+

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Project founders: Ole Bouman, Rem Koolhaas, Mark Wigley

AMO: Research and Design Studio for Architectural Thinking, Rotterdam

C-Lab: The Columbia Laboratory for Architectural Broadcasting, New York

ARCHIS: Magazine for Architecture, City, and Visual Culture, Amsterdam

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Volume goes beyond

Mediakit 2007There are innumerable architecture and culture media interested in what is currently happeningThere are innumerable media occupied with how something was doneThere are innumerable media focused on who is at the top of the ladder, which celebrities are hot

Volume is the only magazine setting the desing agenda rather than covering done dealsVolume is the only magazine writing with Rem Koolhaas instead of writing just about him

Volume is the only magazine with a global platform to voice architectural intelligence, any way, anywhere, anytime

Volume

Volume is the only magazine which is not just a paper, but an engine for design practice, an instrument for cultural invention and re-invention

Volume is the only magazine which is not just a magazine, but also a studio and a school

Under the heading of ‘To Beyond Or Not To Be’ the issue of ‘going beyond the office, the school, and the magazine’ is being discussed in essays by Rem Koolhaas, Mark Wig-ley and Ole Bouman.

34 + 35 = Beyond Architecture

Pierre Huyghe and Le Corbusier marionettesPierre Huyghe, Production Stills for Working Title, 2004photo Michael Vahrenwald, marionette fabrication: Puppet Heap, Inc.wire-frame building: Kazuma Oshita, McConnell & Borow, Inc./PropArt.tree: Makoto Aoki, McConnell & Borow, Inc./PropArt

BEYONDARCHITECTURE

11%

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‘One issue ago this magazine appeared under another name. But it already announced a new project: VOLUME. A title as an object, as energy, and as a container full of reflexive content, representing the expansion of architectural territories and the new mandate for design. It is be-coming irrevocably clear that architecture today has a growing potential to be more than shelter, enclosure, occupation, and spatial accommodation. Beyond all that, there is a growing awareness of a potential that may ultimately challenge the very character of architecture as we know it. For some this means anxiety and perhaps despair about a profession in distress. Others face this challenge with full confidence and intellectual curiosity about the implications for architectural intelligence.’

Universities, schools of higher education, institutions, libraries, museums

Architects, designers, artists Architectural bureaus, professionals in the building industry

Students

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MediafactsVolume#1: To Beyond Or Not To Be Readership

Ilka&Andreas Ruby gathered 14 projects where the desi-gner did as little as he/she could (or was allowed to). Too many architects make too much architecture; a con-versation with Giancarlo De Carlo. Sam Jacob interviews Lou Reed on his performance in Casa da Musica and Tho-mas Daniell reviews a Japanese garden walk composed by Laurie Anderson.

Xu Zhen, Doing Nothing till No electricity Clock (remade), 2003

Volume #2 – 02 + 03

Doing(almost)nothing

OBLOMOVVolume #2 – 04 + 05

For a great deal of contemporary architecture the brief seemsto represent a condition that is alien to architecture. It is seen asa framework that merely defines the field within which thearchitectural project unfolds – it is the mission to be fulfilledwithout questioning that mission too much. Yet by adoptingthis reactive relationship to the brief, architecture makes itselffatally dependent on the brief’s quality. For if the brief is ill-defined, as so often is the case with competitions, then archi-tecture’s answer to the question posed cannot be a lot moreintelligent. We therefore argue that in order to make a validcontribution to society, the architect has to treat the brief as anintegral part of the project itself. The brief is not a given, but amaterial to be processed, reflected, tested, questioned, and, ifnecessary, redefined.

