Log, Issue 59

About Log:

Founded in 2003, Log is an independent journal on architecture and the contemporary city that presents criticism and commentary in a literary format designed to resist the seductive power of the image in media while identifying and elaborating the central concerns of architectural thinking and production today. A carefully crafted compendium of essays, interviews, and brief "observations," Log provides an ongoing international platform for the exchange of ideas, both bearing on and emanating from architecture and the city, among a curious audience of readers, including architects, designers, students, scholars, and artists. Published three times a year, general "open" issues are punctuated by occasional thematic issues on prescient topics.

In this issue:

To mark Log’s 20 years of observing architecture and the contemporary city, former guest editors and current editorial protagonists were invited to interview someone whose work resonates with their current thinking or concerns, or even with what keeps them up at night. The conversations they initiated range from designing with AI to AI’s possible future consciousness; from natural French wine to Indigenous Mexican textiles; from building architecture to theorizing architecture; from corruption in the building industry to untold histories. Literary critic Caroline Levine calls for activism; urbanist Milton S.F. Curry says it’s a time for manifestos; and artist Ursula Biemann brings our relationship to a changing Earth System into sharper view.

The ideas and opinions of the 55 voices in Log 59 both push against and coincide with each other. But they all testify to the changes in architecture and culture since Log was launched in September 2003.