Archinect - News

Whither 400 Lake Shore Drive? Chicago critic Edward Keegan asks for a firm answer

2024-08-15T13:05:00-04:00

Chicago’s most infamous vacant site of the 21st century is finally getting a tower. But will we be getting the architect’s best vision — or just half of a good design? A look at some recent history of large projects in the city offers some guidance, and reason for concern. I have no reason to doubt Related’s stated intention to build both towers, but if history is a guide, it’s more likely than not that the single tower will never see its sibling.

The Windy City's newest architecture critic, Edward Keegan, explains 400 Lake Shore Drive (designed by SOM's Chicago office with David Childs) against five other similar projects that never saw the original vision of their architects fully realized. He says a potential void might become a permanent edifice where once Santiago Calatrava endeavored to build his 2,000-foot Spire tower if Related Midwest is not kept to task by city officials and an active group of "concerned citizens."

"We need a planning mechanism that pays more attention to the interim state of larger projects without becoming too enamored with the complete design," he writes further for the Tribune's newly established architecture column. "Because city building is always a work in progress, as a number of orphan towers can attest."

The first half of the project broke ground in June and expects to be ready for its initial tenants to move in by the fall of 2027.

Liverpool redevelopment scheme wins revived Carbuncle Cup as Britain's 'worst new building'

2024-06-24T18:10:00-04:00

The unfortunate "winner" of the UK’s Carbuncle Cup, which annually celebrates the country’s most detested new architecture, has been announced as the 2019 Liverpool Lime Street redevelopment scheme from Broadway Malyan. The contest, which is presented by the London-based magazine The Fence, was revived for 2024 after a six-year hiatus following BDP’s Redrock Stockport "victory" in 2018.

What can be said about this monstrosity? The magazine describes: "This mass-scale redevelopment demolished a century of businesses and buildings, replacing them with sheet-metal etchings of the cinemas and bars that once stood. Behind that façade, much like everything else in Liverpool, is a 412-bed student accommodation block and a 101-room Premier Inn hotel — two new additions that the city’s residents have never asked for or benefited from."

The outcome might play into the hands of advocates pushing leaders to save the century-old Marks & Spencer department store on Oxford Street in London, a ca...

Lee Bey reviews Chicago Bears' revised new lakefront stadium plans

2024-04-25T19:00:00-04:00

However, check out the stadium renderings accompanying this story. Look at how big that thing is. The size almost makes the Museum Campus buildings look like neo-classical LEGO blocks in comparison. Judging from the renderings, the stadium looks pretty good as far as professional sports facilities go. It’s the right building but the wrong spot.

Bey’s effective teardown includes a slideshow of Manica Architecture’s new renderings for the reported $2 billion stadium, which replaces a scrapped plan to relocate the team to suburban Arlington Heights from its hallowed Soldier Field home.

Bey said Mayor Brandon Johnson's team "stood by as a private entity took the lead and told how the public’s lakefront would be redeveloped." The stadium is expected to be built on a three-year timeline, with the completed design made ready in time to kick off the 2028 season.

The White Sox are also mulling an upgrade closer to the South Loop that could cost upwards of $9 billion.

Nordic 'citizen design critics' are gaining influence thanks to their online popularity

2023-08-07T18:07:00-04:00

Founded in Sweden in 2014 as a public Facebook group, [Architectural Uprising] is a collective of citizen design critics who object to what organizers call the “continued uglification” of developments in Nordic cities, and push for a return to classically informed design. [...] The movement’s size and persistence, however, has earned it a seat in the discourse. “When [historians] talk about architecture during these years, [the Architectural Uprising] will be part of that history”

A new report in Bloomberg tells of the staying power of social media-driven architectural criticism. Projects lambasted by the popular (mostly) Scandinavian group include Oslo’s new National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design by architect Klaus Schuwerk and estudio Herreros’ Munch Museum, which Oliver Wainwright also panned.

