The ideal model of a tight partition of world’s economies and politics known as Three-World Model becomes obsolete and ineffective right after the defining of the Fourth World. There will never be a Fifth World. This publication aims to shift the point of view on this issue. 

Rather than focusing on socio–political aspects and strict categorizations, we sought for speculation on what a Fifth World might be. Can the Fifth World become a new social order? Is it an imaginary place or is it as real as the ground we walk on every day? In answering these questions, it seems possible to pinpoint three main themes. The first main theme can be called as “Utopian.” It is in the sense of the utopian consciousness described by Ernst Bloch that the Fifth World can be seen as a heterotopian concept that somehow tends to reconcile the opposing goals of a utopian thinking and realism. Nonetheless, any ideal has a virtual domain that substantiates its reason of existence. Consequently, we can refer to the “Virtual” as the second main theme used for the definition of the Fifth World. Finally, a third way of looking at the Fifth World seems to be related to more pragmatic realities and, more precisely, regarding the changes of the world’s population: “Migration.” The contributions – theoretical, visual or designs – collected in this publication have drawn an extraordinarily broad landscape of possible applications of the glitch in the architectural field. Given the impossibility of predicting the future of architecture, Glitch is a concept worth of study because by its understanding and by deepening its theoretical background, it might be possible to imagine disciplinary trajectories to come. 

Contributors: Darran Anderson, Federica Andreoni, Therese Eberl, Massimiliano Ercolani, Enrico Forestieri, Arthur François, Mitchell Gow, Eleni Han, Samuel Kapasa, Won Chul Kim, Marta Kowalczyk, Jun Li, Maryam Moayery Nia, Gian Luca Porcile, Brandon Youndt, Hamed Zarrinkamari

The ideal model of a tight partition of world’s economies and politics known as Three-World Model becomes obsolete and ineffective right after the defining of the Fourth World. There will never be a Fifth World. This publication aims to shift the point of view on this issue.

Rather than focusing on socio–political aspects and strict categorizations, we sought for speculation on what a Fifth World might be. Can the Fifth World become a new social order? Is it an imaginary place or is it as real as the ground we walk on every day? In answering these questions, it seems possible to pinpoint three main themes. The first main theme can be called as “Utopian.” It is in the sense of the utopian consciousness described by Ernst Bloch that the Fifth World can be seen as a heterotopian concept that somehow tends to reconcile the opposing goals of a utopian thinking and realism. Nonetheless, any ideal has a virtual domain that substantiates its reason of existence. Consequently, we can refer to the “Virtual” as the second main theme used for the definition of the Fifth World. Finally, a third way of looking at the Fifth World seems to be related to more pragmatic realities and, more precisely, regarding the changes of the world’s population: “Migration.” The contributions – theoretical, visual or designs – collected in this publication have drawn an extraordinarily broad landscape of possible applications of the glitch in the architectural field. Given the impossibility of predicting the future of architecture, Glitch is a concept worth of study because by its understanding and by deepening its theoretical background, it might be possible to imagine disciplinary trajectories to come.

Contributors: Darran Anderson, Federica Andreoni, Therese Eberl, Massimiliano Ercolani, Enrico Forestieri, Arthur François, Mitchell Gow, Eleni Han, Samuel Kapasa, Won Chul Kim, Marta Kowalczyk, Jun Li, Maryam Moayery Nia, Gian Luca Porcile, Brandon Youndt, Hamed Zarrinkamari