Join Volume, Mark Wigley, Jeffrey Inaba, C-LAB, and guests at Project No. 8 (Ace Hotel location, 22 W. 29th Street, New York, NY) from 7-9 pm on Tuesday, 13 December 2011 for holiday cheer and urban conspiracy... i.e. the launch of Volume #29. Copies will be for sale, but drinks and music are complimentary. Click here for more information.

December is the month to guarantee yourself or a loved one a yearlong source of inspiration. Buy a subscription to Volume now and you will get a unique limited edition Volume bag for free and be in the running for the Worldmoon jewel. Click here to subscribe! Commissioned by Alicia Framis for the Moon Life project, Amsterdam-based DUS Architects have designed a masterplan for the moon captured in the form of a jewel at a scale of 1:140,000,000. The jewel can be worn as a brooch or a necklace. (This offer is valid from Dec 1st - 31st, 2011. 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 January 2012 and will receive the jewel in a special gift box, free of charge.) Click here to subscribe to Volume.

Join Printed Matter, Jeffrey Inaba and guests to celebrate the launch of Volume #29: The Urban Conspiracy! Friday 2 December, 2011, 5-7 pm, at Art Basel Miami Beach, Miami Beach Covention Center. Sponsored by Printed Matter.

One-day conference on Friday 9 December 2011, 9-18 h. at V2, the Institute for the Unstable Media, Rotterdam. With Rob van Kranenburg, Martin Pot, Ben van Lier and others. Registration: students €15, professionals €35. Click here for more information. On December 9, 2009, the first Council-conference was held in Brussels. A wide variety of researchers, artists, IT-professionals, architects etc. gathered to discuss questions and answers concerning the Internet of Things. Part of this debate was focused on sub-themes, one of those was ‘Home-Sense’: what are the consequences, implications, questions for our home-environment in relation to the IoT? On April 9th, the world-wide IoT-day, this discussion was continued in Rotterdam on a smaller scale: now, 2 years later, it is time to gather the developments and focus once again on the issues involved. This conference intends to do that by bringing together a variety of professionals and researchers throughout the various disciplines, present/discuss the current status and try to articulate elements that will contribute to the actual, still developing issues of home vs. technology. The morning session will handle the background, architecture, technology; after lunch the emphasis will be on experience, privacy, spheres. Click here to buy Volume #28, the Internet of Things issue!

Wednesday 23 November 23, 8 pm, De Verdieping, Amsterdam. With Peter Luscuere and Hielkje Zijlstra. Entrance: € 2.50. Click here for more information. Failed Architecture shows buildings and urban environments that are malfunctioning, displeasing or have failed to stand the test of time and are currently neglected, abandoned or even vandalized or demolished, because of changing economic, social, political and/or physical circumstances. In the sixth edition of Failed Architecture, the focus will be on the more concrete, technical and practical failures of architecture. Which seemingly clever building technologies or materials have turned out to have unforeseen negative implications for the inhabitants, users, repairmen and janitors? Which types of buildings are more often subject to failure or usage problems? When can we speak of just unforeseen complications and when are architects or contractors to blame? Which cases are exemplary and what lessons can be learned for future architecture?

By Usman Haque and Ed Borden. Published in 'Volume #28: Internet of Things'. Pachube, a data brokerage platform for (sensory) data, positions itself at the fore of what is emerging as a global network of millions of exchangeable data sets. Such a platform, in combination with the emergent technological landscape, then raises questions about a very slippery topology of relations to data. The slipperiness of the current times can be seen as rooted in the novelty of our current state on both individual and corporate fronts. As the US Bill of Rights provided a reassurance of the rights to human liberty, Usman Haque and Ed Borden have crafted a new Bill of Rights for our emerging state of Things. Pachube Internet of Things Bill of Rights 1. People own the data they (or their ‘things’) create. 2. People own the data someone else creates about them. 3. People have the right to access data gathered from public space. 4. People have the right to access their data in full resolution in real-time. 5. People have the right to access their data in a standard format. 6. People have the right to delete or backup data they own. 7. People have the right to use and share their data however they want. 8. People have the right to keep their data private.

Two decades ago, an architecture magazine would be swamped with invitations for previews, tours and photo opportunities for projects ‘just finished’. A decade ago more and more press releases on prize winning competition entries would be added as part of the info mix. A little later the special mentions would get circulation; even entering a competition was seen as a publicity opportunity. It seemed only a matter of time before press releases announcing “we’ve started in the office this morning at 8.30 am, another great day in front of us, full of promise and opportunity” would surface. Publicity equaled economy. Maybe it still does, but not in the form where profiling projects, clearly identifiable as ‘someone’s’ work will necessarily result in a direct connection to new assignment. We know it is not like that anymore, not in most western countries, not for a lot of offices. In the late 90s, shrinkage was discovered as an interesting urban phenomenon, a new challenge for the profession; today this theme has reached the profession in the most unexpected way: no clients what so ever.

