University College of London’s Bartlett School of Architecture’s fourth installment of its student-run magazine, LOBBY, hits shelves this week. The bright and glossy quarterly is named after the school’s primary exhibition/gathering space, however, it also embodies that word’s meaning as a verb, as in “to lobby.” While the publication aims to increase the relevance of architectural dialogue, it also tries to broader its scope by covering topics normally at the fringe of the profession and discipline: this issue alone has articles on Tinder, the UK housing crisis, trash, the architectural consequences of internet and data, and Michael Jackson’s Neverland Ranch.
In fact, LOBBY invites submissions from anyone who can hew to its broad themes. The publication also features interviews from prominent figures—this issue features interviews with Denise Scott Brown and Moshe Safdie—and employs slick graphics and colorful layouts.
LOBBY No. 4, “Abundance,” picks up where last Winter’s “Defiance” issue left off by surveying a topic architecture students and recent graduates today know well: doing more with less in a time of austerity. After releasing first-look images of the new issue to The Architect’s Newspaper, LOBBY Editor-In-Chief Regner Ramos said via email, “With this issue one of the things we were asking ourselves was, how can we reinvent our world and create abundance out of our current shortages? How can scarcity lead to abundance?”
Ramos goes on to say, “We’ve had a lot of really great photographers and illustrators who like the work we’re doing and have been really keen on collaborating with us. I think that’s one of the things that makes this magazine special, that it’s really bringing creatives together to deliver a really special product that doesn’t quite look like any other architecture magazine out there. Yes, it’s a magazine for architecture lovers, but it’s also accessible, wide in its range of content and editorially and visually curated.”
Current and past LOBBY issues can be found on their website.
