Archinect - News

The New Yorker dissects the immersive potential of Sphere and City

2023-11-14T08:00:00-05:00

The differences between “City” and the Sphere are deep, true, yet narrower than you might suppose—the works are trying for the same things but in opposite ways. Both are big, expensive, geometric structures in the desert that offer visitors a vivid encounter with the natural world—one with exquisite footage of jellyfish and the like, the other with deftly roughened rock and concrete.

The New Yorker’s art critic Jackson Arn takes on two of the most recent (and spectacular) cultural offerings of the Silver State — "One with a deluge of images and the other with a tantalizing lack of them," as he writes.

Related on Archinect: Take a look at photos of Michael Heizer's 'City' ahead of its debut (45°, 90°, 180°, City. © Michael Heizer. Courtesy Triple Aught Foundation. Photo: Joe Rome)

Take a look at photos of Michael Heizer's 'City' ahead of its debut

2022-08-26T17:51:00-04:00

The long-awaited public opening of land artist Michael Heizer’s monumental earthwork City is just around the corner, and the Triple Aught Foundation, the group which manages its remote Lincoln County, Nevada site, has shared some amazing new photos that offer a sense of the scale and stasis of the massive sculpture which has taken 52 years and another $40 million to finish.

City © Michael Heizer. Courtesy Triple Aught Foundation. Photo: Joe Rome

Complex One and Complex Two, City. © Michael Heizer. Courtesy Triple Aught Foundation. Photo: Joe Rome

Complex Two, City. © Michael Heizer. Courtesy Triple Aught Foundation. Photo: Joe Rome

Critic Dave Hickey recently described it as "a gracious intervention in the desert...composed and complete."

LACMA Director Michael Govan reflected on its realization, stating: "Over the years I would sometimes compare Michael Heizer's City project to some of the most important ancient monuments and cities. But now I only compare it to itself. It's an artwor...

Michael Heizer’s land art masterpiece 'City' finally sets an opening date

2022-08-22T10:00:00-04:00

City, a vast complex of outdoor structures and landmasses the Land artist Michael Heizer began constructing in the desert of Nevada in 1970, will finally begin welcoming public visitors next month. The site’s opening on 2 September, more than 50 years after work at the site began, marks the fulfillment of Heizer’s most ambitious and career-defining project.

Get ready to weep (assuming you are among the select art tourists willing to travel to the site-specific installation, as Heizer intended): The 50-year saga surrounding the National Mall-sized sculpture is over, and the Triple Aught Foundation, which manages the site, will begin accepting up to six visitors a day in an outcome that has at times seemed impossible.

Heizer's masterpiece has been the subject of an Obama-era protective designation (a measure first proposed by the late Senator Harry Reid) and later the failed Trump Administration attempt to open up the 740,000-acre tract to mining and development. Plans were originally for the earthwork to be made public in 2020. LACMA director Michael Govan says it is "an artwork aware of our primal impulses to build and organize space."

As the artist, who began the piece in 1970, told the Los Angeles Times in 2012: "The size thing is not some gimmick or attention-getting trick but a genuine undercurrent of the work. Frank Gehry for ins...

Norman Foster launches 'On Cities' masterclass series

2021-04-22T14:25:00-04:00

Titled "On Cities," a new series of twenty masterclasses was released by the Norman Foster Foundation this week. Each half-hour video features a leading expert in the fields of architecture, urbanism, economics, and mobility, aiming to promote cross-disciplinary and trans-geographic exchange.

"While cities undoubtedly offer significant advantages in the realm of education, health care and social services, urbanization is widely regarded as one of the fundamental challenges for public health, social equity and environmental sustainability," states the Foundation's announcement.

'On Cities' Masterclass Series, extended trailer. Video via Norman Foster Foundation on YouTube.

"In many parts of the world, urbanization has made cities more spatially fragmented, less environmentally responsive and more socially divided. To meet these challenges, speakers will touch on key themes such as urban leadership, urban form and equity, urban informality, urban food systems, urban sustainability, ...

