Tower: a symbol, a metaphor, a working structure, an architecture, a masterpiece. 
One of the most immediate associations with the idea of tower, is of an imposing human made structure that rises high in the sky, with the ambition of reaching it. Throughout history, such structures have been built with increasingly refined techniques, till reaching the name of skyscrapers. The fascination and complexity in finding ways to fight gravity and the power related to this sense of accomplishment have always been what underpinned a related symbolism of humankind growth, evolution and knowledge aspiration. However, the higher are the ambitious the greater is the risk to fall, and the bigger and more complex the system becomes the greater is the level of precariousness of the whole. There is a crucial need for understanding how agents concur within the structure, their responsibility for participation and collaboration, as well as an emphatic and responsive behaviour towards the codes that rule the system.
Babel’s Tower is one of the first and most symbolic narrative recording the attempt of materialising the highest level of human knowledge, as well as a precedent of the implications that such an ambitious aspiration brings with it. Besides the religious message of humility that passes from this example, it can be said that failure of the project was not related to any miscalculation or physical incapability to complete the aimed designed, but rather to the loss of a communal identity of being together in one system, and to a lack of communication, responsive and receptive forms of behaviour that could not longer be replicated. Indeed, the generation of multiple languages, becomes here a lost of perception of the individual role within the system: the lack of awareness of the single breaks the harmony of the whole and turns into a cacophony of uncoordinated voices.

For the second issue of the ad-lib magazine, the published works are embedding the notion of tower in a sense of a coordinated structure of elements that, by getting together, are able to (re)create working systems for growth, evolution and knowledge production. With the reference to ‘stigmergic collaboration’ as the reproduction of behaviours of the single components derived from simple rules, we intent to retrace into evolving and ever-growing entities through multiple components the reflection of these coded set of rules. Collaborative production in this sense can be seen as a metaphor of the concept of building strategy and generating diverse design solutions into knowledge or contents. 

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As architecture, towers work as a fine composition of elements in perfect balance, working together for the overall purpose of standing against gravity and external agents. The structure composed from separate and singular part working for a common achievement, is meticulously calculated and defined by rules based on experience and empirical knowledge. The integrity in the action and reactions of the parts makes the whole a functioning system.