On the November issue, guest editor 2020 questions how architecture today faces issues on a much larger scale, with a more complex commitment to social representation, environmental awareness and political mandate.

Saskia Sassen begins our final “Agenda” by considering how the abstract dynamics of the global economy are “rescaling” our spatial units. Despite our “impressive capacity to digitise just about everything”, material conditions fortunately still matter.

Lucia Allais reflects on the reappearance of the circle as a spatial ordering device in architecture, as well as our heightened consciousness of the perimeter around our bodies. The circle “help[s] us think about the new scaling mechanisms that have become dominant in social and cultural life”.

Vittorio Magnago Lampugnani leaves us with poignant advice for architects and urban designers, that “the material realisation of a concept cannot be considered apart from the concept itself”. We must, therefore, think of both the grand idea – straddling visions for the future and the rich body of lessons accumulated through history – alongside careful attention to the smallest details of its execution in physical form.

Continuing on from the October issue, we are using the “Practice” section to open the floor and ask fellow architects to respond to the question: what is next for architecture? Toshiko Mori illustrates two of the studio’s projects in Senegal, the Thread Artist Residency and Cultural Centre in Sinthian and the Fass School and Teachers’ Residence in Fass, proposals based on the idea that architecture has the potential to help give stability to communities with limited resources.

For Atelier Bow-Wow, drawings are an important platform for sharing the company's resources. In this issue they present two projects carried out together with our students during Covid-19, so that they can help us all think about a better future to be shaped with the contribution of architectural design.

The double crisis we are experiencing, on the environmental and social level, raises fundamental questions about the importance of residential construction. Anne Lacaton and Jean Philippe Vassalci affirm the need to defend the pleasure of living, understood as a political act: it is a necessity, a problem that must be tackled on the same level as an environmental priority.

Studio Mumbai catalogues through a series of their shots elements that characterise the perception of the physical world in which we live is a stratification of our cultural evolution. According to them, our notion of the world is formed by continuously confronting different landscapes, a receptacle of tacit knowledge, an energy, tactile and sound field made of water, air and light.

Bureau Architectures Sans Titre, an architecture studio, takes a series of photographs of the workers and technicians on the construction sites of their projects, from the renovation of a former garage in an office to the extension and thermal improvement of a house.

The question is not what the future of architecture is, but what architecture is already doing about the problems of the present. Tony Fretton analyses three projects carried out by professionals also dedicated to the world of teaching and theory. Without clamor, what they have done is an antidote to architecture and objects that are made for publication, but they distract us from seeing and keep us from being.

Closing our series of responses on what design means today, Stefano Maffei discusses how the realities of design are no longer bound to the tangible alone.
“The digital dimension has changed the future of design,” he says, but questions how far it could extend beyond human agency in a world of increasing automation and artificial intelligence.

Jasper Morrison continues his personal reflections on his long-standing relationship with Milan and reminds us that curiosity and human connection are essential to the full creative process. Strong cross-sector collaboration and the “diffusion of design capabilities” were critical for the urgent development and delivery of new medical equipment during the early months of the global pandemic.

Antonio Andreoni and Dan Hill argue that considering these as strategic design projects rather than relying on an engineer-led approach would ensure that broader insights could be generated for medical innovation and a more resilient healthcare infrastructure.

Our final “Art” feature looks at the enrapturing work of Thomas Struth whose images have punctuated the “Agenda” in every issue this year. He personally charts the development of his interest in the “public” world of cities, streets and buildings, seeing them not as architecture but as “a time capsule” of ideas and emotions with which we are in constant discussion.

“My desire is not to explain buildings through language, but through the swift stroke of the pen,” says Tadao Ando. We look closer at a technical drawing for the Church of the Light project in Osaka through which he sought to express clarity and purity.

From Japan we move on to Cuba where Rik Nys unveils the complexities of preservation guided by the pursuit of international tourism in Old Havana. Following a “Sisyphean” masterplan by Eusebio Leal, heavily monitored by the state, and encouraged by its Unesco World Heritage Site status, the development of the former colonial city is not only compromising its historic fabric but expunging life from it too, raising critical questions about authenticity as well as the ability to harness global market forces for development.

Katharine Kilalea walks us through a fictional abandoned replica of Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye located in South Africa, conjuring up the uncanny sensation of a new place for a familiar icon.

From the archive Fulvio Irace pulls out Aldo Rossi’s Teatro del Mondo to contemplate scale. Playing with both miniturisation and enlargement, from architecture to object and back again, Rossi’s work “questions the identity of size.”

Although development in the medium to long term of the Covid-19 health emergency and its impact on the workplace is still uncertain, companies in the sector have begun to develop and test new solutions for the post-pandemic workplace.