Its presence has apparently spurred Norwegian firm MAD Arkitektur’s concessions on the Sandakerveien 58 B/C renovation and other projects. Politicians in Norway have even begun reaching out for tacit endorsements in a turn mirroring the "ugly" debate in America concerning the design of federal buildings that has become a charge of late for Republicans in love with the concept of classicism in spite of its racist underpinnings and widely-critiqued past.

‘The limits of what architecture can do’: Critic Alex Bozikovic looks for evidence at Renzo Piano's new Ontario Court of Justice

2023-07-28T15:20:00-04:00

Yet the courthouse reveals the limits of what architecture can do. Its spatial clarity and sedulous details don’t resolve some issues with where it is placed. This is a spectacular execution of a flawed recipe. [...] Then there is a larger question: Is a centralized courthouse a good idea in the first place?

The Globe and Mail architecture critic Alex Bozikovic reviews the massive new RPBW and NORR-designed Ontario Court of Justice project, calling it characteristically calm, natural, and “friendlier” than other contemporary North American courthouse designs owing to a well-articulated “European attitude to justice.”

The new Ontario Court of Justice at the center of the photograph. Image courtesy RPBW

Its site opposite Toronto’s spectacular City Hall from 1965 is the largest foil to Piano’s first Canadian design, he argues. The project was completed in March and offers a consolidation of six smaller facilities that expands access to court services, proponents maintain over the protests of attorney associations like the Society of United Professionals. Here it becomes obvious, Bozicovic reminds us, that "design can’t fix everything."

Kate Wagner goes from McMansion Hell to critic at The Nation

2023-07-03T12:41:00-04:00

The Nation, America’s leading source of progressive politics and culture, today named Kate Wagner (@mcmansionhell) to its masthead as architecture correspondent. Best known as the brains behind the brilliant and satirical architecture blog, “”McMansion Hell,” and following a wildly successful stint as a Nation guest columnist earlier this year, Wagner will contribute monthly commentary on architecture and the built environment—but not as always conventionally understood.

Wagner succeeds Michael Sorkin, who died in 2020. The new correspondent said the post is “an ideal perch for me to explain how everything we see and everything we build is political.” She is now one of a select coterie of dedicated critics writing for American publications, including Michael Kimmelman, Lee Bey, Carolina A. Miranda, Ingra Safron, and Robert Campbell. Wagner's personal account of her ascent from the widely-acclaimed blog, which she founded in 2016, can also be found here via The Baffler.

Previously on Archinect: Bro, Do You Even Quoin? A conversation with McMansion Hell's Kate Wagner

Here’s what the critics had to say about Lina Ghotmeh's Serpentine Pavilion

2023-06-17T04:00:00-04:00

Reactions in the UK are pouring in after the opening week of Lina Ghotmeh's 2023 Serpentine Pavilion in London’s Kensington Gardens.

The annual installation’s 22nd overall edition features the Lebanese-born Parisian designers palm leaf-shaped timber À table pavilion, which encases a café and communal dining table that references Malian Toguna huts while "inviting us to convene, sit down, think, share, and celebrate exchanges."

Oliver Wainwright got the press’ first crack on June 5, calling it a “symphony of timber” and “one of the most modest, low-lying pavilions of the programme so far" before complimenting its delicate site-responsiveness and the apparent lightness of its materials. “From the aerial vantage point of a drone, it is an elegant sight. It floats like a paper parasol, unfurled in a clearing between the trees, its sharply creased zigzag roof making it look as if it could be folded up and carried off at any minute,” he wrote. “It conjures all the metaphors of palm leave...

The NY Times' Michael Kimmelman reviews Adjaye Associates' Bronx 'DREAM'

2023-02-20T12:31:00-05:00

In this case, architecture is the issue and the engine of renewal. With its triple-height library and exalting, barrel-vaulted classrooms with huge punched windows overlooking Manhattan, the redesigned ice plant becomes one of the most spectacular school buildings in the city. [...] the historical arc of 20 Bruckner, as the building is called, is instructive and tells a larger tale about the Bronx, change and renewal.

