This book’s central argument is that plug-ins, situated design outcomes that aim to enrich the complex system of the city and expand its potentialities, are a solid yet supple conceptual framework for rethinking how design can be a key agent in city making. This book showcases some of the projects developed by Elisava’s Design for City Making Research Lab, a research institute that investigates the role of design in the material and social construction of our habitats, focusing on spatiality, temporality, interactions, meaning, citizen engagement and social impact. Projects by students, professors and researchers, in collaboration with multiple partners including the public administration, NGOs, industry and academy, articulate the concept of design as plug-ins as the core idea of this book. This notion of plug-ins results from a renewed approach to how design can be a key agent in city making. Given that the city is a system of relationships, design for city making means understanding, reinforcing and articulating this network. We posit plug-ins as situated design outcomes that aim to enrich the complex system of the city and expand its potentialities. This book’s central argument is that plug-ins are a solid yet supple conceptual framework for rethinking design’s agency in the city – the main aim of Elisava’s Design for City Making Research Lab. With Contributions of Ruedi Baur, Julia Benini, Josep Bohigas, David Bravo, Adrià Carbonell, Tomás Díez, Danae Esparza, Ramon Faura, Tona Monjo, Salvador Rueda, Oscar Tomico, Lluís Torrens, Manuela Valtchanova

It is often argued that the future city will be that one built on the already urbanized territory. This statement asks for a new approach to Urban Planning, more attentive to regenerating existing urban fabrics than extending them. Within this context, Mass Housing Estates and their renovation become an issue of great relevance. Being one of the 20th century's genuine forms of urban growth, their accelerated and very explicit obsolescence demands profound reflection on strategies and interventions. This book shows some descriptions, thoughts and tentative designs on this particular urban form. Opened to an international scope, most of the presented materials and writings are referred to Barcelona and its MHE, since it is an exceptional case study in this matter, as it is in many other fields related to urbanism. The large number and diversity of housing estates that were developed throughout the last century set the framework for the analysis of three challenges that MHE renewal will face in the future: guarantee of basic living conditions; urbanity provision and metropolitan integration. "The relevance of MHEs was the opportunity to build residential neighbourhoods with a much greater po-tential than traditional ones. Some specific cases have shown us how to design residential environments and others show us precisely the opposite, how not to. MHE shouldn't have been located in isolated sites with an excessive insistence on a certain type of architec-ture. Today the centre of our metropolitan reality continues to be Barcelona: it is a key element, extremely important. But let us look with a renewed attention at the metropolitan context. The baricentre of this metro-politan Barcelona is certainly not located in Ciutadella, but somewhere in Collserola. It is in this change of scale, it is in understanding the real city, that we will find the key to redefine MHE as an integral part of a much broader and more complex system than the former periphery where they were once built. Now we have the capacity and sufficient perspective to discern what was a mistake from the positive assets we can recover from these territories"

While Latin American poets such as Pablo Neruda, Jorge Luis Borges, and Octacio Paz have been receiving most of the attention of critics, the Ecuadorian poet Jorge Carrera Andrade had quietly continued writing his "transparent" poetry. Nevertheless, Carrera Andrade's poems are undoubtedly some of the best ever written in the Spanish language, and he has often been mentioned as a likely candidate for the Nobel Prize. In his poetic exploration of what he calls "the secret country of human existence," Carrera Andrade marvels at the beauty of the world. And this wonder is conveyed by means of dazzling, descriptive metaphors. Perhaps it could be said that the Ecuadorian poet always interprets the world visually, but his visual images constitute merely a metaphorical technique, around which he constructs his poems. In his verbal structures he expresses the transitory nature of life as well as the loneliness of man in the universe. He describes life in his native Ecuador, contemplates with compassion the plight of the Indians of his country, and denounces social injustices. More recently Carrera Andrade, concerned about the destiny of mankind, manifests his indomitable faith in humanity in the book Hombre planetario (1959), imagining a social utopia. Carrera Andrade has stated that his poetry is the result of "the intimate union of the senses and the intellect." And yet his poems remain "transparent." He rejects obscurity and complexity and chooses simplicity and clarity. He considers that "one of the essential goals of poetry is communion with other men" and that if his poetry cannot communicate "its emotive and sensorial content, it fails to accomplish its mission, which is the interpretation of the world." As to the universal meaning of his poetic work, Carrera Andrade would recall Goethe's phrase: "All my works are fragments of a great confession." He would characterize his own work as a confession of love both for humanity and for the wonders of this world. Carrera Andrade must be counted among the four or five best contemporary poets of Latin America. Whether he is awarded a Nobel Prize still remains to be seen, but there can be no doubt that in his poems one can detect the same literary excellence as in the work of Neruda, Paz, or Borges. Hopefully the work of this great Ecuadorian poet will soon be universally appreciated. In some of his works he can be compared to T. S. Eliot, Hölderlin, or Saint-Jean Perse. The publication of H. R. Hayes' translations will, for the first time, make available to English-speaking readers all of the significant verse of Carrera Andrade, beginning with some of his first pieces from La guirnalda del silencio (1926) and ending with translations from Posía última (1957 –1966).

Zen Buddhism is a form of Mahāyāna Buddhism that originated in China and is strongly focused on meditation. It is characteristically sceptical towards language and distrustful of conceptual thought, which explains why Zen Buddhist sayings are so enigmatic and succinct. But despite Zen Buddhism’s hostility towards theory and discourse, it is possible to reflect philosophically on Zen Buddhism and bring out its philosophical insights. In this short book, Byung-Chul Han seeks to unfold the philosophical force inherent in Zen Buddhism, delving into the foundations of Far Eastern thought to which Zen Buddhism is indebted. Han does this comparatively by confronting and contrasting the insights of Zen Buddhism with the philosophies of Plato, Leibniz, Fichte, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Heidegger and others, showing that Zen Buddhism and Western philosophy have very different ways of understanding religion, subjectivity, emptiness, friendliness and death. This important work by one of the most widely read philosophers and cultural theorists of our time will be of great value to anyone interested in comparative philosophy and religion.