Archinect - Features

Social Object Relations: Window Breaking and Projective Identification

2017-04-06T12:24:00-04:00

Throughout modern history, the shattered transparent envelope has, in various ways, indexed social crises wherein revolution leads to the dismantling of the crystalline boundaries between public and private property. From the Watts Rebellion, WTO, and G8 protests to the 2011 London Riots, Black Lives Matter protests, and the inauguration of Donald J. Trump, the shattered glass window repeatedly proves to be a site of counter-identification with systems of oppression under late capitalism. Learning from these events, how might we differently consider the act of window-breaking beyond the conventional understandings of protest and felony, and instead, reframe it as an intersubjective form of resistance and disavowal?

How the couch furnished modernity’s notions of privacy

2016-03-07T14:10:00-05:00

In the 21st century, the couch is so ubiquitous as to be virtually invisible. We find them in commercial waiting rooms, in private homes, as infested harbingers of urban decay on street corners. They populate television talk shows and form a shorthand for psychiatric evaluation. But how has this piece of furniture, which has only been around for about 330 years, become the seat of our culture?

Op-Ed: From (EX)CITE to (IN)CITE, reflecting on Rem's Biennale

2014-07-07T12:43:00-04:00

EXCITE

Rem Koolhaas, chief curator of the 2014 Venice Biennale, managed to excite us, again forcing us to rethink the Elements and Fundamentals of architecture. For me, this is the first time I felt a real desire to visit the show, which I have always imagined to be more like an amusement park for new design.