Since the dawn of the people’s capitalism, where just about everyone is tied to the ups and downs of the stock market, the concept of the bursting bubble and rapid plume of shares attaining ‘a more realistic level’ has become a wide-spread cultural theme. Not just in financial markets, but in many social domains, we see how certain concepts, brands, and personalities are overvalued or promoted and how, as a consequence, counter-forces oblige them to make a reality check. Hype dies, the public gets distracted, and those who were only recently the center of attention are forgotten for the next big thing.

An unspoken revolution is occurring in architecture; a change that is slowly, sub-structurally altering the profession, from what we do, to how we do it and what we are being asked to deliver.

Neither Desperate Nor Decadent is a reaction to Ole Bouman's article Desperate Decadence in Volume #6. Bouman met Al Sager, Al Rubaian and Khanafer -three students from Kuwait- while travelling, and invited them to respond to his article.

Cities arise because of people’s basic need to live and work near one another. The city offers freedom, anonymity, trade, economy of scale, an immediately accessible consumers’ market, work potential – a swarming brew of ideas and innovation that fulfill man’s social, psychological, and economic needs. The city is the motor of progress.

At the most abstract level, the task for the artist and for the architect is essentially the same: to specify a frame. The artist’s frame may be entirely concrete or entirely abstract – from an ornately gilded rectangle to a spoken instruction – but always acts to define its contents as being artworks, whether they are newly created or nothing but found objects.

Few things are as driven by maximalism as architecture. The craft stands out for its almost boundless urge to prove itself. If you want to become a thinking, creative architect, not only must you be capable of doing anything, you also have to do it. Work, work, work: that’s the motto

Can we do something by doing (almost) nothing? Can we achieve anything by doing too much? Can we do what we need to do, by doing just what is needed? How do we define doing too much, too little? How to think through doing anyway?