Archinect - News

The Guggenheim Bilbao announces $129 million Basque country expansion

2022-08-02T15:34:00-04:00

The Guggenheim Bilbao’s long-gestating plans to expand to a Spanish natural reserve may finally come to fruition. Earlier this week, officials with the government of the Biscay province, whose capital is Bilbao, revealed that they were planning to put €40 million toward an expansion in Urdaibai, an estuary to the east of Bilbao that has hundreds of plant species and thousands of human residents.

The new expansion will be connected to Frank Gehry’s original museum complex via a tunnel, according to the local outlet El Correo. The Guggenheim has been promoting the idea on and off since 2008 while it forged ahead with its other either failed or repeatedly-delayed (and not to mention politically-tinged) satellite projects under the leadership of outgoing Director Richard Armstrong.

As ARTnews reported, the Bilbao expansion will be an adaptive reuse design split between two former industrial sites in Guernica and Murueta. The total €127 million ($129 million) construction is expected to add at least 900 jobs and 148,000 annual visitors to the local economy in a hopeful repeat of the original expansion's famous effect. In a press statement, Armstrong said it will potentially be the "first important museum of the 21st century" and would not be "an architectural icon but a landscape one."

Gehry's Guggenheim Abu Dhabi gets a new opening date…again

2021-09-30T17:41:00-04:00

Frank Gehry has met with Emirati leader Sheikh Khaled bin Mohamed in the UAE as the planned Guggenheim Abu Dhabi has announced yet another amended opening date for the second time in as many weeks, according to a press release.

The museum will now open in 2025, a year earlier than was previously announced by director Richard Armstrong at a press conference last week in Basel, Switzerland.

“It is truly thrilling to see this project enter into this new phase,” Gehry said in a statement. “I am immensely proud to work closely with our partners, DCT Abu Dhabi and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, to create a home for their ground-breaking cultural program. I hope that this building is embraced by the people of the UAE and that this work will endure as a landmark for the country for many years to come.”

Previously on Archinect: Opening of Gehry-designed Guggenheim Abu Dhabi announced for 2026. Image courtesy of Gehry Partners, LLP

“As we move forward with our plans, it is crucial to re...

Opening of Gehry-designed Guggenheim Abu Dhabi announced for 2026

2021-09-21T17:06:00-04:00

The long-awaited Guggenheim Abu Dhabi will open in five years, said the institution’s director Richard Armstrong at a press briefing held today in Basel.

One of Frank Gehry’s most-anticipated projects to date, the $200 million Guggenheim Abu Dhabi satellite museum, has been pushed back numerous times over the years after being originally announced by Armstrong’s predecessor in July of 2006.

Armstrong’s tenure has been permeated by protests over the labor conditions of workers in the UAE. The new museum will complete the cultural segment of Abu Dhabi's Saadiyat Island, which includes Jean Nouvel's Louvre Abu Dhabi and a planned performing art center from Zaha Hadid.

“We think it should be five years from next week,” he said. “It looks like everything is coming together, so we can say something definitive. It has been a relatively long gestation.”

'Countryside at the United Nations' by Rem Koolhaas + AMO opens in New York

2021-06-16T12:40:00-04:00

AMO, the research, branding, and publication studio of the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA), has taken over the fences of the United Nations headquarters in New York for a public exhibition that serves as a continuation of Countryside, The Future.

Curated by architect and OMA founder Rem Koolhaas and AMO director Samir Bantal, Countryside was originally presented in February 2020 at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. The exhibition presented research gathered by AMO over five years, bringing together discussions from scientific, sociological, artistic, and political spaces. It set out to define and explore the contemporary “countryside” of the “98% of the Earth’s surface not occupied by cities.” Countryside, The Future was unfortunately shut down just three weeks after its opening due to the coronavirus pandemic but continued after the museum reopened.

Previously on Archinect: See photos from "Countryside, The Future" at the Guggenheim Museum

This new showcase, informed by ...

Countryside: The Future and the Past

2021-01-26T20:48:00-05:00

It is no exaggeration to say that our present is the future that Dorothea Lange’s images foretold. The crisis of agriculture in the face of toxic capitalism and climatic disaster that is at the center of her famous photographs might also have served to focus and sharpen "Countryside: The Future," where it is occasionally a subject but more often merely an unstated subtext.

