Archinect - News

The Housing Question

2012-06-25T13:48:00-04:00

Foreclosed is controversial because it suggests that the state, or the public sector — conceived along with civil society in terms of multiple, overlapping, virtual and actual publics — might play a more active, direct and enlightened role in the provision of housing and, by extension, of education, health care and other infrastructures of daily life in the United States.... Simply put, can we no longer imagine architecture without developers?

Earlier this year Foreclosed: Rehousing the American Dream opened at MoMA in New York. The exhibition quickly became controversial, with some decrying it as elitist and paternalistic, others defending it as powerful and ambitious. On Places, Reinhold Martin, co-organizer of Foreclosed, and Raphael Sperry and Amit Price Patel, of Architects/Designers/Planners for Social Responsibility, continue the debate — in a virtual roundtable — along with IDEO.org fellow Liz Ogbu and urban planner Tom Angotti of Hunter College.

Reality Check: Developers React to MoMA’s Show, “Foreclosed: Rehousing the American Dream”

2012-03-27T00:44:00-04:00

Though the panelists agreed that the foreclosure crisis will lead to major changes in suburban development, they all thought new patterns are less likely to be brought about by a revised American dream than by economic and demographic factors. And all said it would be very difficult to change zoning laws to permit denser new development patterns, especially in existing “inner-ring” suburbs.

On Archinect: The CRIT: Thoughts on MoMA's Foreclosed: Rehousing the American Dream

Editor's Picks #255

2012-03-19T14:03:00-04:00

For Archinect’s latest Working out of the Box feature, Paul Petrunia interviewed Pinterest Co-Founder Evan Sharp. Will Galloway asked "say shouldn't someone interview paul for this feature too?" to which Paul responded "Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain".

For Archinect’s latest Working out of the Box feature, Paul Petrunia interviewed Pinterest Co-Founder Evan Sharp. Will Galloway asked "say shouldn't someone interview paul for this feature too?" to which Paul responded "Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain".

News
Felix Salmon the finance blogger at Reuters reviews MoMA’s Foreclosed: Rehousing the American Dream exhibit. Therein he wrote "Of course, for an idea to be sustainable, it also has to be realistic. Much of the MoMA show fails that criterion miserably." Steven Ward questioned "he's reviewing a highly speculative ideas-based exhibit at an art museum as if it's a feasibility study?!" and then went on to suggest "this is why it's so hard for innovation and idea-generation activities to gain traction. they're squashed before anything really can be explored fully by those who say 'nah, that won't work' or, worse yet, 'woah, that's elitist/discriminatory/etc'."

The folks from www.wai-architecture.com catalogued ...

Dream Deferred; Felix Salmon on MoMA's "Foreclosed"

2012-03-13T17:19:00-04:00

one driving idea of the show holds firm, Bergdoll’s binder notwithstanding: Suburbs are generally an architect-free zone. Insofar as such creatures are spied at all, they’re employed to rubber-stamp a builder’s plans. Beyond that, they’re not wanted. Suburbanites are conservative, wherever they might lie on the political spectrum: There’s a good reason why builders have kept on churning out houses which have remained essentially the same for decades, even as they have grown steadily in size.

Also see Archinect feature: The CRIT: Thoughts on MoMA's Foreclosed: Rehousing the American Dream

Editor's Picks #252

2012-02-27T11:50:00-05:00

Architect Michael Graves considers the Portland Building one of his top achievements even though the building is still controversial. mdler thinks "this thing is a POS" and elletoman commented "gross". Donna Sink disagreed arguing "I love the Portland building and most important I love that this building happened.

For the latest Showcase Archinect talked to Iranian-Canadian creative director and photographer Sam Javanrouh. He provided two images of Daniel Libeskind's Crystal for the Royal Ontario Museum; one titled Jumping Girl, the other portrays the space without people. So we asked, him "What are your thoughts about including people in your photos? Is it important to photograph a building in use, or by itself?" and he replied "It really depends on the subject and the mood I'm trying to convey. Sometimes showing a structure alone with nothing else to distract is most powerful, and sometimes including people in the shot is what makes the photo. A good example of that is the Jumping Girl photo that I shot in ROM's Crystal. I have a photo of the same exact interior with no people in it, and it has a completely different feeling and it doesn't have the same energy. If I have the luxury of shooting the photos with and without people and choosing later I try to do that."

For CONTOURS: Sherin ...

Justin Davidson on MoMA's Architectural Response to the Financial Crisis

2012-02-13T14:14:00-05:00

Who needs a fancy designer when builders all over the country know how to construct a peaked-roof single-family house? The Museum of Modern Art’s small but magnificently ambitious new show “Foreclosed: Rehousing the American Dream” makes an overwhelming case that the two camps need each other now. Today’s suburb has little to do with the outwardly tidy, seething, monochrome world of Updike or Revolutionary Road.