The NY Times critic gets off the sixth train to explore Adjaye Associates' first American K-12 project in Mott Haven, The Bronx. Kimmelman mentioned his two best-known New York projects – 130 William Street and Sugar Hill Mixed-Use Development – in addition to D.C’s National Museum of African American History and Culture for context and said its well-placed lightwells and other design features place a “premium on architecture [that] makes an obvious statement about the value of Dream’s students.”

He went on to add what seems like a heartfelt note on the tragic deaths of three immigrant construction workers on the site between 2019 and 2021. “I didn’t begin this column with that information because Assemblywoman Septimo is right," he wrote. "Stories about the South Bronx invariably start with trauma, casting the community as victim. For students, the new DREAM school is a place of hope and opportunity — a new chapter and good news for the neighborhood.”

It seems like a critic trying...

Rowan Moore picks his favorite UK projects for 2022

2022-12-30T15:22:00-05:00

Playful, elegant additions to universities and colleges were the class acts to follow, while the newly opened Elizabeth line exceeded all design expectations.

Grimshaw’s long-awaited Elizabeth Line finished second (behind Grafton’s Marshall Building for the LSE). Moore said: “The Elizabeth line, when it finally opened in May, revealed an alternative universe of underground railway travel where everything is bigger, brighter and swisher. This is due to the sheer scale of the stations and to their design – unified and orderly but also curvaceous and a touch baroque.”

Notably absent were any projects by the new Soane Medal winner Peter Barber, any other social housing projects, or the Stirling Prize-winning The New Library, Magdalene College from Niall McLaughlin. The Guardian critic did say he admired Theaster Gates’ community building-inspired Serpentine Pavilion, adding that the all-black design “nicely captured shadow and light and views of surrounding greenery.”

Don't expect much from King Charles' reign architecturally, these two of his constituent critics say

2022-09-26T12:25:00-04:00

Poundbury, Paisley and Perspectives all ultimately failed to conquer the complex commercial and political challenges they faced. Their royal patron’s attempts to create human-centred townscapes have led to car-dominated suburbs. His efforts to uplift grand historic buildings have carved them into dreary flats. Our King is someone who sees the right problems but, ensconced in the very establishment that prevents meaningful solutions, he can only meddle around the edges of effecting real change.

The new British King is memorably the originator of the panned Poundbury estate that has failed to fall in line with its stated goals towards sustainability and car-free pedestrian orientation, according to Phineas Harper. He thinks the scion is hemmed in by a stolid commercial banking system and arcane land ownership laws and that class differences have otherwise made Charles' ability to gain perspective on the needs of his constituents otherwise impossible. As the Open City director sees it: “His view of society, as of architecture, is restricted to what can be seen from the tinted window of a chauffeured car.”

Previously on Archinect: Richard Rogers challenges Prince Charles to public debate over built environment

Meanwhile, in a different corner of the empire, new ArchitectureAU monthly critic Elizabeth Farrelly says she felt he “proved himself thoroughly unrepentant” during his time as Prince, citing his statements in support of traditionalism, and asking, “is he, as a constitut...

Carolina A. Miranda thinks Tom Wiscombe's new billboard should prompt a 'reckoning in architecture'

2022-08-25T17:09:00-04:00

Formally known as the Sunset Spectacular, it consists of a trio of massive steel panels that converge at a height of 67 feet, two of their surfaces draped in irregularly shaped digital screens bearing ads for tech overlords Amazon and Meta. If a game designer for “Halo” were to imagine a billboard, this is probably what it would look like. [...] There is an important story embedded in the design of the Sunset Spectacular. It has nothing to do with its forms.

Responding to the New York Times’ recent “puff piece” on embattled SCI-Arc professor Tom Wiscombe’s long-awaited Sunset Spectacular billboard in West Hollywood, critic Carolina A. Miranda offered a rather cutting take on Joseph Giovannini‘s “extra curious” failure to mention what has become a rather viral academic and professional controversy.

Previously on Archinect: Controversy at SCI-Arc over labor practices leads to faculty members placed on leave. Isolated incident or a wake-up call for the industry at large?

