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.

The Writings on the Wall is an editorial project developed in collaboration by Volume and Beta – Timișoara Architecture Biennial, about the capacity of loopholes to create exceptional experiences among the laws that produce our urban spaces. The first pair of texts (Paula V. Álvarez & Dubravka Sekulić) is dedicated to extra-legal practices.

The Writings on the Wall is an editorial project developed in collaboration by Volume and Beta – Timișoara Architecture Biennial, about the capacity of loopholes to create exceptional experiences among the laws that produce our urban spaces. (Re)publishing two texts a week, for five weeks, will constitute a free compendium of experiments that dealt with the topic

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.

The succession of Roberto Gargiani at EPFL in Lausanne [École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne] ignited a polemic about the role of history in architecture teaching. From the comfort of their personal environments noted theorists/historians Jean-Louis Cohen, Fabrizio Gallanti, Françoise Fromonot and Philip Ursprung talk about the prospects and relevance of history in architectural education. 

In revisiting Volume’s (pre)history In Volume 58: The Legacy, we conducted an interview with Hans van Dijk, editor-in-chief of Volume’s predecessor Archis during the 1980s. An exchange on the role of architecture criticism in general and the magazine in particular at the time. The sad news that Hans van Dijk passed away August 26, 2021 transforms this exchange between colleagues in search of motives and motivations into a testimony of what architecture criticism once stood for and what it may potentially be capable of today.

When humans invent things, for the first 30 years they call those things 'technology'. Then, when it's successful, they begin to call them 'infrastructure'.

Ever since the first edition in Vienna, multiple souls have coexisted within the term Media Architecture: the aesthetic as much as the theoretical, the interactive as well as the political.

With the world finally discussing solutions to avoid climate disaster, media artist Andrea Polli already has two decades of experience under her belt. Situated at the intersection of technology, science, and art her artistic practice explores the materialization of elusive atmospheres, transforming the ephemeral into media architectures. Andrea Polli discussed with Denisse Vega de Santiago.