This act of reviewing the question can cause the architect todraw a variety of radical conclusions. One of them may be toreject the project altogether. It suffices to recall the famousanecdote about Cedric Price and the married couple whomhad asked Price to build a house for them. As they started toexplain the brief the house should fulfill, they got into an argu-ment with each other, making evident their different desiresand concepts about the house. Finally, Price interrupted them,saying that what they needed was not an architect, but adivorce lawyer – and rejected the commission. Even thoughPrice did not do the project, he clearly did not do nothing. Hemade a very precise proposal by urging his clients to face thefact that their real project at this point was not to construct ahouse, but to reconstruct their relationship. Thus a refusal canin fact be constructive. This is even true when the project refus-es to materialize as an oeuvre at all, like John Cage´s famouscomposition entitled 4’ 33’ (1952), which consists of the pianistsitting at a piano and not playing for exactly four minutes and33 seconds. This is obviously not nothing, and it becomes a verydense scenario. People start to wonder what’s going on andwhy the musicians don’t start playing. To compensate for theunbearable silence they begin making furtive noises them-

selves – clearing their throats, moving nervously, causing theseat to squeak and so on. It’s only when the musician eventual-ly stands up from the piano and leaves the stage, that the audi-ence finally realises that while they had been waiting for theperformance to start, it has already ended. What may haveappeared in the first instance to be an annihilation of musicsoon enough proved to be the contrary. By not letting themusic play, Cage enabled the audience to listen to the sound ofsilence, and thus, in the same way that Beuys was enlarging thenotion of the work of art, he radically enlarged the notion ofmusic by eliminating the distinction between sound and noise.1

Therefore the suspension of an action which is expected caninduce something very substantial to occur. We would like tothink that architecture should reserve its right to take advan-tage of this form of inverted action as well. Sometimes doingno thing is the only way to do the right thing. In their project forthe Place Léon Aucoc in Bordeaux in 1996, Lacaton & Vassalpursued this architecture of omission to the ultimate degree.The city of Bordeaux had asked them to make proposals for the‘embellishment’ of the square. Lacaton Vassal, however,already found it beautiful the way it was, and came to the con-clusion that all the square needed was better maintenance andcare. So they drew up a catalogue of suggested measures, butconsciously refrained from physically altering the space.

With their ‘negative’ projects, both Lacaton Vassal and CedricPrice exposed how their briefs posed the question incorrectly.Not only was the actual issue lying somewhere else, but it alsocould not be ‘helped’ by architecture. To find a way out, theytried to redefine the specificity of the intervention required -Price referred his clients to another expert able to deal withtheir situation more appropriately, while Lacaton Vassal tenta-tively acted in the role of that other expert for the sake of theproject. That is to say, both architects used the intelligence ofarchitecture to disengage it from a task ill-directed towards it.

Reprogramming Architectureby Ilka & Andreas Ruby

‘‘Architecture must go beyond itself ’ was the motto of Volume’s first issue. We illustrated some new areas of application for architectrual intelligence, beyond building. Math, medicine, lite-rature, visual arts, satellite technology... these areas also present a choice between doing a huge amount or a very tiny amount. There, too, we see the differences between the will to power, the will to understanding, the will to beauty, the will to serve society and even the will to destruc-tion. Doing things is a question of degrees. That is what this issue is about: an analysis of the architectural Will and how to decide on the right dose.’

Volume#2: Doing(Almost)Nothing

Methods and potentials of broadcasting architecture are discussed in essays by Ole Bouman, Spencer Graham, Vi-cente Guallart, Dirk van den Heuvel, Arjen Oosterman, Kai Vöckler and Alejandro Zaera-Polo. The magazine in-cludes a special C-Lab newspaper with Jeffrey Inaba, Feli-city D. Scott, Nadar Vossoughian, Monique Girard, David Stark, Laura Kurgan, Keller Easterling, Jeannie Kim and the AMO Bulletin on information strategies in an era of information overload.

Mood Engineering

courtesy Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences

from the musical 42nd Street

courtesy Astralwerks Records

from Just Imagine, 1930

Batman

from Metropolis, 1927

Mood Engineering | Volume III | 40 – 41

photo Armin Linke

courtesy Serpentine Gallery, London

drawing of the War Room by Ken Adam from Dr. Strangelove

Cool and depersonalized, Adam’s looming forms and menacing perspectives confl ate the war room and the board room to evoke a post-atomic landscape of limitless power. They are intimidating spaces where Orwellian organizations with ominous names like Spectre, Power, and the Pentagon mastermind

global conspiracies of Cold War violence and death. To depict a society that glamorizes death as stylish sport, Adam transformed military hardware into Warhol-like icons of mass destruction. The Giant map in the War Room of Dr. Strangelove (1964 ed.), for example, acted as a superpower scoreboard,

rendering mankind’s extinction as more show than substance; a graphic spectacle detached from reality of human suffering.

