In their new book, the international CARTHA network engages with the question of forming identity in society and the role that architecture plays in this process. Inspired by Jacques Lacan’s approach from psychoanalysis, CARTHA’s members break down the identity-formation process into four sub-steps, which they explore in interviews: Maarten Delbeke, professor of history and theory of architecture at ETH Zurich, talks about Assimilation; Frederike Lausch, researcher at TU Darmstadt’s Department of Architecture, about Appropriation; Rob Krier, Berlin and Liguria-based architect and sculptor, about Denial, and Jonathan Sergison, London-based architect, about Reconciliation. These conversations make up the cornerstones for a new, experimental design methodology, which has been tested in practice by architecture firms Bruther (Bordeaux), Bureau Spectacular (Los Angeles), Conen Sigl (Zurich), Made In (Geneva / Zurich), Monadnock (Rotterdam), Studio Muoto (Paris), and Sam Jacob Studio (London). CARTHA — Building Identities features a variety of buildings — houses, cottages, apartments — designed in the context of these insights. The book offers a didactic manual for contemporary architectural design. The concept of identity that CARTHA proposes invites readers to adopt a critical attitude towards any found environment. The objective is a deeper understanding of how architects actually create identity through their designs.

Our contemporary condition, governed by the abstract apparatus of the capitalist market, demands a critical reading of the distribution, ownership, and use of common resources such as land. This is especially true in Britain with its long history of privatisation stemming from land enclosure. The latest research campaign of Laboratory Basel (laba), a satellite studio of the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, investigated the English manor house and how it can serve as a testing ground to reassess Britain's complex and ongoing relationship with the countryside. The south-west of England, the most rural region of one of the more densely populated countries in Europe, reflects all the absurdities of a globalised country under pressure to develop economically, physically and environmentally. Highly protected landscapes, both natural and composed, form the backdrop to historic seats of political power and wealth, whilst sites of intense modern productivity are neatly concealed behind natural veils. Manor Lessons: Commons Revisited, the concluding volume of laba's Teaching and Research in Architecture series, explores the lessons that can be learned from the compound history of the Manorial System, whose forgotten feudalistic origins were once rooted in the idea of the land, not as private property but as common ground.