Once there was life without books. It’s hard to imagine what that must have been like: an age of stories and knowledge of the world which stretched no farther than a day’s walk. The introduction of the written source constituted nothing less than the creation of a time and space capsule. The story, the idea, insight, knowledge were suddenly free of their messenger and were all able to bridge distances, able to surface, vanish and reappear.

Just as there was a time before the book, there will also be a time after it. In this issue ‘The Last Book’ project is taken up, but as to the consequences of publishing exclusively online – the loss of filters such as the publisher, editor and publication costs – we can only guess. Yet it is clear that our centuries old house of knowledge is undergoing a fundamental renovation, beginning with the solid base of the library.

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In order to actively grapple with the challenges of our age, architects have to transform themselves from extremely competent executors of assignments into entrepreneurs and producers. This issue of Volume discusses essential tools to reclaim professional autonomy. In the first part, Volume sits ‘Around the table’ with forward-thinking practitioners who see a different role and responsibility for architects. The central part presents the portfolio of the Office for Unsolicited Architecture founded by Ole Bouman and students of MIT. The third part marks the unsolicited world according to young architects and artists from around the globe.

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Our field, and perhaps every field, is defined by ambition. to know ourselves we have to know ambition. But ambition is far from simple. It is never straightforward, never the singular drive it appears to be. Rather, it is a set of interacting forces in which often the means are mistaken for ends. This issue of Volume on Ambition offers a preliminary map of what has become a landscape of misguided purpose.

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“The world is running out of places where it can start over.”
Rem KoolhaasAl Manakh offers a detailed analysis of the history, culture and architecture of The Gulf region including Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Ras Al Khaimah and discusses the implications of the rapid development of these territories for the rest of the world. This is the first time that the unprecedented urban condition of this region has been comprehensively documented from diverse viewpoints and communicated to outside the region. Voices of architects, intellectuals and developers making the Gulf happen are represented in the numerous essays and interviews that accompany this richly illustrated study. Key figures such as, Rem Koolhaas, Ole Bouman, and Thomas Krens give their take on the current situation in The Gulf, along with their predictions for the future of this ‘ultimate tabula rasa’.

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It seems an eternal distinction: sometimes people build, sometimes they destroy. However, since we have a concept of modernity, we also understand that building is very often based on sheer destruction. It is ‘the price of progress’. A new insight is now emerging: much destruction also has an agenda. It has a precision that reminds us of architecture. It has a formal dimension that reminds us of design. In this issue: explore the sinister creativity of Cities Unbuilt.

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Experience the wholesome effects of agitation in its political, physical and emotional dimensions. Meet agitators René Daalder, François Roche, Peter Cook, Hernan Diaz Alonso, Philippe Parreno, and Cesar Millan; check the realities of Beirut and Prishtina, visit informal Rio de Janeiro, be inspired by ‘Gum Pics architecture’, see the hidden persuaders in car design, discover the history of alternative architecture magazines, read…

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Introduction - Jeffrey Inaba
Towards Turbulence - Mark Wigley
We Are All Rebels! - Ole Bouman
Heard a Good Idea Lately? - C-Lab
My Work Is Like Salt. Hernan Diaz-Alonso Interviewed by Jeffrey Inaba
Bump, Crease, Face: A History of Pininfarina - C-Lab
Unfinished Business. François Roche Interviewed by Jeffrey Inaba and Benedict Clouette
Gum C-Lab / Photographs by Maurizio MucciolaBeirut Unbuilt
…To the Ends of the Earth - Tony ChakarWatergate, Again - Reinhold Martin
What If, Why Not? Philippe Parreno Interviewed by Benedict Clouette
Architecture and Justice - Laura Kurgan / Spatial Information Design Lab
Mandalas - Paul Preissner
Monster in a Box: The Sucker Car / Jim Hall Neil M. Denari
The Future of Everything. René Daalder Interviewed by Jeffrey Inaba
Avery Index: Famous When Dead - C-LabAlibi: Rio de Janeiro - Jeffrey Inaba, Laurel Broughton, Kyla FarrellPressing Buenos Aires’ Buttons - Richard Massey
Bandwidth - Sean Dockray with Fiona Whitton, Tom Pilla, and Erik Carver
Obsession - Ben NicholsonArchis Interventions Prishtina
Building in the Wild: The New Prishtina - Kai Vöckler
What’s New in ‘New Prishtina’? - Andrew HerscherDesign Like You Give a Damn A discussion with Kenneth Frampton
Making a Scene. Peter Cook Interviewed by Jeffrey Inaba & Benedict Clouette
Clip / Stamp / Fold: The Radical Architecture of Little Magazines 196x–197x - Beatriz Colomina, including Craig Buckley, Anthony Fontenot, Urtzi Grau, Lisa Hsieh, Alicia Imperiale, Lydia Kallipoliti, Olympia Kazi, Daniel Lopez-Perez, and Irene Sunwoo.
Multiplication 2.0 - Jane Harrison and David Turnbull / Atopia
Gum Pics Delight - Spencer Graham
Leadership. Cesar Millan Interviewed by Jeffrey Inaba
Architecture as Hypothesis - Madeline Gins and Arakawa
Camp for Oppositional Architecture AnArchitektur
The Meaning of the Draw - Arthur van den Boogaard