Volume #29: The Urban Conspiracy will be previewed Sunday 23 October 2011 at the Dutch Design Week in Eindhoven. The occasion is the launch of the third edition of the TRUST Design series, a collaborative project by Premsela and Archis. All editions are inserted in Volume Magazine and presented at special Trust Design breakfast events at several venues all over the world. This time we focus on TRUST Design and Faith. Faith and trust are the underpinnings of almost all our sociological and personal constructs, yet both are allusive and largely intangible qualities. What role does faith have in our relationship with design? Can the mechanisms of faith be used to enable trust through design? Apple has created an almost quasi-religion around its products through design, while contemporary faith-based organisations are turning to design as a way to increase and strengthen their role in society. In addition to discussing Trust Design’s central exploration of the relationship between trust and design, we extend the conversation to debate the role of faith - spiritual or otherwise - within trust and design. Starring: Scott Burnham (researcher and writer), Mathieu Frossard (designer), Corien Pompe (Chief Designer Colour & Material from Volvo), Matthijs van Dijk (Professor of Industrial Design and author of Vision in Design) and Tim Vermeulen (program manager at Premsela). Premsela Design Breakfast Trust Design, Faith Date: Sunday 23 October 2011 Time: 10.00 - 12.00 Location: Designhuis Tickets: 5 euro (including entrance Designhuis)

Vienna-based creative studio Atelier Olschinsky merges the worlds of digital illustration and architecture. Under the names 'Cities' and 'Plants', Peter Olschinsky and Verena Weiss created a series of stunningly detailed graphics. Providing a look into the fictional machine rooms of today's cities, the creators tend to represent the urban beauty as well as complexity and brutality. Check out Atelier Olschinsky's Behance profile for more pictures of the 'Cities' and 'Plants' series.

Sunday 2 October 2011, 1 pm. MoMA PS1, 22-25 Jackson Ave. at the intersection of 46th Ave. Long Island City, NY 11101. Click here to attend the event on Facebook. When things start talking back to you… Literally everything is getting connected these days, your children, dog, car, fridge, even the trees in the park. Data production and data collecting is key here. It has huge potential for creation, and likewise for control. Artists and designers are discovering new fields for exploration, commerce sees new potential and new markets, and governments take further steps in monitoring, mapping and ruling. So what is the role of the designer here? And how should we approach the tension between creation and control? A discussion with Mark Shepard, Lilet Breddels and Arjen Oosterman, plus our mystery guest...

30 September-2 October, MoMA PS1, Long Island City, Queens. Click here for more information. [nyc art book fair] Printed Matter, the world’s largest non-profit organization dedicated to publications by artists, presents the sixth annual NY Art Book Fair, September 30–October 2 at MoMA PS1, Long Island City, Queens. A preview will be held on the evening of Thursday, September 29th. Free and open to the public, and featuring more than 200 exhibitors, the NY Art Book Fair is the world’s premier event for artists’ books, contemporary art catalogs and monographs, art periodicals, and artist zines. Exhibitors include international presses, booksellers, antiquarian dealers, artists and independent publishers from twenty countries. We're proud to be part of the NYC Art Book Fair! The NY Art Book Fair 2011 will include special projects, screenings, book signings, and performances, throughout the weekend. The Classroom—a curated series of artist-led workshops, readings, and discussions—and the fifth annual Contemporary Artists’ Books Conference—a dynamic, two-day symposium on emerging practices and debates within art-book culture—will engage visitors in lively conversation all weekend long.

