Editor's Picks #250

2012-02-12T23:32:00-05:00

Jeanne Gang and Greg Lindsay suggested some ways of Designing a Fix for Housing, beginning with rethinking our historic commitment to detached, single-family homes and segregated Euclidean zoning. Louis Arleo agreed that we need to redesign suburbia but argued "however suburbia will never be improved until architects embrace the idea of a developers business model."

Anthony Carfello, analyzed Los Angeles media’s failings in their role as "the de facto voice" of AEG’s development plans for Farmers Field in Farmers Field: Bringing Football Back on a Need-to-Know Basis. Carfello contended "The existing biases, the assumptions in play, the prized status of CEQA exemption, the traffic, the legitimate fiscal drawbacks weighed against any foreseeable benefits (to the non-AEG public), and greater questions of diversity of primary uses in downtown’s future buildings all beg for further dialogue."and then offered up (323) Projects as an alternative model of citizen discourse.

In the latest addition to the CONTOURS: series Sherin Wing touched on some of the ways various changes taking place in architecture firms with regards to compensation and valuatization, are a result of the "realization that employees are people, not just ‘workers’ or ‘laborers’." in On Business and Bosses.

Gregory Walker commented he would like Sherin to "come on here and enga...

Editor's Picks #247

2012-01-22T16:32:00-05:00

Guy wrote “why, when the evidence is out there, were a number of architects so defensive about the “Don’t Major in Architecture” article? Why are they whining? My conclusion, so far, is that this touched a nerve precisely because this isn’t new information to architects.” In response emergency exit wound asked, “And the assumption that 'an informed public makes the space for architecture more possible' is based on what exactly?

In the latest edition of the CONTOURS feature The Divisions that Bind Us, Guy Horton, analyzed the online commentariat’s response to Catherine Rampell, an economics reporter for The New York Times, article “Want a Job? Go to College, and Don’t Major in Architecture”. Guy wrote “why, when the evidence is out there, were a number of architects so defensive about the “Don’t Major in Architecture” article? Why are they whining? My conclusion, so far, is that this touched a nerve precisely because this isn’t new information to architects.”

In response emergency exit wound asked, “And the assumption that 'an informed public makes the space for architecture more possible' is based on what exactly? Is the desire for 'public discourse' really just a euphemism for 'expanded client base'?" Guy replied “Can architects in a professional setting and in the academy enhance the public discourse and challenge it? Or is it a lost cause. This is the binary problem of casting the public as one pole...

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Editor's Picks #250

Editor's Picks #247