In January 1973, at the editorial offices of Casabella magazine in Milan, Ettore Sottsass, Alessandro Mendini, Andrea Branzi, Riccardo Dalisi, and members of Archizoom, 9999, Superstudio, UFO, held a gathering at which they founded Global Tools. The group aimed to create “a school but non-school “ focusing on arts and crafts, independent of an institution.  Coming from an anti-disciplinary attempt to establish a platform for the free exchange of different ideas and experiences, this was a place suited to stimulating individual creativity and the development of human potential. During its two-year life, the group experimented with various tools, processes, and instant learning.

This presentation will attempt to unfold the fragmented history of Global Tools’ life and shed light on its influence and protagonists as an action of learning. It will focus on the interactive aspect of the Global Tools workshops and the embodied experience that the group was aiming for as a tool for understanding and transforming experience into design. Using the lens of the body, the presentation will highlight the processes and learning methods that the group was using and place the group in the general wave of radical education of the 1970s. Bodies during this period built ephemeral structures, discovered the countryside, left the typical classroom to travel, partied, protested for better education, demanded gender equality, and questioned the institutions.
By highlighting the framework and ideas established by the group, this historical testimony seeks to raise the question of what we can learn and be influenced by while reintroducing the body as a tool in today’s architecture education.

Ecological protests marksthe contemporary era and transform the landscape: north of the metropolis of Nantes, the Zad of Notre-dame-des-Landesis an example.The complexhistory of the struggle and the different levels of the territory (from a sociological, ecological, agricultural point of view) are widely discussed in French literature, in publications bybothscholars and activists. However, the transformative action of protest with respect to the affective dimension of places remains less investigated.Geographers Matthew Gandy and Ben Andersonintroduce the"Affective Atmospheres". Derek P. McCormack explainsthe concept of “Spectral Geographies of Material Remains”, defining them as a “distributed field of circulating affective materials”.  Starting from these premises, this article aims to discuss some spatial situations of the struggle, in parallel with some affective conditions. Direct visits to the territory today are aimed at capturing the atmospheric dimension of the landscape of protest.

La route de Chicanes–the D281 road–provides a spatialised chronology of the struggle, some images revealing the feeling of collective euphoriaduring the first occupations. An inventory of symbol-objects crowds the imagery of this street: wheels, pallets, car trolleys, etc.

Not differently, the same recycled materials describe the precarious condition of the ephemeral architectures that inhabit the Zad. They are physical devices designed to domesticate space: cabins that restore an affective condition of “claustrophilia”. Occupation is horizontal, just as the attitude of those who inhabit the Zad is one of wandering.

Moreover, the place suffers from the proximity of the metropolis of Nantes, it dreams of self-sufficiency but is porous and testifies to a conflictual relationship with the authorities. Inhabiting the Zad, in the past, meantliving in fear, resisting the pressure of the sound of sirens and drones, of evictions that exposed bodies to harsh conditions.

To cross the territories today meansto give voice to the spectres of the struggle, to make the past of a protest landscape resonate in the environment of the occupiers,to reveal the atmospheric depth of the landscape of protest of the Zad of Notre-dame-des-Landes.

---

As the concern for the degradation of the natural environment began to intensify during the late 1960’s-70-s -- a method to study its deterioration was visualized via the World Dynamics model.
Developed in 1971 by Professor Jay Wright Forrester (1918- 2016) and his team at MIT, the World Dynamics model was used to study the correlations between population, capital investment in agriculture, the economy, pollution, and the natural resources of the world. The model was based on systems dynamics, which Forrester founded in 1956. Systems dynamics was a relatively new method in which systems theory was applied to a variety of problems via an extensive use of diagrams and computation.
Presented at “The 1972 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm” World Dynamics was later challenged at the 1973 conference “Report from Tokyo” for maintaining the pattern and substance of existing power of the developed resource-rich nation states. Following the. 1973 conference, systems dynamics was later adapted by architect Kisho Kurokawa’s demographic studies of Japan and some of his urban/architectural work internationally in particular his study of San Salvo and Vasto, within the province of Chieti Italy.
A combination of literary and visual analysis will be employed to explore how the use of systems dynamics migrated from a westernized global stage into the Japanese perspective at the 1973 “Report from Tokyo” to the eventual application by Kurokawa, in Japan and Europe. Thus, revealing systems dynamics ideological nuances and striking similarities when analyzing its use in different contexts.
The focus on the application of systems dynamics in various cultural contexts explores how it was used as an object of authority where its multiple adaptations were projecting similar desires to preserve stable forms of power-- while simultaneously disrupting steady representations of natural environment, urbanism, and architecture. As such, new ways to gain influence to make such disruptions will be contemplated.