Excerpts from an interview with Volume, March 2010. Originally trained as a mechanical engineer, Michelle Addington, now a professor at the Yale School of Architecture, approaches the field of architecture through the application and manipulation of technologies in terms of discrete environmental systems. Arguing against the corralling of forms and ideas into fixed stations, Addington proposes that, similar to work she was doing at NASA in the late seventies and early eighties, architects should approach their practice as the development of malleable, passing events – that which is material though not necessarily visible. Addington recently co-authored Smart Materials and Technologies for the Architecture and Design Professions (Architectural Press, 2005). "We are learning how to have abstract conceptions of an environment no longer defined by straightforward output. I think we’re getting closer – through digital models that embed transience – but not fast enough. Technological development starts as a discrete phenomenon or single property. Then, the pushback follows. We, as a profession, are the wrong ones to be deciding what property we need; this is how we have been frozen. We should be generating the proof of concept, by testing and pushing back. Our way of exploring and understanding will open up ideas beyond the normative sequence of technological development, which is parsed down and atomized. The first step is to accept that the existing building, even the new building, is a dumb armature. The building itself becomes dumber, and cheaper and more of a commodity as we are able to focus on changeable and interchangeable technologies." "We also need to stop zealously guarding our territory. The more we try to maintain control over it, the more it continues to shrink. Ours is one of the few fields in which the profession (Architect) completely circumscribes the discipline (Architecture). Our desire to have everything defined by professional practice, as opposed to a disciplinary canon, is becoming obsolete." "An intelligent environment might no longer be an environment; it might be a set of autonomous and transient and discrete responses that will happen once and disappear. We need to get comfortable with the body as the entity that negotiates with our surroundings. That is our new baseline. That’s an architectural question – it won’t come up in neurobiology or physics or engineering." "The mode we should be working in? I don’t know yet. It’s tragic that the kind of open-ended imaginative thinking that I remember from thirty years ago when I was at NASA is pretty much restricted to the military now, to the Defense Advanced Researched Projects Agency (DARPA). Things they are doing with the human body are particularly interesting – it’s open-ended but designed to be implemented soon. This is something that I wish we, as architects, could get ourselves a little bit more involved in." This article is published as online part of ‘Volume #24: Counterculture’.

Thursday 14, Friday 15 and Saturday 16 April, 9:30-11:00 am, Studio Zeta Milano, Via Friuli 26, Milan. Free admission (limited capacity). Start the day with coffee, croissants and quality conversation on design! Premsela, the Netherlands Institute for Design and Fashion, and the Design Academy Eindhoven present The Milan Breakfasts, taking place during the Salone Internazionale del Mobile in Milan. We invite everyone to join us at 9:30 am on Thursday 14, Friday 15 and Saturday 16 April for free coffee, croissants and quality conversations on design. International design professionals and educators will talk with each other and the audience about three urgent issues: consumer trust, open design and designing for social change. Before all the galleries open and the frenzy of the Salone takes hold of Milan, start the day with breakfast and food for thought. Thursday 14 April: Trust This Breakfast Premsela and Scott Burnham have been investigating the problem of consumers' waning trust in the products and services they use since 2009 in the Trust Design project. So far, the design world has not succeeded in finding satisfactory solutions. We’ll talk with Burnham, Lilet Breddels of Volume magazine, and the designers Gijs Bakker and Alberto Meda on how design can win back the public's trust. Friday 15 April: Open Design Don't ask what design can do for you – ask what you can do for design! More than four decades after John Kennedy’s original exhortation, the masses have all the tools, information and production methods to become designers themselves. But is it really true that anyone can be a designer? We’ll talk to professor Paul Atkinson and the designers Yves Béhar, Martí Guixé and Joost Grootens about open design. Saturday 16 April: Design Matters! Green design, cradle to cradle and sustainability are gaining ground in the design world. Responsible design is quickly becoming a matter of course. But what about the other pressing issues 90 per cent of the world population is dealing with today? Real design for real needs is a matter of urgency. We’ll talk about designing for social change with guests including Premsela director Els van der Plas, Maria Teresa Leal of the design cooperative Coopa-Roca, designer Jan Boelen, Cheick Diallo and Ilse Crawford (TBC).

Thursday April 14, 9:30-11:00 am. Studio Zeta Milano, Via Friuli 26, Milan, Italy, free entrance (first served). With Gijs Bakker, Scott Burnham, Alfredo Meda and Lilet Breddels. With the Western world heading towards a life expectancy of 100 years, and the rest of the world soon to follow, the question is: with the realm of architectural invention on the issue ready for the taking, are you ready to face getting old? And are you ready to talk about it over breakfast? Volume 27 launches its issue on aging during breakfast at the Milan Design Fair. This issue of Volume explores the question of aging through current architectural typologies and institutional approaches over vast territory – from the nuclear industry that builds until One Billon AD to the top-down and bottom-up growth of New York, Tehran, Berlin and Newcastle – and is a necessary compendium for those who wish to design into the future by understanding the immediate challenges of today. Included in the issue is a 40-page insert on trust, design and aging, presented by both Archis and Premsela. Over breakfast, Gijs Bakker, Scott Burnham, Alfredo Meda and Lilet Breddels will be on hand to discuss the importance of designing trust throughout the ages. They ask: after the breakdown of trust in the functioning of society, can design win back the public's confidence? This event is hosted by Archis, Premsela: the Dutch Institute for Design and Fashion, and Design Academy Eindhoven.