Pack Four Themes That Defined 2024

Bio/Matter/Techno/Synthetics. Design Futures for the More than Human
Franca Trubiano, Susan Kolber, Marta Llor, Maria Jose Fuentes, Amber Farrow

B/M/T/S articulates future ready visions for a field that is increasingly called upon to participate in ever more complex aesthetic, ethical, environmental and socio-political contexts by redefining the very origins, principles, and values of design. Despite the propensity of contemporary discourse to favor the search for a hegemonic theory, this collaborative project convenes the work of twenty-eight women, all of whom interrogate the origins, methods, and tactics of their respective disciplines.

Collectively, B/M/T/S challenges the common place nature of ideas founded in parametricism, object-oriented ontology, parafictional realism, post-digital representations, and corporate functionalism. In exchange, it seeks the confluence of critical, aesthetic, and ethical thought in future speculations on the biological, the material, the technological, and their synthesis. The twenty-three papers and five editorials collected in this volume speak to subjects of bio-design, speculative biology, green walls and pavers, design by decay, soilless soil, sentient materials, photogrammetrees, robotics, nanotechnology, thermal architecture and alliesthesia, digital weaving, chemical droplets, and even Frankenstein.

The Right to Nature. For a new urban landscape
Emanuele Bortolotti, Paolo Palmulli with Alessandro Frigerio

The Right to Nature is a new chapter of reflection and work of the AG&P greenscape, centered on the current and renewed relationship between man and nature, and the consequent transformation of our cities through new ways of living, inhabiting, working with nature and the landscape as the protagonist, in every area, at all project scales, as a social balancer and activator of a new urban sociality. The relationship between man and nature today is an urgent issue in the debate on the contemporary city, but it still has to be truly explored, defined, and built. Throughout seven main topics – Green and blue infrastructures, Regeneration, Public space, Dwelling, Green welfare, Heritage, and Care –, the book explores contemporary urban landscape issues at the different scales of the project, in the light of the relationship between human beings and nature. 

Spatialization Takes Command. Metaverse Urbanism. Notes on the Future of The Internet, Urbanism, and Life as We Live It
Firas Safieddine

By weaving together a range of topics, the book takes readers on a journey through the evolution of the Internet, and its next generation – The Spatial Internet- and explores the current technosphere and terminology necessary to comprehend the metaverse. It creatively delves into unique social, cultural, technological, economic, and emerging urban phenomena, providing a comprehensive guide to designing and building metaverse urban environments. 

Intimate Spaces. Exploring Adaptive Living Spaces in a Pandemic Era
Mladen Jadrić

Jadrić examines the evolving concept of family in contemporary society, emphasizing that it extends beyond traditional nuclear units to encompass broader communities such as neighborhoods, co-living arrangements, and working groups. These diverse forms of “family” have increasingly adopted the characteristics of closely-knit, mutually supportive social groups, providing solace and resilience during challenging times.