Volume 47 The System

Description

It’s not the latest Hollywood production, the ultimate sound experience, or Apple’s next level consumer lock-in product line. And despite its ominous ring, it isn’t the enemy either, like the NSA appears to be. THE SYSTEM* indicates the complex interaction of the economy, professional practice and personal choice. The asterisk draws attention to the ambiguity of such a term, while hinting at an intention to change ‘it’, whatever it is. What the system does, on the other hand, is perhaps more easily understood: it organizes things. The system is a set of institutions and infrastructures that shape the contours of resource flows and modulate the rhythms of material cycles. The system doesn’t just distribute and determine availability though; it frames the imagination and conditions creative activity there within. In this issue of Volume, we’re dilating our pupils to focus on ‘the system’ itself, treating it as a result of, and therefore question of, design. As we are unfortunately well aware, lobbying is not enough to change the system. Applying strategies like leveraging, short-circuiting, disrupting and infecting might be more effective.

CONTENTS

• Editorial: How Much Does Your System Weigh? / Arjen Oosterman
• Mining Value / Lionel Devlieger interview
• Resist, Release, Retire, Repeat / Debbie Chen
• Expanding Dredge Geologics / Neeraj Bhatia / The Open Workshop
• Latent City / Yaohua Wang
• The Project of a Collective Line / Godofredo Enes Pereira
• Neck of the Moon / Design Earth
• Cosmic Circuitry / Sasha Engelmann
• Cycles of Creativity / Jan Jongert interview
• Metabolic Wastebelts for Suburbia / Alan M. Berger et al. and MIT Center for Advanced Urbanism
• Logistical Hijack / Clare Lyster
• Global Security Pipeline / Nick Axel
• Acceleration and Rationalization / Francesco Marullo
• Rewiring Territories / The Petropolis of Tomorrow
• Polysynthetic Reclamation / Bruno De Meulder and Kelly Shannon
• Unknown Unknowns / Rob Holmes
• Open Supply Blockchains / Guy James
• Deposition Effects / Jesse LeCavalier
• Revolution as a Technical Question / Amador Fernández-Savater
• Geographies of Uncertainty / Ghazal Jafari
• Two Liquids / Tom Fox
• Back to the Source / Thomas Rau interview
• Coup de Grâce / Patrik Schumacher
• Infinite Circulation / Ross Exo Adams
• Babel / Edwin Gardner and Christiaan Fruneaux
• Sample and Hold / Robert Gerard Pietrusko
• Protocols of Interplay / Keller Easterling

144 pages, ills colour & bw / 20 x 27 cm / English