Decoding the Conversation
February 2024
Our fourth issue, Decoding the Conversation, asks what works and what doesn’t when architects talk amongst themselves, and considers the nature of information conveyed to the public by architectural media. How can diverse practitioners operating from within a codified discourse expand the domain and efficacy of architectural communication?
The issue addresses the accessibility of architectural representation and design tools, the enduring power of architecture to hold meaning and stories well after its intended use has changed, and the communicative potential of architecture (or lack thereof) to speak to others beyond its own disciplinary confines. It includes Seeing Things, an essay by Shantel Blakely; Accessing Design / Designing Access, a conversation between Paul DeFazio and Hannah Wong; More is More, a website review by Francis Aguillard; and Eavesdropping on Architecture, an essay by John McMorrough.
Our previous thread addressed issues of land and authorship, the role of media and narrative-making, and the complex and nuanced function of personal networks in the elevation of works to the architectural canon. Contributors included Yen Ha, Eva Hagberg, Mark Jarzombek, Ajay Manthripragada, Alex Oetzel, Vikramaditya Prakash, and Letícia Wouk Almino.
Pouya Khadem, Sebastián López Cardozo, Mai Okimoto, and Lauren Phillips
by Shantel Blakely
Accessing Design / Designing Access
with Hannah Wong
by Francis Aguillard
by John McMorrough
CROSS-TALK
I Would Prefer Not To, an oral history project produced by MIT’s Critical Broadcasting Lab, invites practitioners to reflect on the significance of rejecting an architectural commission. In the podcast’s November 2023 episode, host Ana Miljački speaks with Liz Diller (Diller Scofidio + Renfro) about instances when contentious commissions can offer avenues for subversion and positive change. Among other things, Diller reflects on the commission to design Moscow’s Zaryadye Park and the political context which led to her studio’s decision to undertake it.
PLAT 11: Soft equips its readers with tools for blurring and piercing through the disciplinary edges of architecture. In the journal’s latest issue, editors Jane van Velden and Paul DeFazio celebrate the conversational, the sensorial, the fuzzy. The collected contributions paint an architectural landscape of cooperation and compromise. Of note is an article by Hélène Frichot, “A Soft On for Caring Relationships,” which traces contemporary interpretations of the term “soft” in architecture and speculates on their broader significance for the field.
Figuring Territory, Canadian Centre for Architecture’s newest web issue, interrogates the relationship between the semantic implications of the term “territory” and its malleable realities. Edited by Claire Lubell, Alexandra Pereira-Edwards, and Andrew Scheinman, the issue sheds light on the perpetual figuration and re-figuration of territory. In “On Phantom Islands and Unknown Lands,” contributor Victoria Addona takes readers through a cartographic history of “phantom islands,” and reflects on the role of colonial powers in claiming control and ownership over unknown territories through mapping and figuration.
Log 55 (Summer 2022) gathers a series of articles under the broad theme of “Observations on architecture and the contemporary city,” with a subsection, “Notes on the Desert,” guest edited by Francesco Marullo. If the choice of words for the theme titles set a cool and unassuming tone—a decision likely stemming from the issue's origin as an open call—the articles themselves please and surprise. A particularly interesting take is Marija Maric’s in “Bricks, Blocks, and (Block) Chains,” which examines blockchain’s link to the commodification of land.