Pritzker Prize laureate Balkrishna Doshi's plea for a Biological City

2018-12-10T15:29:00-05:00

Unfortunately, we have since forgotten this soulful approach to architecture and design, following instead the prevailing planning model of big budgets, large-scale structures and isolated behaviors. Consequently, our habitations have become fragmented and we fail to see the city’s infrastructure and life in an integrated way.

Celebrated Indian architect and 2018 Pritzker Prize laureate, Balkrishna Doshi, pens a passionate NYT opinion piece in which he calls for a renewed harmony of human settlements with nature rather than pursuing more resource-consuming megastructures.

The Balkrishna Doshi-designed Indian Institute of Management Bangalore, 1977. Photo: Sanyam Bahga/Flickr

"In addition to such quietude, other aesthetic measures of settlements include grace, love, compassion and humility," Doshi writes. "To animate a settlement one must create humble and tender connections, which encourage humans to come together and to share and to feel themselves a part of a larger order, a part of Mother Earth."

Saudi Arabia plans to build NEOM, a new $500 billion mega city

2017-10-25T15:12:00-04:00

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman announced plans to build a new city on the Red Sea coast, promising a lifestyle not available in today’s Saudi Arabia as he seeks to remake the kingdom in a time of dwindling resources. The prince said the city project, to be called “NEOM,” will operate independently from the “existing governmental framework” with investors consulted at every step during development. The project will be backed by more than $500 billion from the Saudi government [...].

The project is ambitious with a capital A: besides the mere challenge of building a new mega city in currently undeveloped desert terrain, the Saudi Crown Prince also envisions a new kind of society for NEOM — likely modeled on the 'free zone' concept that made Dubai flourish — whose "new way of living" and "international standards" laws will be at odds with the ultraconservative traditions and values in the rest of the kingdom.

Melbourne named world’s most liveable city for seventh consecutive year

2017-08-18T18:38:00-04:00

Melbourne, Australia has been ranked as the most “liveable” city in the world for the seventh consecutive year by the Economist Intelligence Unit. The EIU’s benchmark annual report titled “The Global Liveability Report 2017,” ranks 140 cities in order of best living conditions. Melbourne’s 97.5 score is down to perfect assessments in health care, education, and infrastructure, as well as hitting over 95 in stability, and culture and environment.

As in previous years, the top 10 list is mostly comprised of major cities in Australia and Canada, while Vienna — once again — barely misses the first spot by 0.1 percentage points overall. Auckland, Helsinki, and Hamburg manage to claim some coveted spots at the top for their respective countries.

The world's top cities for liveability in 2017 are:

Melbourne, Australia
Vienna, Austria
Vancouver, Canada
Toronto, Canada
Calgary, Canada
Adelaide, Australia
Perth, Australia
Auckland, New Zealand
Helsinki, Finland
Hamburg, Germany

Land surrounding Michael Heizer’s "City" could lose national monument protection under Trump Administration

2017-07-31T14:55:00-04:00

As City—Michael Heizer’s vast Land Art installation in the Nevada desert—nears completion, the fate of the federally protected land surrounding it could soon be decided. Ryan Zinke, the US Interior Secretary, visited the state on Sunday, 30 July, as part of a review of 27 national monuments ordered by President Donald Trump, which could result in some of these lands being reopened to development.

"A number of museums banded together to call for the site’s preservation," The Art Newspaper explains the background of City's current surroundings (previously also on Archinect), "and in 2015, Obama created the Basin and Range National Monument, which covers 704,000 acres in southern Nevada’s Lincoln and Nye counties, including the land surrounding City and several Native American rock art sites. The next year, he created the Gold Butte National Monument, which covers 300,000 acres in Clark county."

The end of Shenzhen’s Baishizhou 'urban village'

2016-09-22T15:37:00-04:00

“Village” may not seem like the right term for a cluster of tenement-style walkups that can house more than 100,000 people. Chengzhongcun hang onto the name partly because of the familiarity evoked by the traditions and small-scale businesses that thrive among their migrant populations, and partly because when modern Shenzhen began growing, these places really were just villages in the middle of the city.

