Archinect - News

Blair Kamin: ‘Writer underwriting writer’

2024-10-24T17:59:00-04:00

The [Chicago] Tribune, which had been reducing staff and budgets for years before Alden Global Capital accelerated the process with its May 2021 purchase of Tribune Publishing, did not replace Kamin, just as it did not replace several other culture writers who left the paper. So the retired critic took matters into his own hands.

We covered the debut of the Windy City’s newest critic Edward Keegan back in August along with the restart of work on 400 Lake Shore Drive. His position is being funded by Blair Kamin after Kamin stepped aside in January 2021. He explains the situation to Northwestern's vaunted J-school's Local News Initiative blog.

"I decided that if initially they weren’t going to make a grant, that I would make a grant myself to do this," he tells of his personal philanthropy. "But it’s complicated, because when you have a so-called donor-advised fund, you can’t give money legally to a for-profit enterprise. So you need to find a nonprofit to give the money to, and they, in turn, will give the money to the for-profit. So it took forever going through a variety of possibilities."

Selldorf unveils revised Sainsbury Wing plan in response to critical backlash

2022-10-21T09:00:00-04:00

Selldorf Architects has released a revised plan for the controversial overhaul of the Sainsbury Wing at London’s National Gallery following a torrent of criticism that has grown online after their initial designs were unveiled this summer.

The Architects’ Journal is reporting on the revisions, which appear to have entailed the retention of certain ground floor elements in the lobby and changes to the originally proposed placement of existing structural columns, as well as to the materials used in the balustrade and lobby walls.

Image courtesy Selldorf Architects

"I don't think of these changes as a compromise. I see them as a welcome development," Annabelle Selldorf told AJ. "In the resubmitted plans, much more of the existing fabric will remain, creating a clearer dialogue with the original building. And yet the original goals remain intact."

Image courtesy Selldorf Architects

"I took from this reaction hat people truly care about the building. And when when you perceive that, you ha...

The worst thing about the Venice Biennale? Its critics, argues Phineas Harper

2016-06-01T14:18:00-04:00

This biennale was not perfect. None are. And frankly I wonder whether Venice can ever be a fit venue for a serious interrogation of issues more profound than the Campari or Aperol conundrum. The vernissage is, at heart, a schmoozey, boozey networking knees-up in which the architectural great and good cheek-kiss their way down Via Garibaldi occasionally glancing in a pavilion. Arevena knew this all too well when he set out to give the festival some bite.

Architecture Foundation Deputy Director/Turncoats founder Phineas Harper gives his two cents on critics' self-righteous reactions to the Venice Biennale.

Find more Archinect coverage on the 2016 Venice Biennale in News and Features.

As hammers clang and views vanish

2015-10-03T11:03:00-04:00

residents are taking aim at the disruption caused by construction, the uprooting of cherished institutions, the buildings’ designs and the ever-higher prices attached to the housing that they fear will alter neighborhoods fundamentally.

C. J. Hughes examines how some NYC residents are reacting to an ongoing boom in construction, enabled/exemplified by the rezoning of 37 percent of the city under the Bloomberg administration. From filing noise complaints, pushing for height moratoriums, to fighting against the loss of public space and/or services.

What makes "good" architecture criticism? These writers define the traits

2015-04-21T13:52:00-04:00

What is 'serious criticism' in architecture? This is a vital topic, since architecture critics often shape public opinion as much as architects themselves do, if not more so.

Derived from John Ruskin's 1849 essay "The Seven Lamps of Architecture", architect Lance Hosey compiled a list of comments from the small group of architecture writers pictured above about what they believe are the defining characteristics of good architectural criticism and its role in today's society.

Powers of 10 with Christopher Hawthorne, architecture critic at the LA Times, on Archinect Sessions #10!

Critical response to Googleplex expansion focuses on suburban development, not architecture

2015-03-10T15:37:00-04:00

Google’s choice of BIG and Heatherwick Studios to design their Mountain View campus expansion is true to form: big, brash, debatably realistic, with a dash of techno-utopianism. The critical response to the proposal – a series of webbed glass shells covering reconfigurable utility spaces, integrated with the North Shore’s natural landscape and urban life – depended on where it was published. Design and architecture publications picked at BIG and Heatherwick’s design; tech and general publications focused on mega-client Google and the changes to Mountain View.

The renderings released at the end of February (see here) are part of a massive master plan submitted by Google to Mountain View officials on February 27. It is highly unlikely it will proceed as-is. But with the sheer real estate that Google commands in Mountain View, this project adding 2.5 million new square feet to Google’s cache of the majority of privately owned land in the North Bayshore area, it’s certainly not scaling ...

Archinect rounds up critical reactions to Koolhaas' biennale

2014-06-19T11:42:00-04:00

This year's Venice Biennale of Architecture, curated by Rem Koolhaas, officially opened on June 7, under the theme "Fundamentals". The deluge of criticism and reporting coming out of the Biennale will surely continue until it closes November 23, but so far reactions from the architectural journalism community seem pretty consistent. Critics seem at once relieved that the biennale is not given away to preening and doting upon architectural personalities, but instead focused on "architecture, not architects", as per Koolhaas' design. The flip-side of this could be seen as replacing objects of starchitectural value with a too-safe generalism, imbued with the self-importance of Koolhaas' cult of personality. Responses seem largely concerned with interpreting the man at the same time as his Biennale, rather than investigating the interplay of national pavilions' personalities under a unifying theme. But we've got many months to go, and this is only the beginning.

But with the sheer mass o...