“The Letter Rack” is a speculative exercise in exploring the emergence of new spatial relationships when we stop thinking of future cities in terms of figure/ground duality and instead start looking at them as a continuous assemblage of forms and signs. This form of digital divertissement in drawings originates from the reinterpretation of the so-called “trompe l’oeil,” a pictorial genre used for centuries to depict illusionistic scenes that give spectators the impression that they are facing real, three-dimensional objects. More specifically, the Letter Rack refers to the 1668 trompe l’oeil by Cornelis Norbertus Gijsbrechts, which represents a board partition populated by envelopes, objects, and a music book. The Letter Rack borrows the spatial organization of Gijsbrechts’ painting and, in general, some of the ingredients common to the tradition of trompe l’oeil, such as the use of metaphor, allegory, or symbolism, to reverse their meaning. It turns realistic representations into a hypothetical scenario in which building types and urban spaces meet, collide, and fuse in novel configurations. In other words, The Letter Rack is an inverted digital trompe l’oeil. @en

Bologna is one of the main data processing hubs in Europe. Stefano Corbo traces the infrastructural and architectural development of the city’s computer centers, arguing that to understand the recent history of the city, we must pay attention to the material history of data.@en

En las últimas décadas la producción arquitectónica se ha caracterizado por una diversidad de episodios que, a pesar de sus obvias diferencias conceptuales y formales, comparten un denominador común: la arquitectura ya no es un objeto autónomo y abstracto, sino que actúa más como interfaz, es decir como medio que permite al usuario relacionarse e intercambiar informaciones y estímulos con la realidad. Este ensayo se centra en una forma concreta de interfaz: la de la percepción. Las arquitecturas de la percepción se presentan bajo las formas de esferas, burbujas o atmósferas, en las que el aire se convierte en un material de construcción para alcanzar un grado cero tanto físico como simbólico. Se analizan las nuevas direcciones de la estética contemporánea de filósofos como Böhme, Sloterdik o Virilio, para comprobar cómo conceptos y teorías diferentes hay tenido consecuencias disciplinares ligadas lo perceptivo. Surgen así dos categorías, las máquinas de la percepción y las arquitecturas convectivas, que nos ayudarán a comprender mejor las exploraciones que caracterizan la arquitectura de nuestros tiempos.@en

Cuando se llega a Nápoles por mar, un edificio destaca inmediatamente, asomando sobre la densa ciudad histórica y haciendo mella en su perfil: el tristemente célebre rascacielos de la Società Cattolica di Assicurazioni. Levantado en pleno centro entre 1954 y 1958, el edificio de 104 metros es una de las estructuras napolitanas más controvertidas de la segunda mitad del siglo XX, un símbolo de los enredos del planeamiento con las estructuras de poder y los intereses económicos privados.

Diseñado para alojar quince plantas de oficina y quince de hotel, la forma del rascacielos era similar a la de otros erigidos por entonces en Italia ―como la torre Pirelli de Pier Luigi Nervi en Milán― y en el extranjero ―como el edificio Pan Am de Walter Gropius en Nueva York―. El proyecto original se modificó bajo las indicaciones del departamento municipal de patrimonio, que deseaba una relación más armónica con el entorno, pero su construcción aun así suscitó enérgicas protestas y reacciones negativas. Su reputación empeoró de año en año, hasta alcanzar un punto crítico en 1963, cuando el director Francesco Rosi filmó los interiores del edificio en Le mani sulla città. La película abordaba la urbanización descontrolada de Nápoles, y Rosi ambientó la oficina del especulador inmobiliario de la historia en el restaurante panorámico de la torre. Mientras la llamativa presencia del rascacielos sigue caracterizando la vida y la imagen de Nápoles, por el contrario, una suerte de damnatio memoriae pesa sobre su autora: Stefania Filo Speziale [...]@en

Starting from the late 1980s, the advent of digital design—the possibility to ideate, develop, and generate projects via computers—has progressively pushed the disciplinary discourse to rethink architecture’s role in society, as well as its formal manifestations. The contemporary evolution of digital architecture has taken different directions, which are sometimes contradictory and ambiguous in their intents. This paper especially focuses attention on one of those directions—the opportunities that artificial intelligence can offer in the future production and communication of architecture. Recent episodes are analysed and contextualised within the historical antinomy between two diverging worldviews that, since the fifteenth century until the end of the twentieth century, have informed the architectural discourse. These worldviews can be exemplified in the dichotomy between the dodecahedron and the basket of fruit.@en