Wiscombe was the centerpiece of the recent investigation into student intern labor abuse at SCI-Arc and has been placed on administrative leave as a result of his alleged actions. “To many skeptics, it seemed as if the architectural establishment were intent on scrubbing the record clean,” Miranda wrote, citing the chorus of derision that has swelled on social media. “This whole episode also calls into question how critics (myself included) write about architecture.”

...

'A bit too slick': What the critics are saying about Theaster Gates' Serpentine Pavilion debut

2022-06-08T15:38:00-04:00

Theaster Gates’ hotly-anticipated debut as the first non-architect to win the Serpentine Pavilion commission has been causing quite a buzz online since premiering for the press yesterday in London’s historic Kensington Gardens.

The installation has thus far been received domestically as a mostly disappointing premiere, garnering two-star reviews in both The Times and Evening Standard, which labeled the effort “simple to the point of simplistic.”

“The vertical spruce planks ringing the exterior feel more like a garden fence than a dado, for instance,” critic Robert Bevan described. “But the strangest decision has been to insert a full-height vertical plank partition, which divides the main space, rendering the circular volume unreadable.”

Previously on Archinect: Theaster Gates' Serpentine Pavilion opens as a shrine to community building and sacred practices

Architects’ Journal editor Rob Wilson picked out the limitations of the design, stating that, in his view, “it feels like the...

Form followed finance in 2021, for better and for worse

2021-12-25T09:00:00-05:00

2021 was a year where form continued to follow finance. Throughout the year, our coverage included many examples of the world’s largest architecture firms designing for some of the world’s largest companies. From sleek corporate headquarters to “work-and-play” tech campuses, such projects take on an added significance when searching for clues on the future of work and offices post-pandemic.

However, as we followed the money this year, we also took time to reflect on what lies in its wake. What are the social ramifications of large tech companies landing space-age campuses on areas already creaking from a lack of affordable housing? What does the growing proliferation of Amazon fulfillment centers mean for traditional retail typologies? What are the human consequences of placing the governance of civic space in private hands?

To further explore this point, we have rounded up the highlights of our 2021 coverage on the intersection between architecture and corporatism — for better and...

‘Slapstick Architecture’: Oliver Wainwright’s struggle to find meaning in the new Depot Boijmans Van Beuningen

2021-11-16T12:50:00-05:00

The storage has been forced to fit the quirks of the building, rather than the other way around, which seems like an odd way to design an art store.

The Guardian critic interviewed MVRDV frontman Winy Maas to find out if the inspiration for Rotterdam's new open storage museum came from a €3.99 salad bowl, noting its mirrored exterior affects the opposite of its intended invisibility and is also rather difficult to clean.

“The architects’ ambition was to create a building that ‘seems to disappear into its surroundings’ — but a 13-storey mirrorball does anything but,” he wrote. “There is a freeport here, too, where dealers can store art without paying tax. Such commercial aspects have helped to make the project stack up, along with €42m raised from private sources, but the hefty ticket price seems at odds with so much of the building being a corporate showcase to burnish big brands.”

Previously on Archinect: MVRDV's Depot Boijmans Van Beuningen is finally open in Rotterdam

Oliver Wainwright’s no fan of Oslo’s new Munch Museum

2021-10-26T08:36:00-04:00

The £235m mega museum of the tormented Norwegian artist stands as an ominous grey tower on the Oslo waterfront, lurching out at the top like a military lookout post, keeping watch over the fjord. It is a location scout’s dream for the ultimate villain’s headquarters, an almost comically menacing structure, bent over the pristine white iceberg of the city’s beloved opera house with a thuggish hunch.

Recently on Archinect, "estudio Herreros' Munch Museum to open in October." Photo: Adrià Goula, courtesy estudio Herreros.

The Munch Museum’s opening had been pushed back to this week following years of political holdup swelling from concerns the 11-story museum would, as Wainwright noted in his review, take away from the nearby Oslo Opera House from Snøhetta.