In "Countryside: The Future and the Past," Deborah Gans reviews Countryside: The Future, at the Guggenheim Museum, the multimedia culmination of years of interdisciplinary, globe-spanning research led by OMA's Rem Koolhaas and Samir Bantal, director of its think tank, AMO, alongside Dorothea Lange: Words and Pictures, curated by Sarah Hermanson Meister at the Museum of Modern Art, the first solo show devoted to the celebrated documentary photographer in more than half a century.

Although the exhibitions are very different in scale, ambition, and emotional tenor, each is propelled by the efforts of vastly different urban artists and professionals to document and comprehend historical transformations in rural life. Together they offer an intriguing counterpoint: one body of work is determined to remain detached; the other is driven by political commitment.

'Countryside, the Future' through the post-pandemic lens

2020-11-06T13:35:00-05:00

Certainly New Yorkers’ revaluation of the countryside had begun long before the “Decameron”-style outflows of remote-working urbanites and their families, fleeing the coronavirus last spring. [...] The phrase “farm to table” has been a cliché for years, and Park Slope idealists long ago exported their Marie Antoinette rural fantasies to the Hudson Valley.

With the coronavirus eating its way through America's hinterlands and the election unmasking a deeply entrenched urban-rural ideological divide, NYT art critic Jason Farago takes a second look at the Rem Koolhaas-starring exhibition Countryside, the Future which opened at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum back in February — only to close again three weeks later due to the unraveling pandemic.

"What 'Countryside' does is take seriously the contention that all avant-gardism gets commodified, that dissent is always co-opted, and that under such conditions you might want to get out of town," Farago writes.

Related on Archinect: Koolhaas in the countryside

See photos from "Countryside, The Future" at the Guggenheim Museum

2020-02-27T18:46:00-05:00

The architecture world has been abuzz lately over the recent public opening of Countryside, The Future, the new exhibition taking place at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City by the Office of Metropolitan Architecture (OMA).

Let's take a look at some of the photography from the blockbuster exhibition.

Installation view of the Guggenheim Museum rotunda. Image by David Heald © Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation.

The exhibition makes use of the museum's continuous spiral design to display a wide range of materials. Image by David Heald © Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation.

The Rotunda oculus, filled with large-format information displays. Image by David Heald © Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation.

The exhibition is co-organized by OMA co-founder Rem Koolhaas, OMA's research arm AMO and its director Samir Bantal, Guggenheim Museum Curator of Architecture and Digital Initiatives Troy Conrad Therrien, and a vast team of researchers and interns hailing from the Harvard Graduate Schoo...

Koolhaas in the countryside

2020-02-14T13:21:00-05:00

The Office of Metropolitan Architecture's (OMA) much-anticipated exhibition, Countryside, The Future, is set to open next week at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City.

The exhibition, according to the museum website, explores "radical changes in the rural, remote, and wild territories collectively identified here as 'countryside,' or the 98% of the earth’s surface not occupied by cities, with a full rotunda installation premised on original research."

The exhibition is organized by OMA co-founder Rem Koolhaas, AMO director Samir Bantal, The Guggenheim's Curator of Architecture and Digital Initiatives Troy Conrad Therrien, and others. It features research and contributions from students at the Harvard Graduate School of Design; the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing; Wageningen University, Netherlands; and the University of Nairobi.

According to a recent article in The Guardian from UK architecture critic Oliver Wainwright, Koolhaas got the idea for the exhibition ...

Construction of Gehry's Guggenheim Abu Dhabi to commence 'soon'

2019-04-30T14:24:00-04:00

Guggenheim Abu Dhabi is a project earmarked for the capital’s Saadiyat Island. The museum is being developed near the completed Louvre Abu Dhabi, as part of the emirate’s increased tourism marketing spend by $136 million over three years. The experimental, sculptural Guggenheim building, is the design of famed architect Frank Gehry.

"It's a big building, parts of it are quite complex and it should take a little bit of time to put together as it's also quite large," Richard Armstrong, director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation and Museum, explains in a recent Euronews interview, assuring that the Frank Gehry-designed Guggenheim Abu Dhabi was "on track and on budget."

Image: TDIC and Gehry Partners, LLP

Gehry's Guggenheim Bilbao lights up covered in Jenny Holzer projections this week

2019-03-22T15:45:00-04:00

The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao presents Jenny Holzer: Thing Indescribable, a survey of work by one of the most outstanding artists of our time. This exhibition features new works, including a series of light projections on the facade of the museum, which can be viewed each night from March 21 to March 30.