This paper, the first chapter of my dissertation, explores the emergence of plane table photogrammetry in the 1850s-1890s, a foundational development leading to 20th-century stereophotogrammetry and the contemporary ubiquitous use of digital photogrammetric methods in the monument documentation. It focuses on Albrecht Meydenbauer (1834-1921), the pioneer in the field who coined the term “photogrammetrie” in 1867. Meydenbauer’s revolutionary use of plane table photogrammetry and his development of related apparatuses significantly departed from traditional monument documentation methods, laying the groundwork for this technology’s evolution and use in monument documentation.
Meydenbauer’s leadership at the Royal Prussian Photogrammetry Institute (Königlich Preußische Meßbildanstalt) was instrumental in advancing photogrammetry in monument documentation, overseeing the survey of over 1,200 monuments across Germany and Europe and creating an archive of 20,000 photo plates. The paper examines Meydenbauer’s contribution within the broader context of 19th-century nation-building, monument politics, and land surveying. It also discusses other figures such as Aimé Laussedat (1819-1907), focusing on their techniques, particularly those applied in land natural environment surveying. The research not only delves into the socio-technical evolution of photogrammetric machinery and techniques, but emphasizes its impact on and reciprocation with monument documentation and land surveying. It reveals the interdependent and reciprocal relationships among these disciplines, demonstrating how development in one area propelled technological innovations in the others, all within a broader historical context. Central to this analysis is a recognition of the interconnected processes of key individuals, institutions, and other agents of change. The paper highlights the co-evolution of photogrammetric technologies, monument documentation, and land surveying and how these developments collectively formed a symbiotic network that reshaped each field.

---

While several publications have been published on visionary architectural projects that were developed in Western, and Eastern Europe and in the United States, not enough attention has been devoted to Radical Architecture in the Non-Aligned Country of Yugoslavia, more specifically in Prishtina, Kosovo of that time. In fact, the formal similarities that existed between Western and Eastern visionary architectural proposals, can be treated as evidence of the Iron Curtain’s permeability on the level of artistic/architectural creation. Taking a project led by a woman architect, Ljerka Lulić, as a case study, I will endeavor to display a tendency toward a radical philosophy in Kosovo’s artistic and architectural practice in the 1970s. The project of interest is the winning proposal of the competition organized by the Republic of Yugoslavia, for the Palace of Youth and Sports in Prishtina (Fig.1.). In Kosovo, few were the projects and artists who used architectural vocabulary in their works to develop another discourse that offers an alternative vision of the reality of their times, thereby drawing attention to the social problems of the socialist state. However, the case of “Boro and Ramizi” clearly reflects the opposite, presenting the first attempt of the country to transcend the modern mentality.
The winning proposal for the Palace of Youth and Sports certainly conceives the idea to ascertain that Kosovo was viz-a-viz with the events that took place on the global stage. Studying the culturally and historically rich microcosm of Yugoslavia, including the Utopian thought of the 1960s and 1970s, provides a significant insight into the theory of the Radical Movement, and contributes to the Kosovar architectural thinking. Above all, such research positions the Kosovar society as a whole, towards a philosophy that has been present in the country but has never truly flourished.

In East and West Berlin, the towers of two mass housing estates meet their towering counterparts in the landscape. Two mounds stand out from the flat glacial plateau. Since German reunification, both estates have become places of arrival for refugee groups and newcomers, who identify these mounds as the main sites of leisure and encounter: views, fresh air, and dense vegetation.
Under the topsoil, the mounds conceal the material history of wartime destruction, territorial struggle, and erasure of place. Before the estates' construction in the 1960s and 70s, the land housed post-war agrarian households in self-constructed sheds, where refugees from seized territories and erased apartment buildings began rebuilding their lives. Both East and West demolished the existing structures to counter the dire housing shortage with mass housing schemes.
The rubble was heaped up nearby into hills, covered with topsoil, and transformed into local parks for the new residents. Since then, the rubble hills have undergone significant change, continuous reappropriation, and negotiation. Assuming a central role as green spaces in these neighborhoods, both governments consistently attempted to control the mounds through management and restrictions. Still, whenever governance was absent, the rubble (Latin: rudus) grew into rich ruderal ecologies on soft soil and gentle slopes that continued to attract poplars, trees of heaven, badgers, foxes, and humans.
Looking at the underexplored landscapes of East and West Berlin's housing estates through the two mounds reveals the land's historical record to mediate the interrelated complexity of population growth, migration, and their future potential to answer climatic changes through resilient, ruderal ecologies. This talk will follow questions of material history, revealing the institutional control exercised by subjugating and managing the land and the resistance of inhabitant alliances against this governing control.

