Archinect - News

Christopher Columbus statue to be replaced by a monument to Indigenous People in Mexico City

2021-09-07T15:41:00-04:00

As part of an International Day of the World's Indigenous Peoples celebration in Mexico City on Sunday, Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum announced a major new addition to a space in the city’s historic Paseo de la Reforma recently vacated by a monument to its colonial past.

Artist Pedro Reyes has now been commissioned for a replacement of a monumental bronze sculpture depicting Christopher Columbus by the Frenchman Charles Cordier that has moved around the city to its eventual place on the historic boulevard since being inaugurated by the controversial President Porfirio Diaz in 1877.

The statue was removed in October of last year in advance of the Dia de la Raza, a holiday that has in recent years drawn protests marking the arrival of the infamous colonizer in the Americas.

Reyes’ commission will depict an Indigenous woman from the Olmec civilization and come with a title that refers to a Uto-Aztecan word for “land.”

Hungarian design studio Hello Wood creates a seasonal pavilion to protect a cherished monument

2019-12-03T12:36:00-05:00

Budapest-based design studio Hello Wood has designed a new "Art Shield" pavilion that protects and highlights an iconic monument in the city. The temporary structure shields the Vörösmarty monument, which is located in a popular square that has recently undergone renovation.

Image by Zsuzsa Darab (Hello Wood)

According to a press statement from Hello Wood, "The huge, arched structure owes its airy quality to its weatherproof steel sheets, while the transparent plexiglass facade protects it from the driving rain." The goal of the design was to focus on a high-quality, streamlined approach for yearly assembly and disassembly of the seasonal pavilion. The studio explains that the overall shape and plan of the installation was optimized to the particularities of the monument and to the elliptical design of the square itself.

Hello Wood - Art Shield | Vörösmarty Pavilion. Courtesy of Máté Lakos/Hello Wood

"Its structure and use of materials ensure that...

Fernando Romero to design world's tallest statue of Christ

2019-01-16T14:18:00-05:00

An actor from Tamaulipas has created a project that would give the state’s capital, Ciudad Victoria, the world’s tallest statue of Jesus Christ. Eduardo Verástegui Córdoba explained that the 77-meter-high statue and a complex to be built around it will be known as The Christ of Peace. He said that the purpose of the project is to leave a legacy of peace for the state in which he was born.

Besides the enormous statue of Jesus Christ, the ambitious project is also expected to provide a large plaza for 10,000 people, a church of course, a convention center as well as facilities for retail, dining, hospitality, shopping, entertainment, transportation, and housing.

Mexican actor Eduardo Verástegui Córdoba, the driving force behind the Cristo de la Paz vision, hopes to send a message of peace while also bringing pilgrims, tourists, and thus commerce to his drug war-ravaged home state of Tamaulipas, one the country's most violent.

Fernando Romero, a lead architect of Mexico City's recently canceled NAICM airport development, will reportedly design the project.

It's unclear how much the endeavor will cost and who is paying for it, but construction is set to start soon.

India builds the world’s tallest statue, 4x taller than the Statue of Liberty

2018-11-01T21:07:00-04:00

The new towering “Statue of Unity” in Kevadia, a tribute to Indian independence-era leader Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, at 597 feet is four times as tall as the Statue of Liberty.

Richard Rogers and Renzo Piano will get their very own statues in front of the Centre Pompidou

2017-09-27T15:35:00-04:00

The French artist Xavier Veilhan has created sculptures of the architects Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers that will be permanently installed next month in Place Edmond Michelet outside the Centre Pompidou in Paris. The pair designed the distinctive museum, which opened in 1977.

Don't miss our 2015-podcast interview with Xavier Veilhan for Archinect Sessions. We talked with the Paris-based artist and his Los Angeles-collaborator, François Perrin, about their series of interventions into some of the world's most famous modernist landmarks and the resulting book, Architectones.

Where should Confederate monuments go when, and if, they are taken down?

2017-08-17T16:40:00-04:00

“You can argue that any sculpture is art in some way, but it’s a loose argument,” Schoonmaker said Tuesday. “I don’t know that these statues are worthy of preservation as art objects so much as historical objects – made to preserve a lost cause, a lost war. They weren’t made with great artistic intent, but with political intent. And intent matters in this case.”

With the tragic events occurring in Charlottesville, much ink has been spilled over the topic of Confederate memorials: Should we keep them? Should we take them down? Is keeping them up a celebration of slavery and is taking them down erasing an important part of our past that we must face?

With so much attention given to the particular statue of Robert E. Lee that caused the alt-right to riot in Virginia, it might be a surprise that a number of confederate monuments have been taken down in recent years with much less bloodshed. In May, another statue of the Confederate general was hoisted away in New Orleans amongst a cheering crowd of onlookers and a number of cities across the country have had plans in the works to take down monuments commemorating leaders of the Confederacy. With the events that occurred over the weekend, many of these cities are looking to expedite the process—the Mayor of Baltimore even had all Confederate statues dismantled overnight.

This begs the question ...

First commemorative statue of Frederick Law Olmsted to be unveiled in North Carolina

2016-04-15T21:01:00-04:00

The first statue commemorating landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted will make its public debut in time for Earth Day at The North Carolina Arboretum in Asheville next Friday, April 22. One would assume that Olmsted already has statues of himself in public parks across the U.S., considering that he is regarded as “the Father of American Landscape Architecture” and is the co-architect of New York City's fiercely loved Central Park, which he and Calvert Vaux were selected to design after winning a competition in 1858.

Finally achieving their long-time vision of building a statue of Olmsted, the Arboretum commissioned Philadelphia-based figurative sculptor Zenos Frudakis to design the 8-foot-tall bronze statue of Olmsted, who is portrayed holding an abstract topographic map. Frudakis spent the last two years working diligently to create a sculpture that embodies Olmsted's lasting significance in American landscape design.

Oil painting of Frederick Law Olmsted by John Singer Sargent, ...

Owen Hatherley on a Stalinist city's efforts to "de-communize"

2016-03-24T14:34:00-04:00

The largest remaining statue of Lenin in Ukraine was removed from its pedestal in Zaporizhia last week, the latest victim of the Ukrainian ban on Soviet symbols. But how do you go about “de-communising” an almost entirely Stalinist city?

Giant golden Mao statue in China demolished after criticism

2016-01-11T11:11:00-05:00

Just two days after images of a giant gold-colored statue of Mao in the bare fields of Henan Province spread across the Internet, the statue was gone — torn down apparently on the orders of embarrassed local officials. [...] According to villagers and reports on online chat sites, the statue was the idea of a local businessman, Sun Qingxin ... “He is crazy about Mao,” said a villager who identified himself as Mr. Wang, a potato farmer. “His factory is full of Maos.”

More news from China:

New Orleans deliberates how to dismantle statues of U.S. Confederate figures

2015-08-18T09:36:00-04:00

The question of the monuments’ removal comes after several US states...have withdrawn the Confederate flag, acknowledging it as a symbol of racial hate...The [statues] are on public land 'which means that African American tax money is being used to maintain them', [says Carol Bebelle, co-chair of the Mayor’s committee for racial reconciliation]. 'What does it mean to be a city that pays tribute to part of its history that was about oppressing the major portion of its population?'

Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial Opens in Washington

2011-08-26T00:43:15-04:00

We don’t even see his feet. He is embedded in the rock like something not yet fully born, suited and stern, rising from its roughly chiseled surface. His face is uncompromising, determined, his eyes fixed in the distance, not far from where Jefferson stands across the water. But kitsch here strains at the limits of resemblance: Is this the Dr. King of the “I Have a Dream” speech? Or the writer of the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech?