Our field, and perhaps every field, is defined by ambition. To know ourselves we have to know ambition. But ambition is far from simple. It is never straightforward, never the singular drive it appears to be. Rather, it is a set of interacting forces in which often the means are mistaken for ends. This issue of Volume on Ambition offers a preliminary map of what has become a landscape of misguided purpose. With contributions from Sylvia Lavin, Vincent Gallo, Bjarke Ingels, Elizabeth Diller, Shohei Shigematsu, and more.