Only two years after the pioneering, arty visions of food production in cities featured in 2007 exhibition Edible cities at NAi-Maastricht, we can say that today urban agriculture is considered as an important feature in architecture design and urban planning. And that it's a fashionable topic too. 
’In the past if you were proposing to put gardens on top of your buildings, you were considered as crazy. Now you're considered crazy if you don't’, said architect Andre Viljoen, one of the speakers at the Foodprint symposium, hosted by Stroom, Den Haag on June 26. Integrating food production with urban activities might sound strange, but in fact cities are always shaped after the type of food system feeding them. 
Author of the influential book Hungry City, Carolyn Steele explained that the first cities were born in the so-called 'fertile crescent' in order to manage the surplus of food production in the surrounding countryside. In pre-industrial cities the wealth of the city was linked directly to the wealth of its countryside: Ambrogio Lorenzetti's fresco ‘Allegoria del Buon Governo’ represents the 'good government' as a balance of city and countryside. 
In pre-industrial cities food production had to be located in proximity to urban settlements – as German economist Heinrich von Thuenen formalized in his 1826 model. But after the introduction of railroad transportation, and the introduction of industrial processes in agriculture, food production started to progressively disconnect from cities, which in turn could explode in size and population.

Your web-editor is presently traveling around the former Soviet Union, last week in Tblisi and this week residing in Moscow doing research on how people are dealing with life the Microrayon, the large-scale social housing projects developed throughout the entire former Soviet Union. The Social Housing After the Soviets project is a comparative study of the opportunities and the urgencies of public and private use of the Microrayon. Research will be published in Volume and at the International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam: Open City, as a part of the exhibition by sub-curators Bart Goldhoorn, Alexander Sverdlov and Anna Bronovitskaya under the sub-theme: Collective Follow how the research is developing on the Social Housing after the Soviets blog

Bauhaus City - Get on Site! The Bauhaus Dessau calls students from around the world to attend its anniversary year Summer School. From 22 – 31 July, the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation will hold an international Summer School entitled ‘Bauhaus City - Get on Site!’. On the occasion of its 90th anniversary, the institution invites young artists, architects, designers as well as the interested public to come to Dessau and explore the Bauhaus architecture on site. Parallel to the anniversary exhibition ‘Modell Bauhaus’ which will be shown in Berlin at the Martin-Gropius-Bau, the Summer School in Dessau offers students from all over the world the opportunity to deepen their knowledge of the Bauhaus at one of its original sites. In six workshops the examples of Classical Modernism built here will be examined through performative actions and urban interventions. Hidden traces and connections will be brought to light. The Summer School will look at the experimental housing estate Dessau-Törten, the Bauhaus buildings, the Masters’ houses, the employment office and the restaurant Kornhaus. The workshops are run by INTERBORO, New York; MUF, London; Michael Zinganel, Graz; Wochenklausur, Vienna; Kuehn Malvezzi, Berlin and Gods Entertainment, Berlin. A series of public lectures accompanies the Summer School programme.

On Friday June 5th, 2009 Al Manakh’s series of international Debates on Tour took place at the ADACH Pavilion at the 53rd Venice Biennale of Art. For this occasion architect Rem Koolhaas and curator of the ADACH Pavilion Catherine David engaged in a conversation with Ole Bouman on the curiosities and conditions that has drawn their practice and vision to the Gulf cities such as Abu Dhabi. In this, they discussed the specific urban conditions of cities in the region, and how these influence and are determined by the social/economic make-up and cultural manifestations of the city itself. Also discussed is how exposure to these circumstances has influenced the practice and personal perspective of these two internationally acclaimed cultural producers. Comments and questions from audience members - such as Mishaal Al Gergawi (of the Dubai Culture & Arts Authority) and Kaiwan Mehta (Mumbai based architect and particpant in the ADACH exhibition) – supplemented the discussion with further insight to the relationship between the cultural ambition and political will, as well as the relationship between cultural frameworks and the actual urban plan of a city.

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.

Al Manakh launches its website at Art Dubai and Sharjah Biennial 9 16-21 March 2009 The team responsible for Al Manakh 2 is expanding its network in the Gulf with researchers, correspondents and photographers. Yesterday, March 16, Rem Koolhaas one of the editors of Al Manakh gave a lecture at the Sharjah Biennial 9, sharing his experiences in the Gulf region over the last five years. Koolhaas touched upon his respect for the region and how his insights to the Gulf have developed through professional experience. He approached the Gulf as a mirror for the Western mind set, as the ultimate extravaganza that architecture worldwide suffered from. Largely developed with Western stakeholders, Dubai heard its first dismissal from those same sources. Now when the credit crisis -generated by the West- is hitting the Gulf region, that same Western world that hugely profited from the wealth is now the first to proclaim its decline.

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.