SPECIAL, NOT PUBLISHED IN THIS ISSUE. ONLINE ONLY:
Being political without producing politics, Camp for Oppositional Architecture, Utrecht, 2006 - Markus Miessen

If a crisis is imminent, we need strong policies to cope with it. If the world is facing a crisis of debt, a crisis of truth, a crisis of sprawl and a crisis of purpose, what can design do? This issue of Volume is your survival kit to take responsability and curb the lie that gives a dream to the millions but will be their predicament when they really need a home.

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Truth or suburbia (editorial part I) – Ole Bouman
Scenarios of Doom
Grey Goo as Condition
Monument or Armageddon (editorial part II) – Alexander D’HoogheFEDERAL REPORT
by Alexander D’Hooghe, Tim Campos, Neeraj Bhhatia, and many othersLearning from Late Modernism - Joseph Lluis Sert, Ernst Cassirer, Sigfried Giedion, Louis Kahn and Fumihiko Maki
A Theory of the New Monumentality: From Crisis to Project – Alexander D’Hooghe
An Antipragmatic Manifesto - Mark Jarzombek
Research MIT Love - Yung Ho Chang

See how this issue of Volume can help you craft the agenda for Ubiquitous China, Covering: the Confucian-Taoist nexus, Utopianism, the new empire, Google.cn, heritage & preservation, CCTV, publishing industry, education, urban practice, architectural design, architects as businessmen, criticism, chaos as control, and much more (not necessarily in hierarchical order). In China everywhere…

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Ubiquitous China, editorial - Ole Bouman
China for Real, introduction - Linda Vlassenrood
Controlled by Chaos - Jiang Jun
Ideology as Infrastructure - Jin Chong
Post-Planning as Model, A Decade of Chinese Cities and Architecture in the Age of Hyper Speed - Shi Jian
Upon the Ruins of Utopia - Zhou Rong
China is Deleuzian, A New Plea for The Fold and The Unfold - Rick Dolphijn
Porous Borders - Zhu Jianfei
A Line in the Hutong, The Story of Zhang Jinli - Ou Ning
City Lost - Wang Jun
The Necessity of Banality - Yung Ho Chang
The Big Shift - Tan Kok-Meng
In Search of Quality - Li Xiangning
Learning for a Strange World - Stanislaus Fung, Liu Ke
Architect as Developer, Interview with Ma Qingyun - Bert de Muynck
Who’s Urban Dilemmas - Christian Ernsten
Found in Translation - Rem Koolhaas
Publish or Perish - Zhi Wenjun
The Name of the Place is I Like It - Michael Stanton

In the previous two issues we emphasized how power takes shape and acquires form. How it can be recognized. We’re now taking it one step further in our Volume research campaign on the architecture of (a countervailing) power. This time we will show you how power is using architecture not simply to express itself, but to organize itself. Power structures and relations think architecturally in order to be successful. And if you hope to challenge these structures and relations, you better do the same. A true Macchiavelli is always an architect.

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The Architecture of Power, Part 2 The previous issue of the magazine explored how ‘Power is in the details’. This issue we are widening our perspective and focusing on building schemes. Meanwhile people keep asking us questions…

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