Donald Albrecht, ‘Dr.Caligari’s Cabinets: The Set Design of Ken Adam’, Mark Lamster (ed.), Archi-tecture and Film, Princeton Architectural Press, 2000

‘Architecture beyond itself also means the creation of a story that precedes every architectonic work and that in particular towers over every architectural presentation. The architectonic re-ality on the ground is not what counts, but rather the architectonic story in the air. A growing number of designers understand this well and are increasingly concentrating on the develop-ment of their work’s effect in addition to its production. They produce a never ending series of images which will never transcend the suggestion stage. They are present in the right circles and construct their mission’s unique story. Without this story the architect’s position as the creator of good environments would be increasingly dubious.’

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MediafactsVolume#3 Broadcasting Architecture Distribution

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‘As a creative platform, issue #4 reconsiders the act of getting people together, not through building per se, but through means that can also be completely non-constructivist. In this way architecture is going beyond itself by going back to its primary justification: holding people together or holding them apart. The works in the expo and the catalogue demonstrate the variety of ways in which this is possible. They all convey a provocation and an appeal to communicate, and most of them do this without falling back upon the certainties of a static material discipline or the alibi of a whimsical client.’

The isolation of the self; the sacrosanct object; the solitu-de of ‘outstanding’ architecture. Are these signs of a mori-bund culture? If so, where did our vitality go? Can we find it in other domains? Can we re-animate, re-infuse oursel-ves with energy? Read how reality seeps through our unas-sailable myths and penetrates our splendid isolation.In this issue you find Shareware!, a portable exhibition of ideas to break in, break out, and break through architec-ture as we know it. With Artgineering, Elena Simons, Fat, Guerilla Girls, Jeanne van Heeswijk, Manifesta, Superflex.

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Archis Publishers: Publisher of VOLUME, a state of the art ma-gazine that sets the design agenda for ‘architecture to go beyond itself ’.

Archis Advice: Consultancy concerning spatial issues (Competitions, lectures, debates, exhibitions)

Archis Interventions: A not-for-profit branch of Archis Foun-dation dedicated to provide cities with clues and concepts to revive the public domain (for instance, after conflict)

Become part of Volume’s network!

Archis

AMO Research and design studio that applies architectural thinking to disci-plines beyond the borders of architecture and urbanism - including sociology, technology, and politics. AMO operates in tandem with its companion company the Office for Metropolitan Architecture, an internationally renowned firm, based in Rotterdam, The Netherlands.

Experimental research unit devoted to the development of new forms of communication in architecture. The Columbia Laboratory for Ar-chitectural Broadcasting has been set up as a semi-autonomous think and action tank at GSAPP. C-Lab maintains a portfolio of creative partnerships to broaden the range and increase the intensity of archi-tectural discourse, acting as a kind of training camp and energy source for incubating new channels for debate about architecture.

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MediafactsVolume#4 Shareware Exhibition Network

A photographic essay focusing on the relationships bet-ween power and architecture, is central to this issue of Volume produced in close collaboration with the multi-diciplinary studio 2x4. Portraits of people in power and major commissioners are presented side by side with buildings that have dominated architectural discussions throughout the modern era. The supplement provided was made in collaboration with the Dutch Government Building Agency and includes a number of essays on the Netherlands’ spatial ambitions and how these should or should not be realised.

CELEBRITY POVERTY ADVOCATE MEDIA MOGUL

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‘Power is always entangled with images, even unthinkable without them, yet can never be seen as such in any one of them. Being the potential to act rather than any particular action, power itself is invisible. This elusive character is the source of its force. To study power requires a diffe-rent way of looking – scanning the mosaic of a wider image field for more subtle symptoms. The greatest force operates through seemingly trivial effects.’

