forA on the Urban Issue #1 – Eleven Frictions from an Urbanized World

forA on the Urban explores the open, multilayered, interconnected, complex, and wild nature of urban manifestations, challenges, and situations through an expanded notion of architecture.

In the latest issue of the journal, sixteen international architects, artists and practitioners explore the myriad relationships between friction and space, from everyday frustrations and big inequities to social and political conflicts. At the same time, these relationships reflect the emergence of plurality and co-existence within and beyond what is understood as urban.

Sound artist Steloo reflects on the aural experience of Accra, while Phineas Harper investigates the housing shortage in Britain. Artist Hira Nabi develops a kinship with two trees in the Bara Gali forest of Pakistan, while curator and artist Ou Ning and architect Xu Tiantian discuss the revival of villages in rural China. Keller Easterling challenges the conventional mechanisms of knowledge production in favour of underknown dissenters and activists in academic discourse. Alexia León delves deep into the Peruvian Andean Amazon, and Konstantin Kim examines the cultural complexities of Moscow. Nasrine Seraji reflects on the frictions accumulated over her six-decades studying, practicing and teaching architecture. Santiago Cirugeda and María Paz Núñez-Martí document the walls of Europe's largest slum, Cañada Real Galiana, which serve as canvases for expression. Lola Sheppard and Mason White question the value of scaled drawings in rural and remote areas of the Arctic Circle, while Emilio Distretti and Alessandro Petti, alongside photographs by Luca Capuano, share a vision for architectural demodernization through the distinct places of Aba Shawl and the former fascist rural colonies of Sicily.

While each contribution stands on its own – reflecting particular circumstances, situations, dilemmas, engagements, observations, or thoughts – together they add up to a kaleidoscopic view of spatial frictions that have resulted in imbalances as much as the emergence of multiplicity, plurality, and co-existence.


Andrea Börner, Cristina Díaz Moreno, Efrén García Grinda, and Baerbel Mueller, Institute of Architecture, University of Applied Arts Vienna