Archinect - News

Architecture critics take on the Chicago Architecture Biennial (and each other)

2019-10-02T05:00:00-04:00

As critical reaction to the 2019 Chicago Architecture Biennial continues to pour in, Archinect has collected some critical highlights from a collection of design writers and critics. (See here for Archinect’s 2019 CAB picks.)

And while this year’s takes on the biennial have been relatively level-headed, the entire affair was kicked off with a searing bit of friendly fire from multiple sources.

For one, the recent opening of ArchiteXX’s Now What?! Advocacy, Activism & Alliances in American Architecture since 1968 exhibition at the Co-Prosperity Sphere in Chicago was launched as an act of opposition to the Chicago Architecture Biennial itself. The group is officially boycotting CAB due to the financial sponsorship of the event by fossil fuel corporation BP. Though the Now What?! exhibition is open roughly concurrently with CAB, it is officially unaffiliated.

View of a postcard by Kay Janis advertising More Than the Sum of Our Body Parts, an exhibition in Chicago in 1993 by CARYATIDS...

Zaha Hadid Architects director defends criticisms of the London tower design

2018-01-22T14:17:00-05:00

Zaha Hadid Architects (ZHA) has defended proposals for a high-rise, mixed-use scheme in London – described as a ‘breakthrough project’ for the practice – following criticism over its size and location. Shortly before Christmas, the firm submitted plans to Lambeth Council [...] The scheme, the practice’s first major mixed-use residential and commercial development in the UK, has been dubbed a ‘two-fingered salute’ by opponents, who claim the proposals are too big for the site.

Zaha Hadid Architects combatted criticism of their proposal for the Vauxhall Cross Island site in London. Critiques of ZHA's plan claim the design overcrowds the area with towers that are too tall overshadowing the surrounding area and creating traffic congestion.

ZHA director Jim Heverin responded to the criticisms dismissing claims of congestion stating the design fits within a masterplan overseen by Transport for London (TfL). Heverin justifies ZHA plans asserting the design does not create more overshadowing than what is already permitted in surrounding development plans.

Heverin revealed the importance of this project for the firm stating, "We had been keen to show that we can do this type of project and how the office is moving in this direction."

The Ideology of Publication / Conversation with Bernd Upmeyer

2012-08-14T13:09:00-04:00

Urbanism is one of those malleable concepts that defy definition. A flexible subject where, by trying to lock it within a specific scope, its validity sometimes gets undermined and its potential spoiled.

But when a magazine develops and maintains its own way to portray the multiple faces, forms, shapes, relationships, arguments, contradictions, images, consequences, and messages of the discipline that is supposed to carry the unbearable load of thinking the city, then the exercise of defining urbanism becomes an enriching intellectual journey.

MONU (Magazine on Urbanism) was born in 2004 in Rotterdam. What was originally an almost underground magazine made available through a pdf dossier and a stapled black and white print has evolved into one of the main independent publications, a reference for the collective intelligence of urbanism, and an icon of exquisite aesthetics.

Set to satisfy a growing urbanophilic hunger, MONU has thrown into the mix an intoxicating mixture o...

What determines a solid piece of critical writing?

2012-08-01T21:46:00-04:00

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.

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 in the field.

A New Belle-Lettrism and the Future of Criticism

2012-06-21T18:11:00-04:00

But despite the many and varied predictions of the death of criticism — of architecture as well as other forms of culture — it seems to me that a radical rethinking of critical practice might be prompted by the potentials of writing for online media, and that this rethinking might result in a new belle-lettrism.

How will the accelerating transition from print to digital publishing affect the practice of architecture criticism? On Places, Naomi Stead surveys the scene and is optimistic about the possibilities.

Lantern Inaugural Issue Released

2012-04-18T12:21:00-04:00

Creating anything new, particularly a creative collaboration, is an act of pathological hope. It has been said the difference between construction and creation is this: a thing constructed can only be loved after it is constructed; but a thing created is loved before it exists. It was with this sense of hope that this project began—an idea borne not only of the notion that we had something to say, but that we could express it in an engaging, thought provoking, and intellectually rigorous way.

The first issue of Lantern, an online publication preceding the print versions, celebrates 'Illumination.' In the inaugural issue of Lantern, an online and print publication, we reflect on the nature of illumination, exploring both the lit circumference within the lantern’s glow and the darkness just beyond and finding both spaces of value.

It is our hope that you will step into the dark with us, Lantern in hand, and explore this new topography with the wonder and yearning with which all journeys begin. Celebrate the Vernal Equinox with the release of Volume I, Issue 1, Spring 2012, the inaugural issue of a new journal. Lantern includes a dynamic set of ARTicles that explore, consider, question, and suggest in a way that is both disparate and unified.

Letter from the Editors, Spring 2012