In Volume’s 10+ years of existence money became so ingrained in our neoliberal world, that societies have lost sight of almost any other form of value; like fairness, trust, equity, beauty, rest and uselessness. Values that we think need to get back to the surface, but by just going beyond we might loose sight. Powerful and highly interconnected managing systems are ruling that world that yet nobody seems to steer or fully understand. We as cultural agents have to go to the edges of the system we cannot leave, to scratch at some backdoors, that have no door-handle and put some wrenches to work; to dig and excavate, to unfold and rewrap.
The pressing social, political and urban questions of today cannot be dealt with from within the familiar bounds we are comfortable operating, by just one form of knowledge, one discipline, one type of practice, one approach or one cultural background. To get a grip we need to learn: to re-learn, unlearn, experiment, test, research, play.
And that is what Archis/Volume will do the coming years through research, debates, workshops, exhibitions, online publications and (at least) two issues of revamped Volume Magazine per year. The latest issue is redesigned at Irma Boom’s office with ongoing creativity, professionalism and enthusiasm.
Volume #51: Augmented Technology, represents the first step of a long-term research program undertaken by Archis/Volume and its partners. The program responds to the urgency not only to connect or re-connect the world of architecture to the tech community, but also to acknowledge the reality of design as inherently political. In this framework, the issue exposes core elements of the technological reality we live in and makes propositions for the present.
The digital space is inhabited by multiple, synthetic versions of ourselves and other agents, like bots and artificial intelligences interacting on privately owned platforms that acquire an increasingly political dimension—that is where the difference between user and citizen starts blurring. Those platforms represent a new ground of interaction that organizes life also beyond their digital boundaries into the physical world. Therefore, risks and impacts on the digital or the physical reality affect both, generating often unexpected outcomes, raising questions on the resilience of those very systems. More than that, these technologies have become the very tools through which we perceive reality and through which it is narrated to us. What world we want to live in becomes a question of design.
With: Sigrid Johannisse, Charles Landry, Clement Valla, Florence Okoye, Tamar Shafrir, Felix Madrazo, Adrien Ravon, Ben Schouten, Martijn de Waal, Adam van Heerden, Nick Land, Fred F.J. Schoorl, Doma, Victor M. Sanz, Sever, Leonardo Dellanoce, Liam Young, Nicolay Boyadjiev, Benjamin Bratton, Keiichi Matsuda, Stephan Petermann and Sander Pleij
The issue includes: Deconstruction, a 32-page insert produced with the Jaap Bakema Study Centre and designed by Loraine Furter. It investigates the deconstruction and re-use of modernist building components as researched by Rotor.
Volume #51, Augmented Technology can be purchased here.
