In 1972 the Club of Rome published The Limits to Growth in which they explored the scenario of what would happen in a world driven by limitless growth using finite resources. About 40 years later we are experiencing the clash of these colliding vectors. The bigger the boom the worst the bust, and there is no place on the globe were the spatial implications of the unfolding scenario of The Club of Rome is more evident: Detroit, Michigan. Detroitification is the fear of every American city. But Detroit is also giving birth to the ideas that will perhaps transform it from a symbol of despair into a beacon of hope. Detroit and other cities in the Rust Belt area have abandonned the idle hope for another boom. In the Detroit areaa a new paradigm is emerging that can help to break the negative spiral. This new spark that has entered the Detroit mind is the shrink paradigm. The spatial implications of this paradigm will be such that the urban landscape will become less urban, a hybrid between a rural landscape and the metropolis, a type of '21st century countryside'.

Largely hidden from the view of the city dweller, a worldwide network of food producers and supermarket chains takes care of our supply of daily food. This is very convenient, but it is also the cause of many problems. A handful of distributors decides what we eat. For the most part the people who produce the food are invisible. The natural seasons are passed by. Transport puts a heavy toll on the environment and climate. Supply is dependent on the amount of fuel available. There is hardly any knowledge of how our food is actually produced. The return of food production to the city might help to increase this awareness and might also create healthy and safe food within the boundaries of a more sustainable city. This requires a new way of looking at the city, where nature, the production landscape and the recreational landscape are linked to urbanism in a more ‘natural' way. With Foodprint Stroom aims to explore the possibilities of The Hague as a production landscape and to develop utopian, appealing and feasible proposals. Speakers Henk de Zeeuw, Paula Sobie (CA), Debra Solomon, Katrin Bohn (UK), André Viljoen (UK), Jan Willem van der Schans, Janneke Vreugdenhil, Christina Kaba (ZA), Nils Norman (UK), Menno Swaak, Paul Bos, Onno van Eijk, John Thackara (UK), Bart Pijnenburg, Gaston Remmers, Tracy Metz, Christien Meindertsma, Joep van Lieshout, Nicole Hoven, Maarten Doorman, Will Allen (VS), Jago van Bergen, Vincent Kuypers, Dick Veerman, Carolyn Steel (UK), Gerwin Verschuur, Winy Maas, Annechien ten Have en Rob Baan.

Drawings, photo-montages, renderings and models have always been powerful means to convey ideas, present scenarios and research the future. The publication Beyond Architecture provides us with a bulky collection of sometimes intelligent and mostly enchanting and simply stunning imagery of how artists are dealing in their work with architecture and the city. For architects it is interesting to see 'their' subject approached by other disciplines. Many artists are using similar architectural techniques, but the difference lies in that for artists the drawing, model and photo-montage is the final product, where for the architect it is a means to an end i.e. to build. According to Lukas Feireiss the book: "charts novel ways of discovering and negotiating the potential of the urban in visual culture, thus also providing alternative and valid critical insights into understanding the city" Where architects in general produce their imagery as means to project the future, the artists in Beyond Architecture are investigating the potency and problematics of the present. The book presents the imagery without accompanying judgement or analysis. The absence of accompanying essays or a framing of the content is a missed opportunity and result in confusion.

Beyond Architecture Imaginative Buildings and Fictional Cities Beyond Architecture is the first publication of its kind to document the creative exploration of architecture and urban propositions in the contemporary arts. The projects collected in this book demonstrate how not only architects and designers, but also artists are taking architecture as a starting point for experimentation. They range from performance, installation art and crafted sculptures to architectural models, alternative ideas for living spaces and furniture, as well as illustration, painting, collage and photography. Through stunning photography, visuals and complementary texts, these visionary concepts reveal the hidden creative potential for architecture and urban environments in inventive ways. Editors: R. Klanten, L. Feireiss Release: February 2009 Price: € 44,00 / $ 65,00 / £ 40,00 Format: 24 x30 cm Features: 208 pages, full colour, hardcover ISBN: 978-3-89955-235-5 get Beyond Architecture