McMansion Hell's Kate Wagner dissects issues with big tech and the 'blurred line' between private and public space

2021-03-11T19:35:00-05:00

In February, Amazon announced its latest design for a $2.5 billion headquarters in Arlington, "the Helix." Once visual renderings for the campus were released, the architecture community was quick to respond. Besides heavy criticism of its overall design, discussion regarding its surrounding public space was soon questioned. Architecture critic Kate Wagner addresses the long-rivaled issues between big tech corporate campuses and their intentionality behind fostering a so-called "engaged environment" with public space.

Her article in The New Republic, "How Big Tech Devours Public Space, " assesses large tech companies like Amazon and their double-sided plans to create spaces available for public use. She explains, "Amazon is presenting the Helix as a companion structure to 'the Spheres,' the indoor gardens at its Seattle headquarters. But as a space of consumption and leisure, the Helix actually resembles a lot of classic starchitecture. It is a towering, glass-clad, tree-dotted baub...

Architecture critic Blair Kamin is leaving the Chicago Tribune after 33 years

2021-01-11T13:22:00-05:00

Blair Kamin, author and Pulitzer Prize-winning architecture critic for the Chicago Tribune, has announced that after 33 years, and nearly three decades in the role of the critic, he is leaving the paper.

Kamin published this Twitter thread on Friday, January 8:

1/7 After 33 years at Chicago Tribune, 28 as architecture critic, I’m taking a buyout + leaving the newspaper. It’s been an honor to cover + critique designs in the first city of American architecture + to continue the tradition begun by Paul Gapp, my Pulitzer-winning predecessor
— Blair Kamin (@BlairKamin) January 8, 2021

After 33 years at Chicago Tribune, 28 as architecture critic, I’m taking a buyout + leaving the newspaper. It’s been an honor to cover + critique designs in the first city of American architecture + to continue the tradition begun by Paul Gapp, my Pulitzer-winning predecessor.

During these 28 years, I have chronicled an astonishing time of change, both in Chicago and around the world. From the horrors of 9...

Revisiting "A Pattern Language"

2019-07-12T13:09:00-04:00

“A Pattern Language” is not about architecture, but about how specific design choices can help us build better relationships. By fitting a series of those choices—the patterns—together, you get a room, a house, a neighborhood and eventually a city.

Curbed architecture critic Alexandra Lange takes us on a journey through some of the key lessons from Christopher Alexander's seminal work, A Pattern Language.

The book, originally published in 1977 has long been out of fashion in architecture schools, but, Lange argues, with the rise of smart cities and other quick-fix approaches to contemporary urban and global design problems, now is perhaps a good time to revisit Alexander's earnest, methodical, and people-centered tome.

Lange writes, "As New York, Toronto, Singapore, and more places around the globe build so-called smart cities, maybe we need to read “A Pattern Language” again in that context," adding, "Who is the audience for the smart city? Who has access to the data? Who has the ability to make design decisions based on that data? Is this city going to build better relationships? People are the scoring system, whether you’re deciding on a rug for the living room, or a light rail system for the city."

...

Archinect Outpost to host book launch for "New Investigations In Collective Form," the latest publication by Neeraj Bhatia

2019-04-11T13:17:00-04:00

Join us in celebrating New Investigations In Collective Form: The Open Workshop, the latest book by Neeraj Bhatia at Archinect Outpost on Friday, April 26, 7–9pm.

Keith Krumwiede will give a short introduction to kick off the event, followed by a panel conversation between Neeraj Bhatia, Noémie Despland-Lichtert and Jimenez Lai.

The book can be preordered here for pickup at the event, or shipping immediately after the event. Please go here to RSVP for the event.

New Investigations in Collective Form presents a group of design experiments by the design-research office The Open Workshop, that test how architecture can empower the diverse voices that make up the public realm and the environments in which they exist. Today, society continues to face urban challenges—from economic inequality to a progressively fragile natural environment—that, in order to be addressed, require us to come together in a moment when what we collectively value is increasingly difficult to locate. Organize...

Archinect Outpost to host Swimming to Suburbia, Craig Hodgetts' book of essays

2019-03-04T09:27:00-05:00

Join us March 16th at Archinect Outpost to celebrate Swimming to Suburbia, the latest book of essays by UCLA professor Craig Hodgetts. Hodgetts will provide a lecture about the books, followed by a book signing.

