Archinect - News

Does Jeanne Gang's architecture inspire social justice?

2016-07-21T12:36:00-04:00

In this New York Times interview with Ginia Bellafante, Jeanne Gang discusses the importance and challenges of designing work that isn't simply aesthetically pleasing, but that influences positive changes in social behavior and policy. In addition to her work on waterways, she discusses her idea behind designing a fire rescue station in one of New York City's poorest and most violent neighborhoods:

You feel like you trust a firefighter, a rescue worker. And those doors on the building are often open. And we even put a bench in the front of the building so people can actually sit there instead of taking this approach of creating a fortress, which I think is a contrast to what we see in the design of police stations.

And so really designing this Fire Rescue 2 started me thinking about, are there ways that design could help improve the relationship between community members and police if we looked at the architecture? Not that it can solve everything. But I think, you know, maybe it can ...

US museums provide emergency support for Syria

2014-07-21T13:18:00-04:00

US museums are teaming up with the Syrian Interim Government’s Heritage Task Force to help protect Syrian museum collections and stem the loss of cultural heritage amid the country’s ongoing civil war. Late last month, experts from the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC, and the Pennsylvania Museum’s Penn Cultural Heritage Center quietly organised a three-day training session for curators, heritage experts and civilians in an undisclosed location outside of Syria.

US student is rescued from giant vagina sculpture in Germany

2014-06-23T13:37:00-04:00

On Friday afternoon, a young American in Tübingen had to be rescued by 22 firefighters after getting trapped inside a giant sculpture of a vagina. The Chacán-Pi (Making Love) artwork by the Peruvian artist Fernando de la Jara has been outside Tübingen University's institute for microbiology and virology since 2001 and had previously mainly attracted juvenile sniggers rather than adventurous explorers.