Archinect - News

ACSA issues joint statement on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion censorship in education

2023-09-21T17:39:00-04:00

The Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA) has joined its sibling organizations in landscape architecture and planning in opposing the concerted efforts of far-right lawmakers to prevent the inclusion of race and racism topics into curricula in states including Arkansas, Florida, Iowa, South Dakota, and Virginia.

"This united declaration stands as a strong objection to the legislation that silences educators from sharing the histories of the architectural profession. Practitioners, educators, and students must be granted access to the complete narrative. Being privy to only a portion of the story significantly disadvantages us all," Mo Zell, the 2023-24 ACSA President, said in a statement.

"The boards of directors of the three organizations representing university programs and educators in architecture, landscape architecture, and planning — ACSA, CELA, and ACSP, — jointly communicate our opposition to any legislation that prevents educators from teaching and shari...

Architecture's controversies in 2022: The industry continued to be scarred by strife and scandal

2022-12-21T08:00:00-05:00

The year’s end brings the chance to survey architecture’s progression and social impact through salient entryways that include labor, activism, and the development of topical building trends.

Another way of recapping things is by looking at the varied rows, discord, stories of ill-treatment, and critical reactions to certain projects that shape the way the architecture progresses and is viewed by the broader public. With everything from conflict to college dorms domineering the news cycle, our coverage has been as influenced by current events as it was by goings-on inside halls of higher learning and professional practice.

Previously on Archinect: Updated Munger Hall images show two floors removed as controversial project seeks approval

Twelve months ago, we documented what happened once the industry began to recover from a years-long pandemic-plagued economy. What followed was a year marked by new pinnacles and uncertainty within the industry. With an eye for the murkiness that ha...

Prominent Russian architectural school, Strelka Institute, suspends activities in protest of Ukraine invasion

2022-02-28T14:53:00-05:00

As casualties mount in Vladimir Putin's war of aggression against neighboring Ukraine, the prominent Moscow-based Strelka Institute for Media Architecture and Design has issued a statement condemning the loss of life and announcing that it has suspended all academic activities until further notice.

The 12-year-old institute, which in the past has contributed to the country’s design for the 2014 Venice Biennale, is amongst the most influential architecture schools in eastern Europe and now joins several other academic and cultural institutions inside Russia in expressing their opposition to what the government still insists on calling a “special military operation.”

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Strelka Institute (@strelka_institute)

Strelka's Director of Education Varvara Melnikova and Program Director of The Terraforming Benjamin Bratton also shared their views via social media, joining a chorus of protests that has extended into academia and other...

Architecture and the female form: Erotic collages by artist @scientwehst (NSFW)

2017-10-06T21:02:00-04:00

It’s this learned self-confidence that has become the center of Giulia’s graphic collages, allowing her to push boundaries regarding sexuality and censorship of the female form. By strategically placing architectural elements onto images of the female body, Giulia is ever so slightly bypassing Instagram’s strict censorship rules, but while the Brooklyn-based artist’s near-pornographic collages are technically safe for IG, she says it hasn’t been an easy road on the platform.

Highsnobiety interviews Giulia, the provocative Brooklyn-based artist who is better known by her Instagram handle @scientwehst.

When asked what inspired her to create erotic collages by inserting architectural images in place of female genitalia: "It started with me creating random pornographic collages where I would replace genitalia with images that looked phallic or yonic, typically food. This slowly evolved into me looking for any images that resembled a female body, which was then refined into me looking for only architectural images that resembled the female form."

Click here to read the entire interview and marvel at more of Giulia's images.

France moves to block Tor, ban free and public Wi-Fi

2015-12-07T15:00:00-05:00

According to leaked documents France's Ministry of Interior is considering two new proposals: a ban on free and shared Wi-Fi connections during a state of emergency, and measures to block Tor being used inside France. The documents were seen by the French newspaper Le Monde. According to the paper, new bills could be presented to parliament as soon as January 2016. These proposals are presumably in response to the attacks in Paris last month where 130 people were murdered.

According to the report published by Le Monde, the French Ministry of Interior has developed two frightening new security proposals that may be presented to parliament early next years.

The first, as reported by Ars Technica, would block free, public WiFi during a state of emergency. On November 20, France extended its state of emergency – implemented in the immediate aftermath of last month's terror attacks – to three months. Blocking signals could be difficult to implement, if still possible, and have potentially massive implications, leaving many without internet access for extended periods of time.

The second proposal is to block and/or forbid use of Tor. Originally developed by the US Government to protect intelligence communication, Tor is a free software that enables anonymous communication and internet access. While often used for illicit purposes, notably access to the darknet in order to purchase black market items, it's also vital for whistleblowers, journalists and politic...

China appears to loosen strict exhibition ban on work by Ai Weiwei and other artists

2015-07-06T13:46:00-04:00

In Beijing, Ai Weiwei is back with a vengeance. The dissident Chinese artist has had four solo shows in the Chinese capital, ending an implicit exhibition ban that had been in place since his arrest in 2011. The fact that the shows, which opened in June, were permitted with minimal interference beyond one amended opening date surprised everyone, including Ai. “I never planned to have a few shows all at once,” Ai tells us.

China's New Weapon to Censor the Internet

2015-04-13T15:53:00-04:00

[The Great Cannon] allows China to intercept foreign web traffic as it flows to Chinese websites, inject malicious code and repurpose the traffic as Beijing sees fit. The system was used, they said, to intercept web and advertising traffic intended for Baidu — China’s biggest search engine company — and fire it at GitHub, a popular site for programmers, and GreatFire.org, a nonprofit that runs mirror images of sites that are blocked inside China.

China censors sci-fi film about Hong Kong's political and social anxieties

2014-04-14T16:56:00-04:00

The video reveals Hong Kongers’ anxieties over political and social issues, such as their increasingly crowded and materialist city and the growing numbers of mainlanders since the city's transfer from the United Kingdom to China in 1997. It sends the opposite message of a very common view among mainlanders, that without China's economic support, Hong Kong would have been dead long ago.

"Hong Kong Will Be Destroyed After 33 Years" is a nearly seven-and-a-half minute video by local film studio G.V.A Creative. Set in present-day Hong Kong, the city has become the target of an approaching meteor expected to hit in 2047 -- the year when the Special Administrative Region of China ceases to have separate laws from mainland China. As nearly two-thirds of the population abandons the city, the city is reborn despite its doom.

You can watch the entire film below.

Ai Weiwei still missing after being held by Chinese police

2011-04-04T06:06:20-04:00

Artist's assistants and wife released but his whereabouts not disclosed by Beijing authorities

See Archinect's feature interview with Ai Weiwei here.