Related stories in the Archinect news:

The Arab City

2016-06-01T15:00:00-04:00

In a region at once feared and exoticized, we have been witnessing for more than a generation the devastation of old centers and the rise of new ones. Today there is no better context in which to investigate the complexities of global practice in architecture than that of the rapidly changing Arab city.

How does the deeply traditional meet the hypermodern in the older centers of Beirut, Damascus, and Cairo, and in the emerging new cities of Dubai, Doha, and Abu Dhabi? In Amale Andraos’ new article on Places, and in the new book, The Arab City: Architecture and Representation, she explores the region’s complex relationship with modernity, questions the risks of essentialism in the enlisting of its cultural heritage, and asks what architecture has to do with identity in today’s Arab cities.

The high psychological cost we pay for boring buildings

2016-04-12T20:24:00-04:00

Boring architecture may take an emotional toll on the people forced to live in and around it. A growing body of research in cognitive science illuminates the physical and mental toll bland cityscapes exact on residents. Generally, these researchers argue that humans are healthier when they live among variety — a cacophony of bars, bodegas, and independent shops — or work in well-designed, unique spaces, rather than unattractive, generic ones.

Related stories in the Archinect news:

National Geographic takes a closer look at the world's great urban parks

2016-04-04T15:01:00-04:00

This is the urban park of today. Unlike the neatly drawn public spaces of an earlier age, these parks are reclaimed from the discarded parcels of our cities: Stranded patches of woods, abandoned military bases and airports, storm-water systems, rail lines and bridges, places where scraps of land are pieced together like quilts or strung together like beads. The experimentation is global.

Related stories in the Archinect news:

Michael Kimmelman on Public Squares

2016-04-01T14:40:00-04:00

Squares have defined urban living since the dawn of democracy, from which they are inseparable. [...] I don’t think it’s coincidental that early in 2011 the Egyptian revolution centered around Tahrir Square, or that the Occupy Movement later that same year, partly inspired by the Arab Spring, expressed itself by taking over squares like Taksim in Istanbul, the Plaça de Catalunya in Barcelona, and Zuccotti Park in Lower Manhattan.

Related stories in the Archinect news:

Rem Koolhaas and Kunlé Adeyemi sit down with Guardian Cities to discuss Lagos

2016-02-29T14:53:00-05:00

In 1997 two architects set out to rethink Lagos, an African megacity that had been largely abandoned by the state. Amid the apparent chaos and crime, they discovered remarkable patterns of organisation. Two decades later, Rem Koolhaas and Kunlé Adeyemi discuss the past, present and future of the city – and reveal why their own project never saw the light of day

"...it was the ultimate dysfunctional city – but actually, in terms of all the initiatives and ingenuity, it mobilised an incredibly beautiful, almost utopian landscape of independence and agency." - Rem Koolhaas

Related stories in the Archinect news:

Odd beauty: downtown São Paulo through the lens of Felipe Russo

2016-01-09T09:00:00-05:00

Felipe Russo, photographer who lives and works in São Paulo, Brazil dedicated a photoseries titled Centro, to this vibrant and complex city. Felipe Russo focuses on nearly invisible objects spotted in urban space. He analyses coincidentally captured oddments to decode zeitgeist of a modern city. A plastic bag, brick, cardboard box or zoomed-in cobblestone hidden between business centers, skyscrapers and modern buildings became subjects of surreal compositions.

Photos from the series Centro by Felipe Russo.

China hopes to improve its cities with newly released urban planning vision

2015-12-28T14:54:00-05:00

China has detailed its urban planning vision, which has been designed to make its sprawling cities more inclusive, safer and better places to live. [...] policymakers pledged to transform urban development patterns and improve city management. The last time China held such a high-level meeting was in 1978, when only 18 percent of the population lived in cities. By the end of 2011, in excess of 50 percent of the population called the city their home.