The book is available for presale here, to be signed by Craig Hodgetts at the event. RSVP here.

Craig Hodgetts and Lester Walker. Architectural Design 40 April 1970, 178

Widely known for his award-winning design work, the Los Angeles-based architect Craig Hodgetts has distinguished himself as one of the key voices of his generation through trenchant commentary and visionary speculation on architecture and design. This volume gathers an array of theoretical polemics on buildings and cities, critical assessments of major projects and personalities, and other writings that showcase Hodgetts' unique position as both a central figure in the discipline of architecture and a tireless advocate of technological opportunities developed at the fringes of the field.

Collage by Craig Hod...

What happens when one of YouTube's most popular car reviewers reviews a house?

2019-01-28T11:15:00-05:00

This $2 million house is perched on an ocean cliff. Today I'm showing you the quirks and features of this rather unusual house. It's not a car, but it's still interesting, and quirky, and exciting -- and this house is worth checking out.

What happens when a world famous car reviewer turns his sights towards a house? While on vacation, Doug Demuro of YouTube fame couldn't help but review the 2 million dollar home he was staying in on the island of Nantucket. His insights were impressively thorough and refreshingly unlike those one might expect from an architectural critic or historian.

Video still. "Here's a Tour of a $2 Million House on an Ocean Cliff." YouTube.

Demuro highlighted the "quirks and features" of the custom-built home, just as he does the production cars on his channel to a fan base of over 2.5 million subscribers, including the porthole window in the upper bedroom, the sunken outdoor eating area and its interminable outlet layout.

Video still. "Here's a Tour of a $2 Million House on an Ocean Cliff." YouTube.

Watch below for the full review, and consider whether we might anticipate a future in which architecture is the subject of study on YouTube in the same fashion as we have normalized car reviews and...

Log Journal turns 15

2018-12-03T13:37:00-05:00

First with a white cover, then black, then grey, then red and then finally pink, Log Journal has carried itself as a unique voice in the architectural community for an astounding 15 years.

Log Journal logo

Edited by Cynthia Davidson, the magazine has been published three times a year, often as general "open" issues punctuated by themed issues. Editors for themed issues have included Mark Foster Gage, Florencia Pita, Michael Meredith, Bryony Roberts, Greg Lynn and Jan Åman and Savinien Caracostea of AtelierSlice.

If you're in the LA area and would like to check out Log Journal, we are currently stocking Log 44, the newest issue, as well as several back issues at Archinect Outpost.

Archinect Outpost. Photo by Hans Koesters

Radical Candor; Archinect Sessions ep. 120

2018-04-12T18:09:00-04:00

This week Ken, Donna and I talk about some topics in recent architecture news, along with a little discussion about dealing with criticism.

Listen to episode 120 of Archinect Sessions, “Radical Candor”.

iTunes: Click here to listen, and click the "Subscribe" button below the logo to automatically download new episodes.
Apple Podcast App (iOS): click here to subscribe
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Download: this episode

Shownotes:

Commemorating 50 Years of the Fair Housing Act When We Still Have a Long Way to Go
Architecture's Page Six moment: Brad Pitt hangs out with American-Israeli architect and MIT professor Neri Oxman
Wire mesh artist Edoardo Tresoldi to present large-scale installation at Coachella Festival (stayed tuned for an update on Edoardo's Coachella installation to be published here on Archinect tomorrow, Friday April 13)
Belgian Architect Aude-Line Dulière ...

0 for 25? Christopher Hawthorne challenges the 25 Year Award

2018-01-23T12:45:00-05:00

In that spirit I set a challenge for myself: Could I come up not just with one but with 25 buildings that might have deserved the award this year? It took me a few days — and I was helped by some terrific suggestions from architects, critics and historians on Twitter and elsewhere online — but in the end finding 25 wasn't that difficult.

LA Times journalist Christopher Hawthorne has penned, or passionately typed, an inquiry into the fact that this year's 25-Year-Award was awarded to—no one.