The current phase of capitalist development manifests itself through a very diverse range of spatial byproducts: data centers, warehouses, container terminals, logistics parks, and many others. Generally considered as mediocre and banal examples that sit outside of pre-established disciplinary canons, these architectural episodes are extremely relevant. They are relevant not for their aesthetic or historic qualities but for what they represent – for the system of values these spaces embed. They express specific power relations, exacerbate issues of labor, and generate dramatic processes of subjectivity. Most importantly, these architectures, despite their formal and typological heterogeneity, belong to a common paradigm: the EXTERIORLESS. How can an architecture of the EXTERIORLESS be defined? How does it differentiate from examples and manifestations of the past? How do notions of legibility, form versus function, typological articulation come into play? In situating the spatialities of contemporary capitalism within the larger debate on Anthropocene, Post-Anthropocene, and Capitalocene, the book attempts to answer those questions by delineating three main characteristics for an architecture of the EXTERIORLESS: its physical and symbolic role as interface; its ambiguous condition of being at the same time local and global, isolated and connected, compressed and expanded; and, lastly, its contribution to new forms of urbanity in absence of the traditional city. These three defining aspects constitute the main sections of the book. Each section includes two chapters covering a wide spectrum of themes and examples. In its tripartite organization, the book describes the influence that the experimental architecture of the 1960s has exerted on late-capitalist spatial byproducts; it analyzes the impact of logistics on the redesign of the territory; and it introduces the radical processes of urban transformation generated by the EXTERIORLESS.@en

The deepest existing mines are at least four times deeper than the height of the tallest skyscraper-the Kingdom Tower in Jeddah (1008m). Both structures (mines and skyscrapers) require the same technological apparatuses: elevators, complex ventilation systems, telephones, electricity. But the connection between skyscrapers and underground spaces is not merely symbolic or illustrative. The construction of a super-tall tower requires tons of steel, concrete, glass, and aluminum. This implies the mining and exploitation of iron, limestone, bauxite, coal, and many other minerals. As a symmetrical counterpart of the vast vertical expansion that characterizes the global cities' skyline, subterranean spaces are a repository: an inventory of architectural forms and strategic intentions. Such spaces are not discrete and bounded, but rather are profoundly entangled with the world above. At the same time, underground structures only represent a limited portion of a wider and more articulated terrene: the Underworld. The Underworld can be read as an interpretative category that includes all those secret and hidden episodes--urban infrastructures, habitable environments, military and religious structures, architectural ruins, left-over spaces-that, despite their apparent marginality or their current state of conservation, have a relevant impact on our cities: because their role has been historically specular to the one played by the visible vertical architectures. In other words, the Underworld is not a state of exception; rather, it constitutes a complementary aspect of the capitalist and late-capitalist condition.

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Over the last 18 months, Lebanon has simultaneously faced an unprecedented series of dramatic situations: the exacerbation of a systemic economic crisis, which has seen the country’s GPD decreasing from close to US$ 55 billion in 2018 to an estimated US$ 33 billion in 2020; the diffusion of COVID-19; and, also, the terrible explosion at the Port of Beirut on August 4, 2020, which has produced hundreds of victims and thousands of injured, with damages estimated around $4 billion, concentrated in housing and cultural heritage. Significant areas of the city’s waterfront, as well as historic buildings, hospitals, infrastructures, warehouses and the major grain silo, have been seriously damaged. Today, in the city center, besides the signs of the devastation caused by the August explosion are other forms of ruins, which trace back to the Civil War (1975-90), and which are equally charged with political and cultural connotations. A few miles away from the port, in fact, stands the so-called Egg—a ruined concrete shell located in proximity of the famous Martyrs’ Square. Originally designed in 1965 by Lebanese architect Joseph Philippe Karam, the Egg is paradigmatic of Beirut’s current problems, but also of its incredible challenges and opportunities. Its location tells us about the intricate relationship between design, politics and public space. This article describes the Egg for its relevance as sounding board of higher instances, and its appropriation as a political act. The choice of the Egg as ideal place for conversation has crystalized the rise of alternative models of participation and, at the same time, has testified the latent capability of architecture to provide a framework for action. The Egg becomes an amplifier: its interiors absorb and reverberate the need for new demands—either spatial and political.@en

Nel 2001, la US Food and Drug Administration – l’agenzia governativa statunitense responsabile della regolamentazione di prodotti alimentari e farmaceutici – approva ufficialmente la capsula endoscopica M2A – mouth to anus: una piccola videocamera costituita da un sensore di immagini a colori, un sistema di illuminazione, un trasmettitore, un’antenna e due batterie, ideata in origine da un ingegnere israeliano nel 1981.@en

Editions QNDMC published GRAM-03 – an architecture magazine sharing conversations and encounters with young architectural practices. GRAM-03 features the work of Stefano Corbo, Ultramoderne, Sauter von Moos, a practice., Plan Comun, and Arrhov Frick. @en

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