In the Buddhist murals of the Dunhuang Mogao Caves, there is a type of instrument suspended in the sky of the Pure Land, which produces celestial music spontaneously without the need for human performance. These instruments are adorned with colorful ribbons and float in the air, creating ethereal melodies. This form is referred to in Buddhist scriptures as “self-playing instruments(不鼓自鸣)”.The concept of “self-playing instruments” conveys the idea of expressing the echoes from the depths of the universe through the movement of objects. It emphasizes the spontaneity of nature and reflects a romantic artistic imagination and philosophical concepts that transcend human centrism. The “self-playing instruments” belong to the concept of “music and dance performer 伎乐” in the music and dance schemas in the murals which have long transcended the anthropocentric category. The concept of “伎乐” in Buddhism encompasses not only the creators of music and dance but also the nonhuman everyday performance itself, such as singing, instrumental music, dance, and various natural sounds (the sounds of trees and birds).
In the English-speaking world, research on dance schemas in Dunhuang murals is nearly blank. This study focuses on the analysis of dance schemas in the murals, aiming to fill this gap.
The research posits that dance schemas in Dunhuang murals goes beyond mere human movement forms and styles. I argue it is intricately connected with the sounds of trees and birds, lotus ponds, and Asparas, collectively forming a natural sound system within the mural scene.
Viewing dance images as part of this sound system transcends anthropocentrism in dance studies and provides insights into the in situ natural environment of Dunhuang cave. Therefore, the murals not only depict the utopian Pure Land environment but also seamlessly integrate it with the natural surroundings of the Dunhuang cave space. The dance schemas in the murals serve as a bridge between the idealized Buddhist world and the tangible natural landscapes, creatinga performative relationality between human and nature.

Virtues are by definition offering a behavioural script to humans. However, in the 15th and 16th century inanimate buildings are also perceived through a moral lens and described in virtuous terms. This apparent contradiction between architecture and moral virtue will be the focus of my paper, identifying motives and strategies of describing a building as virtuous.
The virtue termed ‘magnificentia’ is often mentioned in relation to architecture. According to the Aristotelian definition of the virtue, architectural patronage is magnificent and virtuous as long as the expenditure remains within the bounds of the decorum regarding the owner, occasion and context. However,  this virtue is also often used to describe architecture itself. Frequently, owners seem to inspire authors to describe a building as virtuous. Rhetoricians seem eager to praise the house as a pars pro toto for the great deeds of the patron. Sometimes the building is even presented as an allegory of the patron, and therefore it also takes the properties of the donor.
In other instances, it is the presence of a morally exceptional human living or having visited the building that renders it magnificent and virtuous. In the descriptions of the building the building is framed so that it fits the status of the guest, but afterwards the building keeps those connotations, therefore the guest also gave the building its virtuous status.
However, there are also authors that associate certain building elements with certain virtues. Magnificentia is according to them in marble and in tall towers. In these texts the virtue moves partially from the realm of morality into the realm of aesthetics, creating an intricate web of meaning that retains elements of both.

There has always been a dark side to the display of virtue. Its troubled history in architecture stretches from the plight of greenwashing back to the tower of Babel. Ostentation comes at a cost, even if those costs are offloaded to the least fortunate in society. Such were the argumentations of the nostalgic authors of Early Stuart England, who saw in the increasing magnificence of buildings, a neglect of the hospitable duties traditionally assigned to the land-owning classes.
Such polemics aimed to direct the virtue-seeking eyes away from the symmetry, scale, and decoration of a building, towards an alternative moral semiology. Open gates, smoking chimneys, luminous kitchens, and ‘a butterie door that turneth often on its hinges’ were all highlighted as signalling the virtue of hospitality. Almost ironically, such an argument against ostentation constituted an alternative mode of virtuous display, one which was being stripped of utility as the manorial economy continued to decline in the wake of nascent capitalism.
But what material traces are left of this moral conundrum? This doctalk holds the moral panic against the architectural evidence. Through analysing the signs of hospitality across numerous country houses, this talk aims to identify trends in typological change, and discusses whether such transformations are the cause or effect of moral panic around the decline of Hospitality.