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MediafactsVolume#5: Architecture of Power, Power is in the Details Technical Requirements

After showing how power manifests itself in details (Volume 5), Volume 6 discusses power at the scale of the building. Francesco Bonami, Ole Bouman, Zvi Efrat, Jeffrey Inaba, Jeannie Kim, Rem Koolhaas, Brendan McGetrick, Markus Miessen, Lina Stergiou, Robert Stern and many more on superchurches in the USA, the palaces of Saddam Hussein, penthouses taking over whole skyscrapers, entrance lobbies, detention centres, security fences, the perseverance of mo-dernist utopias, and much more. Including a dossier on ‘de-sperately decadent megalo projects in the Gulf region.

Bahrain Financial Harbour. BahrainLocation Manama centerTotal area 380,000 m2

Cost $ 1.3 billionStart 2002Expected completion 2010Program Financial fi rmsDeveloper ReemoonArchitect Ahmed JanahiDescription Bahrain Financial Harbour will be a highly technological, regional specialist banking and fi nance center integrated with a major urban retail and leisure complex. The site is located close to Bab Al Bahrain that was, until 20 years ago, Bahrain’s gateway to the outside world and center for traders and merchants, and the old Manama port, which has been the real waterfront of Bahrain since the early 1900s. The development will thus link the seafaring tradition of the kingdom with the heart of the old Manama souk. The buildings will be designed with fi ber-optic cabling to make traffi c fl ow as easy as possible. Particular care will be also taken to ensure that the project does not harm Bahrain’s marine environment. Esthetically the project will refl ect the image of the dhows that once sailed the Persian Gulf.

Vol

ume

6N

ew C

ity

14 >15

‘Gone is the era of the iconic building that has to catch your attention. Now you can just build an entire skyline as a logo. After the Bilbao effect, we now have the Dubai effect. In such a city (even though she lies ringed by scorching desert) all smells and sounds are banned, even the searing temperature is made obsolete. They are replaced with a commercially acceptable sound-scape, aromatic scenario’s and a soft, sultry breeze. This is the architecture and urbanism of the most evolved form of brand awareness. It looks like a city, but feels like animation. The inhabi-tants and visitors are not the city’s cause, but its legitimacy and profit margin.’

Forecast for global city culture and agenda for design that makes a difference. This double issue of Volume raises fundamental questions for the urbanized world in the 21st century.

Modernity used to think destruction was a means to an end: a better future. Today’s thin-king suggests a different reading: destruction as a state of being. You’d better prepare!

Issue AppearsAdvertising

#12: Al Manakh

#11: Cities Unbuilt

#13: Ambition

#14: Unsolicited Architecture

12-03-2007 13-04-2007

09-04-2007 26-05-2007

23-07-2007 27-08-2007

19-11-200715-10-2007

Al Manakh is released on occasion of the first International Design Forum in Dubai. Partner: Moutamarat, Dubai

deadline

The possession and handling of books has been the main instrument for intellectual dominance in culture., the library its strong-room, symbol, repository. But what is the li-brary of today and tomorrow?

#15 Library 25-02-200821-01-2008

In an era when architects have become cul-ture celebrities, where their uniqueness as de-signers and their personalities have become the main focus, we ask if the ambition to be-come this kind of celebrity is good for the profession. Rather than play into the cult of personality, can the architect use this moment of increased notoriety to be more ambitious about becoming a public intellectual: that is, to be a person who can influence the general views, thoughts, values of a wide audience?

Practical strategies to go beyond the functional li-mits of architecture as we know it. Resolutions for new questions facing the profession. This issue of Volume is an imaginary office for „unsolicited ar-chitecture“. Breaking ground for new ambitions.

MediafactsVolume#6: Architecture of Power, Power Building Publishing Schedule 2007

Following the two previous issues which tackled various representations of power in architecture, this third issue in the series goes a step further and demonstrates how power is using architecture not simply to express itself, but to or-ganise itself. The central thesis reflected in this timely and wide-ranging collection of articles and images is that po-wer structures and power relations think architecturally in order to be successful.

