Archinect - News

Spatializing Blackness: Milton Curry on black aesthetics and urbanism

2017-12-11T15:05:00-05:00

Architecture, like contemporary art in the 1990s and legal theory a decade before, faces a critical moment in theory and practice. What do black citizens of major U.S. cities and global cities have to look forward to in the coming century in terms of urban conditions and their agency in determining how these conditions change and transform? What does an approach to cities that takes into account black agency, social codes and aesthetics have to offer to city-making as such?

CNN Style highlights USC architecture dean and CriticalProductive editor, Milton S. F. Curry, and his recent role as lead organizer behind Spatializing Blackness, a three-part panel discussion on "contemporary thinking and creative work related to black aesthetics, urbanism and the lived experiences of black bodies" at Design Miami 2017.

Listen to the Rethinking the City Through Blackness/ discussion from December 6, featuring David Adjaye, Amanda Williams, and Germane Barnes, below (click here for the full list of the 2017 Design Talks program).

Archinect also recently interviewed Curry — one month into his new deanship — as part of our ongoing Deans List series.

Marines To Conduct Training In Downtown LA

2014-12-08T14:16:00-05:00

It's not going to look like 'Apocalypse Now' by any stretch of the imagination. The Marine Corps has held similar training in recent years in Atlanta, Memphis and other cities. The military worked closely with the Los Angeles Police Department and notified property owners so no one will be caught off guard

Message and the purpose is clear. US Government is training for urban warfare and large cities are the training grounds. Once we are done with foreign urban centers perhaps the idea is to "bring it on home."

Of course, it's all under the disguise of fighting terrorism (or is it Ferguson?).

"There’s no terrorism threat out there that would be the reason that these exercises are being conducted, this is something that’s been kind of ongoing for a while. This is one location amongst many that the Marines are gonna be kind of exposing their people to.”

Editor's Picks #395

2014-11-28T13:12:00-05:00

Julia Ingalls reviews, the built work and paper architecture of Jimenez Lai. To wit "regardless of the medium...Understanding the role of storytelling within design is fundamental to all of Lai's work".

jla-x commented "The most interesting drawing that he did was a series of plans of a space ship city...really cool how he treated all surfaces as plan (the drawing was in zero gravity...)...A guy like him would be really great at film...I would love to see his drawings animated into short films". tanya enjoyed reading the article and summed up why "Understanding space from a different viewpoint , experiencing a variety of emotions while inhabiting a space , having the luxury to change the vibe of a specifically designed space, a sense of play within architecture, playing around with the art/part of architecture !"

Paul Keskeys, penned A First-Hand View of Gentrification in San Francisco. Arch2133 wasn’t happy "I really don't understand neutral positions like this and it leaves a bad t...

A Failed Public-Housing Project Could Be a Key to St. Louis' Future

2014-08-25T14:53:00-04:00

Today the Pruitt-Igoe site is once again in the spotlight, but this time because of a new bid to “get the economic flywheel going in the right direction again,” in the words of private developer Paul McKee, the force behind the proposed NorthSide Regeneration project. [...] The lynchpin of it all would be to get the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency—the high-tech eyes and ears of the Defense Department—to relocate to where the towers of Pruitt-Igoe once stood.