts and forms. During the first two months studio participants searched for aspects and potentials of the ultimate European skyscraper. The research phase resulted in the Open Tower exhibition, a form-exhausting collection of 676 models in scale 1:1000, which are presented as a grid of 26 linear iterations. "This extensive catalogue of possibilities will serve as the first step to a more precise parametrization of the process and a deepened design process on modeling 8 European skyscrapers in scale 1:100", the initiators explain.

Co-founder of location-sharing platform Geoloqi Aaron Parecki has been tracking every geo-location he has been over the last 3.5 years. The project resulted in a series of maps generated from 2.5 million unique GPS points (approximately 1 point per 2-6 locations), which were tracked by Parecki's smartphone. The different colors of the lines represent different years, in order to reveal how his physical footprint changes over time due to the different locations of his house.

The latest issue of Volume marks a special jubilee: it is the twenty-fifth issue designed by Irma Boom – the award-winning Dutch book designer whose work for clients such as Office for Metropolitan Architecture and Ferrari has earned her the highest regard in the profession. On February 24th 2012, Volume sat down with Irma Boom to discuss among other things her practice, her work with Volume, and her unexpected love for iPads. Arjen Oosterman: "First I was wondering if you could introduce your studio since you’re not an employee of Volume, but have your own office." Irma Boom: "Yes, I’m an external designer – which is a very important detail. [Laughs] The office consists of three people: two assistants, Julia Neller and Sanne van de Goor and me; I make Volume with an ex-assistant, Sonja Haller. The first issues were made with a former student of mine Natascha Chandani (issues 6 to 10) and from issue 11 until now with Sonja. This is the only magazine we do and we’re very proud of working with Volume and Archis."

On Wednesday February 22nd Droog held a debate, in collaboration with Jan Konings, Kosmopolis Rotterdam, and the Netherlands Architecture Institute, which in many ways mirrored many of the themes discussed in the latest issue of Volume. The debate was held primarily to discuss WIJkonomie Tarwewijk ­– a project currently taking place in the Tarwewijk neighborhood of Rotterdam. The project explores how one can make visible and build on existing social and economic networks as a method of economic and social development. Although Tarwewijk is one of the poorest areas in the city, it has a hidden network of homeworkers, from hairdressers to car repairmen to radio broadcasters. Is there a way this network can be improved on to strengthen the economic and social vitality of the neighborhood? The evening opened however not with a discussion about Tarwewijk, but with Levittown, one of the first tract suburban developments in North America. Charles Renfro from Diller Scofidio + Renfro presented his project Open House, made in collaboration with Droog, which looked at inventing new service economies in the suburbs. Designers were paired with homeowners to temporarily transform suburban homes into a service-sector business. One elderly couple sold their attention for a small fee – clients would choose from a list of attentive services (hugs, active listening, confessions, advice) and the transaction would take place at their kitchen table. Another couple transformed their house into a museum, creating a spectacle out of the banality of a typical suburban home. One man simply sold signs, to support the new service-sector economy that had temporarily emerged.

The 'Success and Uncertainty' project displays a series of 21 neatly designed posters that were made by Dutch graphic designers Sandra Kassenaar and Bart de Baets during their residency in Cairo during the outburst of the revolution in Egypt and the resignation of president Hosni Mubarak in Spring, 2011. Kassenaar and De Baets created one poster every day for a period of three weeks, that were displayed at the entrance of a gallery in Cairo. All posters in the series commented on recent events and contain political discussions, interviews with locals in Cairo, international comments on the revolution, observations and more. The series is on show between 3-18 March at the San Serriffe art book shop in Amsterdam, so be sure to check it out when you're nearby!

Spring is almost in the air and along with it a new Volume subscription special. Guaranteeing yourself or a loved one a yearlong source of inspiration just got easier. Buy a subscription to Volume now and receive a unique Volume bag for free. We will also put you in the running for a signed copy of Project Japan from Dutch book designer Irma Boom and architect Rem Koolhaas. Click here to subscribe! The offer is valid from March 1, 2012-April 30, 2012. A winner will be selected at random from all the new subscribers from that period. The winner will be announced in the second week of May 2012 and will receive the book free of charge.

“At a moment when the connection between architects and their ‘own’ culture has dwindled to insignificance, and the market has dissolved any connective tissue between colleagues, it seemed urgent to listen to the survivors of a group of architects who saw their country and its transformation as a project, who changed their fatherland with new tools recognizably derived from its traditions, who worked together in a strategic alliance to achieve greater prominence and credibility, in a sustained intellectual effort that mobilized a vast range of other disciplines.” — Rem Koolhaas in Project Japan The introduction of Project Japan sounds the alarm and makes the reader aware of the necessity for research into a group of people who took up the question of changing their world: the Metabolist Movement. Rem Koolhaas dives into this Japanese avant-garde movement and produces a combination of interviews, visual and written historic documentation, timelines, and project descriptions, providing insight into the individuals of the movement, as well as its overarching story.

By Caroline Bos (UNStudio) The principals of self-organization and professionalization seem to be at odds – especially in the world of architecture. While self-organization has been lauded for its ability to create buildings where no capital investor would dare, professionalization is seen as rigid and inflexible. Can the two find a compromise? Caroline Bos, co-founder of UNStudio, sees professionalization not as inherently antagonistic, but potentially a useful counter-balance to self-organization. Some years ago, as part of a study group organized by Luuk Boelens, I visited Villa 31, one of the oldest and best-known informal neighborhoods in Buenos Aires. This is where we met Alicia, an immigrant from the north who had lived in the Villa since 1974 and had moved incrementally through various layers of self-organization. (1) As a new inhabitant she had initially participated in the construction of her own self-built house and services, such as water, sewage, and electricity, fulfilling her most basic individual needs. As time went on, Alicia became involved in community projects; a flourishing subsidized canteen had later made way for sponsored computer programs. Thus her self-interest became mixed with community interests and she had learnt to liaise with various donors. Finally, Alicia had to some extent participated in the management or the governance of the Villa. At this level, her original self-interest had expanded and developed to encompass a more comprehensive approach and understanding of shared benefits.