"The artist’s aim is to engage the public by creating evocative spaces that ask viewers to consider and potentially define their positions on contentious issues including the global refugee crisis, violence against women, and systemic abuses of power," reads the description of the new exhibition Jenny Holzer: Thing Indescribable.

"The exhibition features newly created works, including electronic signs animated by robotic assemblies, paintings, and light projections. Writing by Basque, Spanish, and international poets will be projected onto the museum’s facade after dark from March 21 to March 30, creating a series of nighttime public events."

View this post on Instagram Indescriptible es la mejor palabra que describe la exposición “Jenny Holzer. Lo Indescriptible" #Inauguración #HolzerGuggenheimBilbao Patrocina #FundaciónBBVA
A post shared by Museo Guggenheim Bilbao (@museoguggenheim) on Mar 22, 2019 at 4:02am PDT

Frank Gehry's buildings are no strangers to becomin...

Anti-opioid activists protest Guggenheim's ties to Sackler Family, the prominent art donors making billions from OxyContin

2019-02-11T17:27:00-05:00

Over the weekend, a group of more than 100 protestors demanded that the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum refuse further funding from the Sackler Family. Led by the American photographer Nan Goldin and her organization PAIN (Prescription Addiction Intervention Now), the activists have been targeting the billionaire dynasty and its pharmaceutical company for promoting the use of OxyContin, a highly addictive, narcotic painkiller that is widely considered to be one of "the most dangerous products ever sold on a mass scale."

The demonstrators took over the museum's iconic atrium on Saturday night, dropping thousands of fake prescription notes from the six-story building while others handed out pill bottles to confused museum-goers. As Goldin staged a die-in on the lobby floor, banners hung from the spiraling hallways with messages such as "SHAME ON SACKLER," and "400,000 DEAD." Afterwards, the protest moved onwards to the Metropolitan Museum, where one of the wings is paid for and named aft...

Rem Koolhaas envisions the future of the 'countryside' in upcoming Guggenheim exhibition

2017-12-01T13:23:00-05:00

The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum is teaming up with Rem Koolhaas and the research arm (AMO) of his practice (OMA) for an upcoming exhibition that will be on display come fall 2019. The project, Countryside: Future of the World, will explore radical changes in the countryside while positing speculations about its future and is an extension of research already underway at the think tank.

Koppert Cress, The Netherlands, 2011. Photo: Pieternel van Velden.

Curated by Troy Conrad Therrien—the museum's first curator for architecture and digital initiatives who also happens to be one of our Ed contributors—the exhibition will examine themes of artificial intelligence and automation, the effects of genetic experimentation, political radicalization, mass and micro migration, large-scale territorial management, human-animal ecosystems, subsidies and tax incentives, the impact of the digital on the physical world, and other developments that are altering landscapes across the globe, according t...

Guggenheim Helsinki plans nixed by city, citing "the project’s excessive cost for the Finnish taxpayer"

2016-12-01T13:24:00-05:00

The mix of private and public funding for the Guggenheim Helsinki has officially been rejected in a city council vote, meaning that the plans for the museum designed by Moreau & Kusunoki are unlikely to ever be built. A new financing plan that drew the bulk of public funding from the city and the rest from private fundraising had been approved by the city board in November, but was vetoed by the larger city council last night. According to The New York Times, Richard Armstrong, director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Foundation in New York, said about the vote that “I suppose that it was a reaction to a sense of engulfing internationalism, or a reaction against globalism. That’s how I’m explaining it to myself.”

Meanwhile, Helsinki City Council member and Guggenheim opposer Osku Pajamaki said that “I’m exhausted but relieved. Instead of buying a subsidiary of the Guggenheim Museum in New York, we can now focus on creating unique local cultural attractions in Helsinki.”

Offici...

You can now explore the Guggenheim rotunda galleries online via Google Street View

2016-01-22T18:28:00-05:00

Online visitors from around the world can now explore the interior of the iconic Frank Lloyd Wright–designed Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum through Google Street View technology. Additionally, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, in collaboration with the Google Cultural Institute, has made available over 120 artworks from its collection for online viewing. [...] The Guggenheim’s architecture presented unique challenges for Google’s engineers and Street View team.

Ready to immerse yourself? Click here to start your stroll down the rotunda.

All images courtesy of Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York.