Leading street artists weigh in on the gentrification debate

2015-11-16T18:32:00-05:00

Earlier this week, the online street art community was abuzz about an article by Rafael Schacter for The Conversation, From dissident to decorative: why street art sold out and gentrified our cities. [...] Basically, Schacter argues that street art isn’t rebellious anymore. Rather, that it’s most notable form is as a tool used by corporations to spur gentrification. Agree or disagree, the article is a must-read.

Vandalog author RJ Rushmore reached out to some of the influential figures in street art and muralism to get their reactions to Schacter's claim that street art has sold out and become complicit in the corporate gentrification of our cities. He received responses from Buff Monster, Living Walls, 1xRun, Jeffrey Deitch, Libray Street Collective, Tristan Eaton, John Fekner, Gaia, Ganzeer, Carlo McCormick, The Painted Desert Project, Jessie Unterhalter, Vexta, Wall Therapy and shared their views here.

Related news and one exclusive interview with Buff Monster on Archinect:

Egypt's challenges to build its new capital city

2015-11-09T17:38:00-05:00

Cairo is an unruly urban sprawl that has spun out of control. Now, officials want to build a new capital in the desert -- a potent symbol of President Sisi's regime. But will it ever happen? [...] The old Cairo is an ugly city, an affront to the senses. [...] a city of contradictions, created from the bottom up, even though that had never been the intention. It has been growing wildly since the 1960s -- from 3.5 million back then to 18 million now -- against the will of the country's rulers.

Previously in the Archinect News:

Adam Gopnik on why cities can't win

2015-10-05T18:28:00-04:00

Cities can’t win. When they do well, people resent them as citadels of inequality; when they do badly, they are cesspools of hopelessness. In the seventies and eighties, the seemingly permanent urban crisis became the verdict that American civilization had passed on itself. Forty years later, cities mostly thrive, crime has been in vertiginous decline, the young cluster together in old neighborhoods [...] —and so big cities turn into hateful centers of self-absorbed privilege.

Melbourne is world’s most liveable city for fifth consecutive year

2015-08-20T15:24:00-04:00

In any event, it's as you were for the "haves" at the top of list, with Melbourne taking the top spot for a fifth year running, with Vienna, Vancouver, Toronto and Adelaide/Calgary (tied at 5) completing the top five most livable cities in 2015. [...] these cities have "relatively few challenges to living standards," and enjoy a good infrastructure, healthcare system and a low murder rate. Unsurprisingly, Damascus remains the least livable city, with Syria embroiled in a bloody civil war.

Other articles related to liveability on Archinect:

Heizer's "City" now part of national monument, thanks to POTUS

2015-07-10T15:23:00-04:00

Using his authority under the Antiquities Act, the president created a protected area spanning roughly 704,000 acres in central Nevada’s Basin and Range, as well as smaller ones in California’s Berryessa Snow Mountain and Texas’ Waco Mammoth. [...] Broadly supported by environmentalists, [Basin and Range] is also home to a major earthen sculpture, “City” which the artist Michael Heizer has worked to create over nearly half a century.

All in all, these new monuments cover more land than the state of Rhode Island, adding significant mileage to Obama's public lands legacy. The Basin and Range (Nevada), Berryessa Snow Mountain (California) and Waco Mammoth (Texas) monuments cover lands that are either completely or mostly undeveloped, and their now-protected status will prohibit mining and energy leasing.

The designation also encompasses Michael Heizer's "City", the massive land-art project now in the final stage of its creation, located in Garden Valley, Nevada. "City" was an integral part of a public preservation campaign aimed at getting President Obama to act on the area. Heizer will reportedly attend the White House ceremony when the President will sign the monument proclamations.

Also now off the table are talks of a possible rail corridor through the Basin and Range area, chiefly for shipping nuclear waste to the nearby Yucca Mountain repository.

For more on the history of Heizer's "City":

#ProtectCity campaign l...

