I Would Prefer Not To, a self-described “oral history” project produced by MIT’s Critical Broadcasting Lab, invites practitioners to reflect on the significance of rejecting an architectural commission. In the podcast’s November (2023) episode, host Ana Miljački speaks with Liz Diller about instances when contentious commissions can offer avenues for subversion and positive change. Among other things, Diller reflects on the commission to design Moscow’s Zaryadye Park and the political context which led to her studio’s decision to undertake it.

PLAT 11: Soft equips its readers with tools for blurring and piercing through the disciplinary edges of architecture. In the journal’s latest issue, editors Jane van Velden and Paul DeFazio celebrate the conversational, the sensorial, the fuzzy. The collected contributions paint an architectural landscape of cooperation and compromise. Of note is an article by Hélène Frichot, “A Soft On for Caring Relationships,” which traces contemporary interpretations of the term “soft” in architecture and speculates on their broader significance for the field.

Figuring Territory, Canadian Centre for Architecture’s newest web issue, interrogates the relationship between the semantic implications of the term “territory” and its malleable realities. Edited by Claire Lubell, Alexandra Pereira-Edwards, and Andrew Scheinman, the issue sheds light on the perpetual figuration and re-figuration of territory. In “On Phantom Islands and Unknown Lands,” contributor Victoria Addona takes readers through a cartographic history of “phantom islands,” and reflects on the role of colonial powers in claiming control and ownership over unknown territories through mapping and figuration.

Log 55 (Summer 2022)  gathers a series of articles under the broad theme of “Observations on architecture and the contemporary city,” with a subsection,“Notes on the Desert” guest edited by Francesco Marullo. If the choice of words for the theme titles set a cool and unassuming tone—a decision likely stemming from the issue's origin as an open call—the articles themselves please and surprise. A particularly interesting take is Marija Maric’s in “Bricks, Blocks, and (Block) Chains,” which examines blockchain’s link to the commodification of land.