Hot Work in the Summertime: From Helsinki to London to NYC, Archinect Sessions #35

2015-06-25T17:20:00-04:00

Lots of summer blockbuster news to discuss on this week's podcast. The winner of the Helsinki Guggenheim competition was announced (a young husband-wife firm from Paris took the cake), SelgasCano's "psychedelic chrysalis" Serpentine Pavilion opened, and Andres Jaque's COSMO for MoMA PS1's "Warm Up" began its water cycle. And while not quite blockbusting, in what could easily be the premise for a Vincent Price flick, residents of the blighted Robin Hood Gardens dared Lord Rogers to spend a night in their quarters.

Special guests Quilian Riano and Peggy Deamer of The Architecture Lobby join our news discussion this week, dropping their excellent and incisive commentary on ethical practice into every topic. We are collaborating with the Lobby to measure satisfaction with work-life balance in architecture – take the 3-question survey here.

Listen to episode thirty-five of Archinect Sessions, "Hot Work in the Summertime":

iTunes: Click here to listen, and click the "Subscribe" button bel...

Who are Helsinki Guggenheim winners Nicolas Moreau and Hiroko Kusunoki?

2015-06-25T09:33:00-04:00

Before yesterday's announcement that Moreau Kusunoki Architectes had won the highly contentious and big-budget Guggenheim Helsinki competition, the firm wasn't much used to the spotlight. Querying Google Trends for "Moreau Kusunoki" preceding the Guggenheim news, the firm barely blips twice since the husband-wife duo, Nicolas Moreau and Hiroko Kusunoki, began their practice in 2011. Before now, the highest instance of search traffic was in December of 2014, when the six finalists for the competition were announced. Their website's "info" section currently includes only contact information.

After having won such a high-profile competition, the firm had to make some kind of statement of its architectural perspective, and revealed that their media silence was highly intentional, as "architecture is best conceived in reserve and introspection, which are favorable to the emergence of poetic visions." Or at least so states their firm bio, released as part of the press packet for the Guggen...

A black museum for "The White City of the North": Moreau Kusunoki Architectes selected to design Guggenheim Helsinki

2015-06-23T13:29:00-04:00

One year and 1,715 entries later, the Guggenheim Helsinki Design Competition has selected Paris-based Moreau Kusunoki Architectes as the grand-prize winners today for their design, "Art in the City". In recent years, the Foundation's plans for building a new Guggenheim in Helsinki prompted lively debate among local residents and architects worldwide alike, including the launch of the Next Helsinki counter-competition that wondered whether Helsinki even needs a Guggenheim Museum.

But just like the whirlwind of discussions around the project, the competition itself is just as memorable: Stage One reeled in an astounding 1,715 anonymously submitted entries from around the world last fall, attracting a variety of designs ranging from the safer-yet-promising to the bolder-but-downright wacky. By the start of Stage Two this past January, only six teams – whose team names remained unidentified – made the cut. Over the following months, each finalist team received additional briefing to deve...

Guggenheim director Richard Armstrong talks Helsinki, Abu Dhabi, New York

2015-06-16T17:15:00-04:00

We spoke to Richard Armstrong, the director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Foundation, on the eve of the exhibition Guggenheim Helsinki Now: Six Finalist Designs Unveiled at the Kunsthalle Helsinki [...] So the Guggenheim Helsinki will really happen? Come June we will say which architect seems best for the job; then there has to be a vote in city council again [...]. So there are still a few legislative hurdles ahead, but I would predict yes. It’s irresistible.

Did you submit one of the record-shattering 1,715 entries to the Guggenheim Helsinki competition and think it's worth presenting to the wider Archinect audience? Check out the related Archinect Project Collections list to see other user contributions and learn how to get yours listed, too.

Get a glimpse of the Guggenheim Helsinki Stage Two finalist proposals

2015-04-27T20:33:00-04:00

The big announcement of the winning Guggenheim Helsinki concept is only weeks away, so start making those predictions now. In the meantime, the Stage Two proposals of the six finalists have been revealed.

Throughout Stage Two, the teams worked on further developing their initial concepts for final submission. On that note, the finalist teams are AGPS Architecture Ltd. (Zurich, Switzerland; Los Angeles, USA); Asif Khan Ltd. (London, United Kingdom); Fake Industries Architectural Agonism (New York, USA; Barcelona, Spain; Sydney, Australia); Haas Cook Zemmrich STUDIO2050 (Stuttgart, Germany); Moreau Kusunoki Architectes (Paris, France); and SMAR Architecture Studio (Madrid, Spain; Western Australia).