Istanbul’s introverted megaspaces

2015-06-18T23:42:00-04:00

A new typology of XL-architecture is emerging in Istanbul, negating the urban context. These ‘Citadels-on-Steroids’ rapidly encroach on the city’s urban fabric. [...] This might very well be the future of all cities. As city walls and state boundaries erode under late capitalism, the walls are only rebuilt at a smaller scale to maintain immunity from the chaos outside.

New York & London ranked highest in 2015 Global Cities Index

2015-05-21T14:45:00-04:00

New York and London remain the world’s most global cities, as they are the only cities to rank in the top 10 of both the Global Cities Index and the Global Cities Outlook according to the A.T. Kearney Global Cities 2015 [...]. San Francisco leads the Global Cities Outlook due to its strength in innovation. Other cities ranking at the top of the Global Cities Outlook include London (#2), Boston (#3), New York (#4), and Zurich (#5).

For lovers of city rankings:

For skeptics: The Top 6 Reasons to Be Wary of City Rankings, Ranked

Future cities of the past

2015-04-29T18:17:00-04:00

But supplementing that aesthetic of “the future” sketched in imaginary edifice, the full SF vision of the future city is a mosaic, constructed from fragments of the cities that we recognize, including symbols that are decidedly from the past. [...] If SF functions by taking the world we know and altering it with a constructed future fantasy, the Statue of Liberty serves as the junction point, the axis where the speculative fantasy begins and ends.

The Calvert Journal asks experts: How to fix Moscow?

2015-01-22T14:42:00-05:00

Big, brash, and full of energy, Moscow is a city that knows how to make an impression. But for all its attractions — world-class museums, clubs and rapidly transforming food scene, to name a few — its downsides are impossible to ignore. [...] This week, The Calvert Journal considers Moscow’s prospects, consulting experts at the Moscow Urban Forum, looking in detail at two projects in the pipeline — VDNKh and Zaryadye Park — and checking out some neighbourhoods that are already going places.

Mapping the City: maps through the eyes of street artists

2015-01-21T17:53:00-05:00

Street artists are showing how they’d map cities differently in a new show that lets visitors step into their clandestine worlds. [...] Mapping the City, an exhibition of the responses by 50 international street artists to being asked to map their cities “through subjective surveying rather than objective ordinance”. Conventional cartography this is not.

Seeking identity through city fonts

2015-01-20T13:53:00-05:00

Decimated by manufacturing losses, some smaller cities are turning for help to an unlikely group of people: typeface designers. Can new fonts really breathe life into the postindustrial city? [...] Type has a lot of effect on the atmosphere of a place, he says, calling it “the voice of the city”: “I think cities that don’t have this very dynamic energy, they don’t feel the need to change their identity.”

50 years of gentrification: will all our cities turn into 'deathly' Canberra?

2014-12-12T13:22:00-05:00

The Economist Intelligence Unit puts Melbourne in first place, followed by Vienna, Vancouver, Toronto, Adelaide and Calgary. There is never any mention, on any list, of London or New York, Paris or Hong Kong. There are no liveable cities where you might actually want to live. [...] Liveability, it seems, is defined by a total absence of risk or chance, pleasure or surprise. It is an index of comfort, a guide to places where you can go safe in the knowledge you’ll never be far from a Starbucks.

Is Jan Gehl winning his battle to make our cities liveable?

2014-12-09T15:24:00-05:00

Ahead of a special Guardian Cities event, the renowned urban ‘rethinker’ says cities should be six or seven storeys high, Helsinki is on the verge of revolution, and that he’s sceptical of London’s cycle superhighway plans [...] Practice partner Søholt puts forward one way of improving a city’s liveability: “Mix the city and assemble the people rather than dispersing them.”

Building an identity: Immigration and architecture in Southern California

2014-12-02T14:25:00-05:00

When Times architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne looks at L.A., he sees the city shaped by immigrants. Landmark buildings in Koreatown that adapt and evolve with a new generation. Houses in Arcadia that allow Chinese homeowners a proud, conspicuous place in a new country. Street life across the region that takes its cue from the way Latino neighborhoods blur the line between public and private.