Archifutures” Represents a Vital Infusion of Oxygen Into the Arena of Architectural Discourse

Archifutures” Represents a Vital Infusion of Oxygen Into the Arena of Architectural Discourse

Publishing is a cultural project, first collecting and condensing ideas and then diffusing them. In the architectural sphere, it is a pursuit which has often struggled to tackle an inherent paradox: is a book, for instance, speaking to an audience entirely “in the know” or one completely fresh to the concepts, ideas, and figures which tend to envelop the discourse – often resonating like records on repeat.

Unplugging architectural publishing from its conventional realm while, at the same time, seeking to challenge existing tropes in discourse, has been made at once easier and more challenging by the dawn—and subsequent acceleration—of online publishing. Yet the book, as opposed to the magazine—printed, bound, and representing a cohesive and finite exploration of thoughts—is beginning to benefit from more innovative models of circulation, responding to the territory presently occupied by it’s ubiquitous counterpart. Archifutures, an initiative of the Future Architecture Platform, has emerged as one of the more ambitious of these projects.

Positioned by the publishers and editorial team—dpr-barcelona and &beyond respectively—as a series of “field guides,” Archifutures, of which three volumes are currently available, “maps new developments” by means of “conversations, essays, interviews, and images.” It is an exercise in reflecting on contemporary thought—both real and imaginary—in architecture and urbanism, inviting and involving a range of bodies active in and around those territories. These include institutions, for instance; activists, curators, urban bloggers, critics, editors and, of course, architects.


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