Tomà Berlanda argues that architects and designers must first unpack discourse around the term “shelter” and its association with a “sub-standard product” for a “sub-standard client” in order to recover the idea that our “duty is to design spaces for life and human activities, no matter where”.

Considering the impact of the pandemic on city life, Richard Sennett raises caution about the authoritarian control and social isolation “that might outlast it”, and challenges us to re-examine the architecture of density.

Modernist mass housing associated with minimum standards and mass production do not fare well under these criteria, but Vittorio Magnago Lampugnani questions whether we should be abandoning the project of the Modern Movement entirely yet. Upon closer examination, its ambitions to provide shelter for all and the ideology that underpinned it remain equally relevant for our epoch.

The energising approach of Jo Noero to practice reveals a sincere passion for the physical qualities of architecture, alongside a sharp awareness that its political power lies more in the processes by which architecture is created – both within the studio and outside it – and the agency of those it serves. Confronted with injustice, discrimination and corruption in South Africa over the decades of his career, he has remained committed to a belief in the power of the smaller scale to confront greatest issues, most notably in the provision of housing.

PRO Peterson Rich Office, Perrotin, New York

Davidson Rafailidis, Big Space Little Space, Buffalo, USA

Cadaval & Solà-Morales, CH-Reurbano, Città del Messico/Mexico City

At a moment when many of us are rediscovering personal interests, Jonathan Olivares presents the case for design that is built on subjective collections of references and expertise, often only tangentially related to the field. Great inventions, he argues, rely on “cross-pollinating materials and typologies, devising new syntactic structure”.

In the interest of developing our collective source material, Jasper Morrison and Francesca Picchi consider the wooden crate – an often-overlooked object “so essential and devoid of superfluousness” – and its influence on designers and artists alike who have sought to capture its qualities in new forms.

Exploring the interaction between design and robotic technology, Graham Pullin takes us into the field of prosthetics. While it is traditionally an area dominated by technologists and clinicians, there is clearly a role for designers in considering the profound significance of materiality and personal identity.

Robin Monotti Graziadei highlights the work of Japanese film director Hirokazu Kore-eda, whose films continuously explore those rituals and interactions that form the family unit, and how the spatial context becomes a home.

Inspired by former teacher Louis Kahn, Balkrishna Doshi’s charcoal drawings of his own studio reveal his fluid process and the desire to create a “living thing” – a sequence of experiences rather than a form with set functions.

Samira Shackle reports from Karachi where crisis is nothing new. Half the population do not have access to clean water or drainage from their homes, but a pilot project in one of the city’s informal settlements is overriding chaotic governance, violence and corruption by helping local residents connect with technical expertise and take matters into their own hands.

Writing as the streets of Berlin emptied out in recent weeks, Peter Schneider reflects on those grand public squares that “give a city its appearance” and firmly locate you in a place. He takes us through Berlin where its complexities, contradictions and failures are revealed more fully in its depopulated state.

Jean Prouvé’s designs for domestic metal prefabricated structures “prioritised the versatility of technology as a means to satisfy its social vocation”. Fulvio Irace traces how Prouvé’s lifelong investigation into the “architecture of assembly” was covered in Domus from the 1940s to 1970s.

The architect Victor Bisharat was responsible for many of the corporate buildings in Stamford, Connecticut, including the headquarters of G.T.E. (General Telephone and Electronics Corporation), completed in 1973. The building was the first owner-occupied corporate headquarters to be built in Stamford during a period in which the city experienced rapid growth. In 1999, the building was bought by the pharmaceutical company Purdue Pharma, recently the focus of intense criticism and legal action over its marketing and sale of Oxycontin, a drug that is linked to the United States’ current opioid crisis.