16 June 2009 – 26 June 2009 at Berlage Institute - Botersloot 25, Rotterdam Imagining Recovery is an exhibition based on an international competition charging designers to collectively imagine innovation recovery through design. Designers were asked to offer their expertise in designing a means of getting from the present to the image of recovery. On 20 January 2009, the first day of the Obama presidency, began the current administration’s commitment to transparency, participation and collaboration in government. On 17 February, President Obama signed the Recovery Act into law and launched Recovery.gov, a website publishing the spending of recovery funds in the name of transparency, offering “maps, charts, and graphics” to illustrate the distribution of funds. The exhibition calls upon designers of all types to imagine the futures these maps, charts, graphics and accounting figures serve to anticipate, and to interpret for the public the lived experience of this future by producing an image of recovery. This moment of change offers an opportunity for designers to rethink their role in our society. Imagining Recovery promotes collaboration by pairing designers with policy makers to collectively write the competition brief, proposing a model wherein designers can actively participate in the initial imaginings of the policies they will be called upon to implement.

the Masters of Intervention event with a lecture by Nader Vossoughian, titled Happy City the next issue of Volume 'Architecture of Hope' will be presented at Felix Meritis (Amsterdam): Sunday 5 april 2009 14.00 - 17.00 Teekenzaal - Felix Meritis, Amsterdam Special Masterclass at P!ONEER Can we build a happy city? Can we engineer happiness? A Masterclass on creative industry, social cohesion, participatory planning and creating new worlds What is left of the highmodernist ideals? How do they translate into the Wijkaanpak,the national push to uplift the Dutch ghettos? And what instruments have we got to engineer society and change people in their beliefs and behavior? Nader Vossoughian wrote on the global polis and its engineer of happiness Otto Neurath. He has a strong vision on the knowledge economy, how it creates ignorance and intelligence. Is ignorance bliss? Or do we set course to develop a responsible participatory community? What is the ethics of urban transformation? Free entry for applicants for this program, reservation is necessary: maakbaarheid@partizanpublik.nl For more information on the Masters of Intervention go to engineeringsociety.wordpress.com [NL]

Last week(end) Volume has been present in an exposé of magazine culture around the world. Tokyo and Luxembourg to be precise. In Tokyo, Volume was exhibited in the We ♥ Magazines Library which opened last week in Omotesando Hills, Tokyo. Colophon2009 - Luxembourg (see slideshow full screen) Another celebration of the independent periodical took place in Colophon2009 in Luxembourg. Magazine makers from all over the world gathered in a congregation discussing, lecturing and networking in concert with publishers, distributors, designers and other magazine enthusiasts. Volume was invited as one of the ten Magazines to outfit an exhibition space, capturing some of the spirit of the our publication. Volume's exhibit was titled "The Situation Room," referring to the crisis management space under the White House, and evoking imagery of Ken Adam's War Room he designed for Dr. Strangelove. On the 7 meter high walls of the Volume situation room two windows on the world were projected, one with imagery of the various RSVP events that were organized since 2004, on the other textual commentary and analysis of the RSVP events. A dialogue between image and text. Between these two projections an eight seat conference table where the agenda's for architecture that emerged from these events be discussed. Surfacing one of the central drives of the Volume project: uncovering new urgencies an opportunities for architecture.

From wacko hippy-esk ideology, ‘sustainability’, or ‘eco-friendly’, or ‘green’ has now become globally accepted. But, as what? As an environmental urgency, as a political issue, as a technical problem, as a historical destiny, or as a new world order? And with which consequences? The sustainability consensus is dangerous, since the concept has no political content and can be used for any cause. Carbon neutrality and zero emissions are like magic formulas, cover ups for complicated ethical questions about the inequalities in our societies. Architecture is called to rescue the planets future with eco-cities and sustainable design but what is this future is rarely discussed. We invite you to join us in the examination of sustainability, and answer questions as: whose, what kind of and sustainability in which way? Help us setting the zero point, and let’s search for the strategies after zero and plan more sustainable furtures.