Although the teams have been named, they'll remain unmatched to their Guggenheim Helsinki proposals until the winning announcement in June. Check out the proposals below:

↓ GH-121371443 (concept boards)

↓ GH-76091181

↓ GH-5631681770

↓ GH-5059206475

↓ GH-1128435973

↓ GH-04380895

This past January,...

Guggenheim to host "Competing Intelligence" Digital Architecture Masterclass this Saturday

2015-03-04T20:40:00-05:00

Mark your calendars, The Guggenheim is hosting a free one-day "Competing Intelligence" Digital Architecture Masterclass this Saturday, March 7 from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. All current architecture students and recent graduates (from within the past five years) in the New York metro area are encouraged to join!

This experiment will bring together human and artificial intelligence in evaluating design, as an interactive way to test the limits of artificial intelligence in an architectural context, specifically in the architecture competition. To make things even more interesting, the Stage One entries of the popular Guggenheim Helsinki Design Competition will be used as the data set.

The one-day workshop will be led by Hugo Liu, principal scientist at eBay and a Ph.D. holder from the MIT Media Lab, and Troy Conrad Therrien, who is the curator of the Architecture and Digital Initiatives.

Results will be showcased in the forthcoming Guggenheim Helsinki Now exhibition at the Kunsthalle Helsinki a...

Archinect Project Collections presents your Guggenheim Helsinki proposals!

2014-12-30T19:37:00-05:00

One of 2014's most popular news item was the announcement of Stage One of the not uncontroversial Guggenheim Helsinki Design Competition.

With a mind-boggling pool of over 1,700 Stage One entries (and one Idaho potato) from 77 countries, it's tough to grant each proposal an appropriate platform and audience — so we created a new exciting Archinect feature: Project Collections!

Over the past few weeks, many of you had already followed our call to share your own submissions as project posts directly on your Archinect people or firm profiles, and Project Collections has them now all accessible in one handy Guggenheim Helsinki list.

Haven't submitted your entry yet? Worry not — the collection is an ongoing effort and new matches are constantly being added to the list.

TO SHARE YOUR GUGGENHEIM HELSINKI SUBMISSION:

Simply submit your entries as project posts to your Archinect profile. Don't have a profile yet? Click here if you're a firm, or here if you're an individual.

We're adding entries t...

The six Guggenheim Helsinki finalists are announced

2014-12-02T13:12:00-05:00

December 2 marks the day that the six finalists of the Guggenheim Helsinki competition are revealed. The controversial competition has sparked enough debate in the architecture + design community that a counter-competition called The Next Helsinki is currently having their own call for alternative solutions. Stage One reeled in an entertaining mix of 1,715 entries from 77 countries.

The 11-member jury, who convened for four days last month, were tasked with selecting the proposals that show the most potential for developing into outstanding designs during Stage Two.

Here are the six finalists:

More details about them on Bustler.

Previously: What do you think of the Guggenheim Helsinki Stage One entries?

Guggenheim Names Troy Conrad Therrien as Curator of Architecture and Digital Initiatives

2014-11-10T14:14:00-05:00

The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Foundation announced today that Troy Conrad Therrien will join the institution as curator of architecture and digital initiatives, a new position. Therrien has worked on exhibitions at the Berlage Institute, the Canadian Centre for Architecture, Columbia University, MoMA PS1, and the New Museum. The museum’s press release says, “A major and immediate component of Therrien’s work will be related to the Guggenheim Helsinki Design Competition.

What do you think of the Guggenheim Helsinki Stage One entries?

2014-10-22T19:25:00-04:00

Stage One of the Guggenheim Helsinki Design Competition reeled in a whopping 1,715 entries from 77 countries. Although the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation officially launched the competition this past summer, the idea of proposing a new Guggenheim Museum for the city of Helsinki has already stirred plenty of debate...Most of the entries received were from the United States, Italy, the United Kingdom, France, Japan, and of course, Finland.

We picked out a few fairly promising submissions and more, uh, interesting ones.

Check out more of our picks and other details on Bustler.

Big businesses and baby steps: Weekly News Round-Up for September 22 and 29, 2014

2014-10-06T18:43:00-04:00

Friday, October 3:

Eisenhower Memorial clears key hurdle on Gehry design: In a positive step for the Memorial's Approving Process Odyssey, the National Capital Planning Commission has OK'd the Commission on Fine Arts (the other federal body that must approve the design) to vote on the Memorial.
Where are the women? Measuring progress on gender in architecture: A series of infographics on the representation of women in architectural practice and education, courtesy of ACSA.

