How can we let geriatrics design the future? There is a creeping conservatism in old age, Rogers and Piano’s Pompidou was genuinely revolutionary, but that was in 1977, ever since then they've been riffing off the same ideas, with decreasing vitality...They are past retirement age and yet they march on, pulling out the same ideas over and over again, while the planet fawns obsequiously at their feet. — Vice
As part of Vice Future Week, Eddie Blake pens a critique of the current geriatric state of architecture. He believes that we must move beyond the tired designs of the past and embrace a new emerging architecture. The future of architecture is more co-operative, varied, often temporary and... View full entry »
Bustler.net posted a list of the 2012 Recipients of the AIA Small Project Awards. Reacting to the Saint Nicholas Antiochian Orthodox Christian Church; Springdale, AR by Marlon Blackwell Architect Orhan Ayyüce posted an image of Fire Station No. 4, Columbus, Indiana, 1967, by Venturi and Rauch asking "Do you think so too? As a student FS 4 was a big deal for me and still is."
News Janelle Zara wrote about The New Architectural Wisdom of Airports: Ikea, iPads, And Ice Skating Rinks for Art Info. aml pointed us to her "more skeptical take on contemporary airports" and airport urbanism over at her blog. Therein she argued "my main point is that airports are and... View full entry »
But I'm not sure if I want all critical writing to be "solid" however. I'm also interested in more experimental, imaginative approaches to writing that take risks with form and language. — the Atlantic
Steven Heller recently had a chance to talk with Alice Twemlow, co-founder of the MFA Design Criticism program at the School of Visual Arts. They touched on the benefits that come from learning to write critically about design and her belief that there is a need more and better writing by experts... View full entry »
Mr. Landman views these attempts at defining the critic’s frame of reference — Kimmelman-style and Scott-style — as entirely appropriate. Critics, he said, are not supposed to be objective; they are free to champion certain kinds of work. They are “free to like or dislike anyone or anything.” — NYT
Arthur S. Brisbane, (the Public Editor) provides some insight into the workings of the NYT Arts section. He spoke with Jonathan Landman, The Times’s culture editor, in an effort to better understand the rules that The Times plays by. Specifically, when it comes to the New York... View full entry »
I remember Poly Styrene, the singer from X-Ray Spex, and all her prophetic songs from the late 70s: "I Am A Poser," "Germ-Free Adolescents," "Prefabricated Icon," "Genetic Engineering." Take a look at architecture and people today and you realize that it all came true. — Vice Magazine
A candid conversation on the horrendous state of new construction in New York, with the crankiest of architecture critics, Ivana Force-Majeure, and Vice Magazine's Bob Nickas. View full entry »
... one the most gifted architects of my time has been reduced to wrapping such conventional programs of use in merely expressionistic forms, without letting a single ray of her genius illuminate the human condition. Am I being pretentious and overly demanding? Of course. But that’s the way disappointed lovers behave. Exaggerated emotions. Absurd demands. Anger that transgresses all reason. She has let me down, and what makes it worse is that she apparently couldn’t care less. — Lebbeus Woods
In 2002, Tony Blair decided to invade Iraq – not a decision that, on the face of it, has a lot to do with architecture; but one of the articles I am most proud to have written for this paper was the story of a journey I made from one end of Iraq to the other, with Stuart Freedman, an unflappable press photographer. — Guardian
Jonathan Glancey has been the Guardian's architecture and design correspondent for the past 15 years. On the occasion of his last article for the paper he looks back at some of the projects – ancient and modern – that have enchanted him over the past 15 years. View full entry »
Jeanne Gang and Greg Lindsay suggested some ways of Designing a Fix for Housing, beginning with rethinking our historic commitment to detached, single-family homes and segregated Euclidean zoning. Louis Arleo agreed that we need to redesign suburbia but argued "however suburbia will never be improved until architects embrace the idea of a developers business model."
Anthony Carfello, analyzed Los Angeles media’s failings in their role as "the de facto voice" of AEG’s development plans for Farmers Field in Farmers Field: Bringing Football Back on a Need-to-Know Basis. Carfello contended "The existing biases, the assumptions in play... View full entry »
Passage across a border wrenches us from a space of citizenship — where our individual being is cloaked in layers of legal protection — to a space where we experience at once freedom and nothingness. As architects and planners, we lack the language for describing this shift in the perception and socio-political dimension of place; for distinguishing between the place of the citizen and the place of the stranger within the space of the state. — Places Journal
In an essay on Places titled "Hospitality Begins at Home," architect and Pratt Institute professor Deborah Gans explores the spatial and political dimensions of being a stranger, particularly an immigrant or refugee. She reviews Maya Zack's Living Room exhibition at the Jewish Museum in New York... View full entry »
In landscape, legible intent is different for forms we perceive to be buildings than for forms we perceive to be sculptures, since in most cases (Gehry is the exception) before we ask, what is the architect’s purpose, we ask, what is the building’s purpose? This may be the single most profound difference between architectural and sculptural presence in landscape. — Places Journal
David Heymann analyzes the very different ways in which works of sculpture and works of architecture occupy the landscape. And he looks closely at a grain elevator, and shows how a form which we usually experience as a familiar and even neighborly presence can come to seem evil. The final... View full entry »
The underwater mortgages and overleveraged loans that underlie this latest great contraction result in significant part from valuing both residential and commercial buildings merely as investment vehicles rather than as complex and consequential things-in-the-world. And on this urgent issue, which places buildings at the very center of key political and economic debates, architecture critics have been mostly missing in action. — Places
Thomas Fisher dean of the College of Design at the University of Minnesota, reviews the state of architectural criticism. Are the days of a professional critic who writes for a major newspaper over? Has architectural criticism been weakened by the globalization and commodification of the... View full entry »
Architects innovate through design, but developers also innovate by selecting architects and making decisions to invest in new neighborhoods or provide housing forms that they think other developers are neglecting. Although what developers do is not as obvious as architecture, that doesn’t mean there aren’t consequences to liming competition among them. — forbes.com
As he has moved through the design professions, Hustwit has scaled up from a single typeface (Helvetica) through industrial design (Objectified) and now to cities. Each one has followed essentially the same structure, talking heads interspersed with images, one person and one idea leading to the next. No voiceover. No narrative. No critique. And not a lot of style. As Hustwit told Adam Harrison Levy, that’s the way he wants it. — observersroom.designobserver.com
The new library across from the Pacific Design Center strikes an appealingly upbeat tone, borrowing from various architectural influences to become one of the most impressive public pieces in the region in a decade. — Christopher Hawthorne, Los Angeles Times
Times Culture Editor Jonathan Landman: In this case, Michael had some things to say about the approach he will take to this beat that I and my bosses thought were worth amplifying. The old-writer-new-mantle thing played a part, but there’s certainly no guarantee that a writer gets a Page 1 story when he or she switches beats. — New York Observer
In his first review, MIchael Kimmelman goes to the South Bronx of all places, sending a message that he may just be up to the task of replacing, even besting, Nicolai Ourossoff. View full entry »
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