Prizes Juries

Rem Koolhaas 00 Pritzker 04 riba 05 MvdRohe

Rafael Moneo 96 Pritzker 01 MvdRohe03 riba

Frank Gehry 89 Pritzker 92 Aga Khan00 riba 95 Aga Khan Steering Committee

01 Aga Khan Steering Committee

Zaha Hadid 03 MvdRohe 05 MvdRohe 04 Pritzker 04 riba

98 Aga Khan01 Aga Khan Steering Committee

Jacques Herzog 01 Pritzker 04 Aga Khan Steering Committee07 Aga Khan Steering Committee

Norman Foster 90 MvdRohe99 Pritzker

Alvaro Siza 88 MvdRohe 92 MvdRohe94 MvdRohe95 Aga Khan

Dominique Perrault 96 MvdRohe 98 MvdRohe01 MvdRohe

Peter Cook 02 riba 01 riba06 riba

Jean Nouvel 01 riba

Nicolas Grimshaw 94 MvdRohe

Elia Zenghelis 92 MvdRohe94 MvdRohe96 MvdRohe98 MvdRohe01 MvdRohe

Balkrishna V. Doshi 92 Aga Khan 98 Aga Khan Steering Committee05 Pritzker06 Pritzker

Kenneth Frampton 88 MvdRohe90 MvdRohe92 MvdRohe01 Aga Khan Steering Committee

Farshid Moussavi 04 riba04 Aga Khan 07 Aga Khan Steering Committee

Terry Farrell 02 riba03 riba04 riba

Piers Gough 01 riba02 riba03 riba

Charles Moore 83 Aga Khan Steering Committee89 Aga Khan Steering Committee92 Aga Khan Steering Committee

Charles Correa 80 Aga Khan Steering Committee83 Aga Khan Steering Committee86 Aga Khan89 Aga Khan96 Pritzker 97 Pritzker98 Pritzker

01 Aga Khan Steering Committee04 Aga Khan Steering Committee

Mohsen Mostafavi 02 riba03 riba05 MvdRohe04 Aga Khan Steering Committee07 Aga Khan Steering Committee

TheWinnerTakes All

Architecture of Celebrity

Vol

ume

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26 27

‘If architecture is released from its materialism and can engage with everything, it will become clear how everything is already dealing with architecture. Empires need architects, not as the ser-vants of bricks and mortar, but as constructors of cause. You may believe this is architecture only on the level of metaphor. But there is more at stake. Architects who strive to make a difference socially and historically move beyond the destiny of the simple built object. They may create the edifices of power that will leave a true mark on human history.’

Inserts are welcome, please send 5 samples for a quote.If you have special wishes, please contact us. Special features will be quoted upon request.

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MediafactsVolume#7: Architecture of Power, Power Logic Advertising Rates

‘Il faut être absolument C

hinois’ to be modern.

97

Is it possible for a magazine to help craft the agenda for a ubiquitous China? Volume tackles the problem full on, presenting a wide range of articles by Yung Ho Chang, Ji-ang Jun, Qingyun Ma, Shi Jian, Zhi Wenjun, Wang Jun, Ou Ning about China’s building conditions, interesting locations, revolutionary programs, urban urgencies and social ideas beyond the mantra of Car, Condo and Credit Card. Guest Chinese in this issue is Rem Koolhaas, wri-ting about the public sphere of China. Guest editor is Lin-da Vlassenrood, curator at the Netherlands Architectureinstitute.

A new publication for new ideas about the future of the Chinese City

‘Let’s now focus on the winner who will take all. It is no longer enough to consider China solely with an anthropologic view or via business interests. We need to think by China, through Chi-na, with China. And for that we need to think Chinese.’

MediafactsVolume#8: Ubiquitious China Volume China

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 - produced in close col-laboration with School of Architecture - is your sur-vival kit to take responsibility and curb the lie that gives a dream to the millions but will be their predicament when they really need a home.

Vol

ume

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90

Federal Report: Form – Urban Design

Assemblage of Monuments

..Defi nition and Solution

The crisis and the resulting mass psychosis result in a demand for easy answers, a single (totalitarian) fi gure to be erected for all of society. Against this apparent danger, liberal democracy’s project sounds almost weak – a division of power over various centers, a staged representation of minority groups, etc. Can we propel a powerful fi gure forward of this ideal, one that takes the liberal fi gure of the ‘assembly’ and reconstitutes it as a spatial assemblage of monuments on a platform? Such a project would celebrate liberal democracy with a clear fi gure, pay homage to its principles, and monumentalize its intentions, in the midst of a popular drift away from such intent. When brought effectively, such a project might contribute to a turning of the tide. The assemblage of monuments on a platform as a template deserves to be reinvented. After a fi rst,

