Dan Barasch’s interest in abandoned architecture originated with his visionary Lowline project which, by 2021, will transform the stations and tracks  of the Manhattan-Brooklyn subway line on New York City’s Lower East Side into the world’s first underground park. The 200+ pages of his Ruin and Redemption (Phaidon) examine a number of beautiful big abandoned buildings worldwide. Some have been forgotten, others demolished while still others are flanked by projects that reimagined, transformed and saved them, injecting new life.

A banal request by physicist Robert Oppenheimer for a nail to hang his hat on and a small table for his telephone marks the starting point of Amy Franceschini and Michael Swaine’s (Futurefarmers) original tale of the Manhattan Project, a WWII programme that led to the creation of four atomic bombs in the Los Alamos desert, employing more than 130,000 people and at an estimated cost of two billion dollars.  For Want of a Nail (after a famous English-language nursery rhyme) concludes a Futurefarmers’ investigation commenced in 2014 – from the discovery of a document in the archives of the Historical Society in Los Alamos to the creation of three nails (the first forged from a meteorite fragment; the second was created out of the zinc-coated steel pennies replaced copper ones in wartime; the third is made of trinitite, a glassy residue that formed following the first atomic bomb test in 1945) and a short film in which ten actors assemble a table without instructions. The narration develops on several levels, drawing us in and prompting us to reflect on the many implications of nuclear, past and future. It all starts from just a nail because, actually and as science historian Peter Galison has explained, it is the materiality of things that helps us understand the huge significance of the most abstract subjects. Art critic Lucy Lippard has also written that the focus of their research is the distance between the nail for Oppenheimer’s hat and the atomic bomb he was constructing, which changed human destiny.

Superstudio architect Gian Piero Frassinelli brought his interest in the human sciences and anthropological methods applied to architectural analysis to the Florentine group. Among other things, Design e antropologia, edited by Gianfranco Bombaci (2A+P), contains a series of lessons held recently at IED in Rome and thoughts on anthropology applied to design. From Victor Papanek who designed objects for those who could not afford them to Donald Norman who analyses the difficulties those able to buy them encounter in their use; from a beer bottle to a bar of chocolate and a hand grenade (objects with similar characteristics that serve very different purposes); and from aboriginal tools to mathematical and economic models, Frassinelli conducts independent research with no scientific presumption. He must however be praised for presenting and analysing the subject from a different angle, “ironical and biased” he says but, more importantly, “from the heart”. As Gianfranco Bombaci writes in the foreword, he is “on a journey to explore an alternative path to design, all too often denied when not, indeed, endured, seeking a new and unexpected approach to the creation of objects and spaces.”

Many threats hang over today’s cities: climate change, over-population and social inequality. Paul Dobraszczyk suggests we look to the imagination to lend meaning to the uncertainty on the urban future. Holland’s floating cities and Dubai’s skyscrapers are, after all, just like the cities conjured up by science fiction in the past; and the slums that spring up in developing countries are reminiscent of the dystopic cyberpunk cities. Bringing together architecture, fiction, film and art, Future Cities connects the imaginary city to the real one, proposing a future that already exists in many of today’s creative practices.

Antonio Calabrò, a Fondazione Pirelli director and vice president of Assolombarda, a journalist and writer, outlines and explores the genre of enterprise now more necessary than ever: reformist enterprise, one capable of effecting economic, social and cultural projects and strategies, and looking beyond mere profit. It is a “cohesive” enterprise that strives for positive innovation, eco-friendliness, solidarity and social responsibility in the wake of the Olivetti tradition of the “people’s factory”. This very approach has the edge as it manages to be more competitive. From northern Italian big industry and  points of excellence to the bright stars of southern Italy, Calabrò examines remarkable stories of Italian enterprise that offer a concrete and pursuable model for the future.