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.

With 64 guides spread throughout the 68 pages of the issue, 'The Ultimate Guide to Guides' helps architects and designers to navigate the immediate future of their profession and reflect on the role of guides, manuals and tutorials today.

Official maps are instruments of power, benefitting some while impoverishing others. Inscribed in the law, they fortify the territorial interests of a select few. This is especially apparent in places where the pressures of resource extraction collide with land claims by disenfranchised indigenous groups. In Papua, where capital-rich mining and logging operations rule, local groups are attempting to stem the tide of environmental destruction by creating their own maps; counter-maps that demonstrate ancestral domain. The third week of The Writings on the Wall opens with Nabil Ahmed exploring how to fight a map with a map.

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).

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.

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.

In its latest plans for renovation of its Rotterdam office located in the iconic Delftse Poort high-rise complex and its head office in Haagse Poort (The Hague), one of The Netherlands largest insurance company’s Nationale Nederlanden opted to radically break with this habit. Not that they will stop changing their interiors every few years anytime soon, but they have come to terms with the fact that this should not damage the environment. They decided to strive for the highest of sustainability ambitions: Zero Waste.

This fall, in a large meeting room located inside of the bowls of MVRDV’s orange monstrous staircase at TU Delft, you could hear a pin drop. The crowd of 20-something highly international postgrad architecture students collectively held their breath for an instant. In thinking about potential topics to review we were discussing contraposing in writing and devil’s advocacy when out of the blue one of the students seemed to suggest reviewing the positive sides of ISIS. It was one of many fruitful moments of doubt and tension in the preparation of this issue of VOLUME. (The other awkward moment briefly occurred a little earlier when I asked how many students still read magazines …only two…)

It all started with 3 Beiruti’s joining Archis RSVP event #06 Amman/Ramallah in 2004 which two years later lead to Archis RSVP event #10 Beirut, dedicated to “Unbuilt”, on destruction as a deliberate act of design. Since then, we’ve established a network, friendships, a body of work. Now we went back for the first time since Covid, amid a financial decline and in the aftermath of the ammonium nitrate blast of August 2020.