Archinect - News

Occupying Wall Street and Mapping Liberty Plaza (Video Trailer)

2012-09-17T12:41:00-04:00

As Occupiers posted links, updates, photos and videos on social media sites; as they deliberated in chat rooms and collaborated on crowdmaps; as they took to the streets with smartphones, they tested the parameters of this multiply mediated world. What is the layout of this place? What are its codes and protocols? Who owns it? How does its design condition opportunities for individual and collective action?

On the anniversary of Occupy Wall Street, architects Jonathan Massey and Brett Snyder investigate the spatial dimensions of political action in two related features on Places, including axonometric drawings that follow the transformation of Zuccotti Park into Liberty Plaza. See the trailer below.

Housing and the 99%

2012-02-14T21:07:00-05:00

How should the state pursue the goal of making decent housing affordable and accessible to all its citizens? How can we mobilize our collective resources in the service of social justice? In what other ways might we imagine living together? What is a house?

On Places, architectural historian Jonathan Massey puts Occupy Wall Street and the 99 Percenters into the historical context of housing in America. Walking us from the 1920s to the present day, he explores how governmental and banking policies have worked to promote the ideal of home ownership — and lately to endanger it.

Editor's Picks #234

2011-10-23T19:45:44-04:00

Orhan noted that in the language of "architectural poetics, the living room bathes you in a beautiful California light, washes your soul and takes your thoughts into the Pacific Ocean through the large window which sets the elevation on that side. Outside is wide and open, nurturing the peaceful inner space, this is something only great architecture can bless you with and masterfully achieved as in Schindler made experience."

Orhan Ayyüce, reported on his visit to Schindler's 1926 Lovell Beach House which the MAK Center and its brilliant curatorial team were able to gain access to as a 2011 fund raising event. Orhan noted that in the language of "architectural poetics, the living room bathes you in a beautiful California light, washes your soul and takes your thoughts into the Pacific Ocean through the large window which sets the elevation on that side. Outside is wide and open, nurturing the peaceful inner space, this is something only great architecture can bless you with and masterfully achieved as in Schindler made experience." SDR then posted some older B+ W documents "As a contrast to (or context for) Orhan's new photos".

In The Ideal Firm's Profile, Sherin Wing, laid out a number of working conditions by which firms large and small can try to whether the effects of poor economic policies and deregulation throughout the 2000’s will be felt for years to come. Lian Chikako Chang commented "'But ...

Editor's Picks #233

2011-10-16T14:10:47-04:00

Anthony J. Lumsden, a prolific Southern California architect who helped develop new ways of wrapping buildings in smooth glass skins, died Sept. 22 in Los Angeles. eric chavkin shared a personal memory “I remember Tony Lumsden. He taught 5th year studio at SCI-Arc , the time between Cesar Pelli and Alberto Bertolli...Lumsden's after work crits started from later afternoon and lasted to evening , always over-sketching on flimsy. A roll a night. One student after another.”

Sherin Wing, takes A Macro Look at Unemployment and the Economy. In the piece she examines what the architecture profession can do in the face of high unemploymentand the current macro economic conditions. Most importantly, she believes “First, they must stop simply immersing themselves in a narrow vision of the profession as merely one of buildings, spaces, and aesthetics. They must understand the larger context of both their national and the global economy and how the architecture industry is shaped by those forces. And they must be involved politically. In the famous words of Frederick Douglass, “Agitate, agitate.” A collective voice of both the unemployed and employed in architecture would prove powerful indeed.” Gregory Walker, argued in his response that “We need a WPA style program because our infrastructure, which makes Rick Perry’s report card look good, is aging to the degree that we will see many countries surpass us (qualitatively) in the near future, making them incr...