Wednesday, October 1:

Guggenheim plans New York expansion… again: Not for more art space (Gehry tried that before) but for offices.
Zaera-Polo steps down as dean of Princeton's School of Architecture: From the press release: "the school's former dean, Professor Stanley T. Allen, will serve as acting dean until a permanent successor is appointed and that Professor Allen will chair the search for the new dean."
Tiny Spanish Island to be First Energy Self-Sufficient Island: The 10,000 population island will use renewable e...

Guggenheim plans New York expansion… again

2014-10-01T19:33:00-04:00

The Guggenheim plans to research “productive and hospitable office space designs”, staff will be glad to hear, and it is also considering whether to hold a competition to find an architect. The expansion plan comes just over 60 years after the Guggenheim commissioned Frank Lloyd Wright to design its original space and more than a decade after it abandoned a scheme for a second, Frank Gehry-designed museum downtown.

The Next Helsinki counter-competition launches in response to Guggenheim Helsinki controversy

2014-09-09T21:07:00-04:00

On the same day that Stage One of the Guggenheim Helsinki competition will conclude, The Next Helsinki is launching their own international call for alternative solutions to attract the best ideas that they believe would better meet the needs and enhance the city of Helsinki, Finland. Launched by a group of independent arts organizations and chaired by Michael Sorkin, The Next Helsinki bluntly addresses the controversy that the Guggenheim Helsinki competition has sparked [...].

Below is The Next Helsinki announcement:

"Coinciding with the end of the official competition for the design of the controversial Guggenheim Helsinki, a group of independent arts organizations has issued a call for submissions for alternative ideas. This competition—titled The Next Helsinki—is designed to attract innovative ideas about how to more fully meet the city’s cultural, spatial, and sustainability needs.

Following the success of the Guggenheim Bilbao in transforming that region’s tourist economy, many city managers have been seduced by the fantasy that a high-concept museum, designed by a starchitect, will turn around its urban fortunes in a similar way. Advocates of this branding formula see Helsinki as an ideal candidate for a new Guggenheim franchise. Yet the proposal has generated a surprisingly heated public debate among Finland’s citizenry, with pro and anti-Guggenheim sentiment running high.

The Next Helsinki competition aims to elevate the debate by giving voice to b...

Weekly News Round-Up for August 4, 2014: Musk, Martha and monuments

2014-08-11T15:53:00-04:00

Friday, August 8:

Guggenheim Bullies Journalist: Molly Crabapple reports for Vice on inhumane immigrant labor conditions on Saadiyat island in the UAE, where a new arm of the Guggenheim (and Louvre, and NYU) is being built. The Guggenheim holds its cards close and skirts responsibility when Crabapple pushes for answers.
Controversial new app will keep you away from "sketchy" areas: "SketchFactor" rates an area's "sketchiness" based on crowd-sourced local data. Critics are worried that the app will amplify racial profiling and encourage stereotyping.

Thursday, August 7:

Gentrification and the Persistence of Poor Minority Neighborhoods: Harvard sociologists identify another determinant in the gentrification debate: racial composition. Their report, focusing on Chicago, found that a neighborhood's economic redevelopment depended on certain thresholds of black and white residents.
Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu called for the suspension of the Israeli Architects’ Association from an intern...

Guggenheim Bullies Journalist

2014-08-08T17:22:00-04:00

On Monday, artist Molly Crabapple published “Slaves of Happiness Island,” a firsthand report of the slave-like worker conditions on Abu Dhabi’s Saadiyat Island; the Guggenheim, Louvre, and NYU are all building enormous new enterprises there [...] These conditions violate local and international labor laws. We have now received leaked email correspondence between the Guggenheim and Crabapple ... [that] reveal a shocking unwillingness to provide any statement to journalists [...]

Slaves of Happiness Island: Abu Dhabi and the Dark Side of High Art

2014-08-05T15:43:00-04:00

“You know how Ford said you can have any car you like as long as it’s black? In the UAE they can make whatever you want, as long as it’s a building. They can’t make free speech or human rights”

A heartbreaking and personal story of construction labor conditions in the UAE, illustrated with hand drawings showing how literally trapped the workers are. It's ironic and sad that this news item will share the same space with a contemporary article about building a cage-less zoo in Denmark.