Guest editor David Chipperfield reflects on how our ideas about the city are fundamentally challenged by the way they have developed over the past 50 years

Rowan Moore confronts this by assessing the historical social values that have underpinned urban spaces. If the distinctions between public and private are shifting, what does it mean for the revived European tradition of dense mid-rise city blocks? He warns that classical civic forms and those of investment-led developments “can be deceptively similar” in their rigidity, flattening the layers of urban life rather than providing the much-needed range of creative responses to how we live now

Jennifer Hattam reports from Turkey where government-funded mass housing schemes are claiming to be “new cities”. The reality on the ground feels far removed from the rich texture of the inhabitants’ former neighbourhoods, highlighting the design challenges for fast-paced urbanisation across the developing world

Vittorio Magnago Lampugnani argues that the celebrated historic centre is a delicate palimpsest of accumulated values that cannot be held by investment nor reproduced through formal imitation. In studying it as “an efficient machine”, however, we can extract the lessons for creating authentically urban architecture of our own time

In this month’s discussion for our “Good Practice” series, Indonesian architect Andra Matin explains his distinctive form of practice which connects diverse locally established building traditions with the globally explored ambitions of modernism to create projects of environmental resilience, social credibility and beauty. He is determined to establish a public role of the profession by proving the value of good design through his body of work, and by nurturing a national architectural culture of engagement

Terrassenhaus, Brandlhuber+ Emde, Burlon, Muck Petzet Architekten, Berlin

Wohnregal, FAR frohn&rojas, Berlin

IBeB, ifau e/and Heide & von Beckerath, Berlin

Jimena Acosta Romero argues that design “must be intersectional and feminist” and continuously question its logic if it is to contribute towards social justice. She discusses how design has sought, often subversively, to both liberate and regulate the female body through the creation of products

Jasper Morrison and Francesca Picchi look at Danish design from 1920 to 1970 — a period of “consistency, excellence and sophistication” — as evidence of what design can do for us. They trace the various conditions and influences which allowed design to flourish and provide a selection of objects which remain fresh and relevant to this day

As vocal reassessment of the statues and memorials that currently occupy our public spaces increases, Anja Löesel looks at Gunter Demnig’s quietly powerful Stolpersteine memorials to individuals persecuted by the Nazi regime

The artwork of Peter Fischli and David Weiss has continued to provoke debate about the function and presentation of architecture since the 1970s. Tracing the history of the building as an artistic motif over the centuries, Stanislaus von Moos places the work of Fischli/Weiss within a wider tradition as both inheritors and progenitors of an intriguing multidisciplinary dialogue

This month we look at Álvaro Siza’s intriguing early sketchbooks for a social housing project in Portugal that he would work on for 20 years. Capturing extensive notes on the site and context, they reveal a reliance on drawing as a means of understanding, remembering and synthesising ideas

In Baltimore, Justin Hollander is researching ways that the depopulating city can resize to new limits. Through a combination of technology, community participation and planning expertise, he proposes a method of “smart” decline that questions conventional models and ensures continued quality of life for its inhabitants

Continuing our exploration of the personal connection to place, Nobel laureate Svetlana Alexievich shares a passage on the accumulation of life lived in the kitchen during the Soviet era. More than a space for preparing food, the kitchenette was “a dining room, a guest room, an office, a soapbox” where culture concentrated and ideas about the future were expressed freely

Looking back into the archive, Fulvio Irace revisits the utopian ideals expressed in the construction of Lúcio Costa and Oscar Niemeyer’s modernist Brasilia which was poorly received in Europe in the 1960s, serving as evidence of a difference between urbanism and urbanity

Despite the cancellation, due to the Covid-19 pandemic, of major trade fair events planned for the autumn such as Cersaie in Bologna, Marmomac in Verona and Sicam in Pordenone, the world of surface finishes has not stopped and has organised itself to offer the market flexible materials, woods, resins and wallpapers, innovative finishes and surfaces that go beyond the traditional notion of ceramic. Thanks to the expressive capacity of high-definition 3D printing they have reached levels of extreme sophistication, the most recent proposals take a look at the past, at history and traditional atmospheres that have been translated into reproductions of antique marbles and natural stones, emulating their material and tactile qualities

The Tata group, founded in 1868 by Jamsetji Tata, today is one of India's largest multinationals. To date, India has never hosted an Olympics. But in Trombay, a district of Mumbai, stands the magnificent complex of the Olympic Swimming Pool and Stadium, designed for the Tata Electric Company by Brinda Somaya between 1983 and 1985 as a sports facility for the company's employees and their families, a remarkable construction due to the graceful curvature of the facade, which looks similar to raw concrete, but is actually made of Dholpur Indian sandstone.