THE MONUMENT IMMORTALIZES THE INTENTIONS OF LIBERAL DEMOCRACY JUST AS THE CITIZENRY

42

Credit:

James Shen

91

DRIFTS AWAY FROM IT. IT REMAINS, HOWEVER, A PROMISE WHICH CAN’T COME TO FRUITION THROUGH ARCHI-TECTURE, URBAN DESIGN OR ORGANIZATION ALONE.

half-hearted attempt in the s, this template is now ready for another investigation. The practical advantages of the template are aplenty: as we are no longer talking about a singular architectural mega-project, but rather about a fl exible accumulation of forms and ideals, such a complex could expand over decades, by simply adding or stacking new monuments on an ever more crowded platform. The platform itself allows for an inclusive treatment of the various traffi c fl ows leading up, in, and through the project. The assemblage, however, will never present a clear overall fi gure – it never gets closer than a contour, shimmering through squinted eyes. It is a promise, the realization of which cannot happen through architecture, urban design or organization alone.

43

‘We propose three paths out of the quagmire of self-celebration: recognize urgency, organize communality, and create monumental gravity. This means the design of symbols, new forms of organization, and germinating a commitment to sharing time. It must create the public values of trust, legitimacy, solidarity, vision, drama, history, leadership, vigilance and purpose.’

Volume’s average reader is a cultural producer or opinion leader in arts, architecture, and design between 25 and 45 years old. He/she wants to make a difference in challenging the discipline and is aware of the ex-pansion of the new mandate for design.

Keywords are: Highly educatedUrbanCosmopolitanCurious

MediafactsVolume#9: Crisis? What Crisis? Suburbia after the Crash Average Reader

68 Volume Agitator

Geography

Rio de Janeiro developed along flat topographical areas close to the water that were level enough to lay down major roads and services. While its squatter settlements date back to the th century, there was a dramatic increase in favelas as the city grew during the mid- th century. The vast majority settled during the s occupy hillsides. At the time, hillsides were undeveloped left-over areas, since the steep, water-saturated geography made infrastructure and building construction difficult. In the s as the formal sector of the city expanded, many hillside favelas were destroyed and its inhabitants were forcibly relocated to flatlands on the city’s north side far from tourist destinations. Rocinha is one of the few remaining that occupy the hillside geography along Rio’s beaches. The favela’s residents, or ‘favelados’, benefit from the proximity to the city’s affluent areas. But negotiating the hillside topography is difficult and has only worsened as Rocinha has ballooned in population.

Agitator Volume 69

Rocinha is located west of Copacabana, Ipanema and Leblon, on an impossibly steep slope immediately across the Auto-Estrada Lagoa-Barra highway and uphill from the well-heeled district of São Conrado. Being situated close by is good for Rocinha’s over inhabitants. They find work and other economic opportunities in the formal parts of the city. At the same time, residents from nearby districts patronize shops along Rocinha’s main street searching for bargains (above). It also doesn’t hurt having breathtaking views of the Atlantic Ocean and a beautiful beach below.

The wholesome effects of agitation in its political, physical and emotional dimensions outlined in essays by Araka-wa + Gins, Kenneth Frampton, Jane Harrison and David Turnbull, Reinhold Martin, Mark Wigley and many more. Meet agitators René Daalder, François Roche, Peter Cook, Hernan Diaz Alonso, Philippe Parreno, and Cesar Mil-lan in interviews by Jeffrey Inaba and Benedict Clouette; check the realities of Beirut and Prishtina, visit informal Rio de Janeiro, be inspired by ‘gum architecture’, see the hidden persuaders in car design, discover the history of al-ternative architecture magazines, read… VOLUME 10 Address

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‘We hope after viewing this collection that you too will believe that agitation should not dimi-nish further, but that it should be initiated to a greater degree. You might discover that it is not antithetical to making architecture, but is fundamental to it. Without it the final outcome is weaker, compromised by a lack of consistency, and more prone to fragile imperfection. Just as concrete needs agitation before it is poured, architecture needs agitation before it can set.’

MediafactsVolume#10: Agitation! See what Architecture is Shaking Contact