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Obscene was the Venice Biennale of Rem Koolhass
On one side the fetishism of the industrial products and components (Italian International Pavilion) and on the other the celebration of the political failure of the world… as a naive agitprop able to wrap the architect with politically correct conscientiousness… self-complaisance for this comfortable dualism.
— new-territories.com
We are in the pursuit of the diagrammatic hoax he himself promoted 20 years ago, same arrogance of reductionism to avoid embracing and gathering complexity in a productive way, in an aesthetic way, for a critical production, not for a simulation of a critical behavior… sponsored by Rolex. View full entry
His writing has a patient, deliberate quality that is rare at a moment when the dominant medium of architectural discourse is Twitter. Perhaps this is why Mr. Rybczynski, despite himself, is suddenly all the rage. — nytimes.com
News Dave Heller spoke with Inga Saffron about not just architecture but "city life criticism". Evan Chakroff asked for tips "Has anyone compiled a good 'top ten' of her articles?" Quondam replied "Links to Saffron's articles appear almost weekly within ArchNewsNow's daily collection of... View full entry
Inga Saffron, who writes the "Changing Skyline" column for the Philadelphia Inquirer, won the Pulitzer Prize for criticism this week.
She talks with Dave Heller about the state of criticism today, and the changing attitudes towards cities.
— newsworks.org
Previously: Inquirer's architecture critic Inga Saffron wins Pulitzer Prize for criticism View full entry
His work is badly constructed, ravey-balls hair metal, a C.C. DeVille guitar solo that cannot—will not—end until the billionaire clients who keep paying for this shit can be stopped. — gizmodo.com
I guess this is what you get when you put a decent writer in charge of driving traffic.CPM = 1 / Journalism = 0 View full entry
Though easy targets for fiscal hawks, public architecture that’s luxurious and dramatic — even excessive — should be ours as a right. — Jacobin
Owen Hatherly has published a piece praising "white elephant" architectural projects. View full entry
The tech sector is, increasingly, embracing the language of urban planning — town hall, public square, civic hackathons, community engagement. So why are tech companies such bad urbanists? — nytimes.com
The new Pérez Art Museum that opened here last week embodies a vernacular style—deep-shaded, loose-limbed and connected to the tropics—that should have been but never was because of those two invasive species, Art Deco and the air conditioner. — online.wsj.com
Space Oddity was conceived by rub-a-dub in 2012, while studying under the DRL at the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London, a post-professional MArch program. They state that while their proposal "is obviously not a viable option for actual space travel...Lately there has being a lot of noise about space design...We believe a lot of these projects are only solving technical issues".
Fred Scharmen was intrigued "Very nice work. Thanks for posting this".
Amelia Taylor-Hochberg Editorial Manager for Archinect, interviewed rub-a-dub (a team of Sebastian Andia, Rodrigo Chain, Apostolos Despotidis and Thomas T. Jensen) to learn about their project 'Space Oddity', for the latest edition of the Student Works series. Space Oddity was conceived... View full entry
"designed by famed architect Zaha Hadid whose signature style appears to be making some of the world's most f**kable buildings...like Georgia O'Keeffe of things you can walk inside...i guess maybe it is time things evened out a bit" - Jon Stewart — Daily Show
Last night on The Daily Show, they offered a critique of Qatar's recently released plans for the Al Wakrah 2022 FIFA World Cup Stadium, designed by Zaha Hadid Architects. The show goes on to label the proposal one of the world's most f**kable soccer stadiums. Also while reporting in, on... View full entry
The creaky staircase was covered in plastic, as was the living room furniture, but the bones were still there: pressed paper wainscoting in the hall, thickly painted moldings. We often got in trouble for walking too loudly in our clompy shoes up to the top floor at night. — Alexandra Lange
Like one skyline perched on another, the latest mega-building by Rem Koolhaas towers over the starchitect playground of Rotterdam. But why was it even built? — theguardian.com
Today’s piece was going to be an op-ed column in the New York Times.
But they declined to publish what I supplied. Which was this... - Banksy
— Better Out than In
Cornell University’s new architecture building designed by Rem Koolhaas’ Office of Metropolitan Architecture is a “disaster” says Cornell University architecture professor Jonathan Oschorn. “The code violations are egregious”, states Ochshorn. — businessofarchitecture.com
Photo by Theodore Ferringer View full entry
Far from being anchored in the local context, the project (the disastrous City of Culture of Galicia outside Santiago de Compostela, designed by Peter Eisenman) has decapitated Monte de Gaias and replaced it with a phony landscape with curves like those of a fun-fair roller coaster. These cynical intellectual manipulations cannot mask the reality of structures resembling supermarkets twisted about with algorithms and camouflaged with a thin veneer of granite (imported from Brasil!). — Uncube
In a short sweet and illustrated article writer historian William J.R. Curtis puts several Bilbao effect projects in the trash can. It might as well be called "f..k content." View full entry