In the article, Hawthorne walks us through the importance and aim of such an award and how to him, there are more than a few projects that could have claimed the award this year. Hawthorne even goes as far to produce a personal 25 for 25 list that emphasizes the lack of clarity and potential rigor that might have gone into this year's decision. The Hawthorne list is as follows:

Temporary Powell Library, UCLA, Hodgetts & Fung, 1992 (dismantled 1997); Oriole Park at Camden Yards, Baltimore, HOK Sport, 1992; restoration of Majestic (now Harvey) Theater, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer, 1987; Hayden Tract, Culver City, Eric Owen Moss, begun 1986; Hollywood Duplex, Los Angeles, Koning Eizenberg, 1987; Temporary (now Geffen) Contemporary, Los Angeles, Richard Meier, 1983; Fire Station No. 5, Columbus, Ind., Susana T...

A failure "in truth-telling"

2017-12-03T14:32:00-05:00

Starchitecture is out of fashion these days, but it can still produce visual wonders. The look of the Louvre Abu Dhabi, designed by Jean Nouvel, might be described as Arabic-galactic. In the form of an immense, filigreed gray half-sphere resting on a low base infiltrated by water channels, it could pass as a spaceship, an unfinished mosque or a Venetian pavilion set on the edge of the Persian Gulf.

Holland Cotter reviews the new building and collection/inaugural installation, of the Louvre Abu Dhabi.

Spires and Gyres: Contemporary Architecture in Jakarta

2017-11-28T14:56:00-05:00

Jakarta is perhaps the truest realization of a post-colonial cosmopolis. Many former colonial capitals stage a rivalry between quaint traditional centers and desperation-driven peripheries. But Jakarta can be understood not as a dialogue with its former foreign overlords but rather as a fiercely insistent projection of Indonesian independence.

In his latest article for Places, Joe Day examines the contemporary architecture of Jakarta through the framework of the utopian terms of the Five Pancasilas, the founding principles of modern Indonesia.

Day traces the development of Indonesian architecture from founding president Pak Sukarno's “modernism with Indonesian characteristics” to the new architectures heralded by the Arsitek Muda Indonesia (AMI) generation of the 1980s and '90s and their contemporary successors.

Tradition for Sale

2017-10-31T17:29:00-04:00

Yale has just completed two new residential colleges near the heart of campus: a superblock of neo-Gothic fantasy. This reversion to an archaic visual language exemplifies a troubling trend. With their new architecture, universities all too often abdicate leadership in promoting artistic innovation as they pander to plutocratic donors.

Columnist Belmont Freeman takes a critical look at Yale's RAMSA-designed Benjamin Franklin College and Pauli Murray College in his latest piece for Places.

While Freeman marvels at their extraordinary evocation of tradition, he argues that their historicism represents a missed opportunity to reinvent the residential college for the 21st century — as Saarinen did on the same campus in the middle of the 20th.

What makes a work of architecture American?

2017-09-11T20:53:00-04:00

“Whether there is or is not a Northwest regional style of architecture is debatable,” said John Yeon in 1986, “but what is certain is that lot of people want to think there is.”

In "A Fortuitous Shadow," Keith Eggener is inspired by the Portland Art Museum's recent exhibition on John Yeon's life and legacy to explore the concept of regionalism in architecture, beginning with the doubts expressed by the architect long associated with Pacific Northwest regional modernism.

Every City Needs a Crank; A conversation with architecture critic Inga Saffron

2017-08-17T20:07:00-04:00

This week we're joined by Inga Saffron, the Pulitzer Prize-winning architecture critic for the Philadelphia Inquirer. If you haven't read her latest piece on Henry Wilcots, the relatively unknown architect responsible for finishing Louis Kahn's masterpiece in Dhaka, go read it now. We talk with Inga about her experience meeting with Wilcots, architecture criticism pre and post-internet, Philadelphia and more.

Photo from 1970 of Wilcots and Kahn discussing the roof structure of the National Assembly building in Dhaka, Bangladesh.

Listen to "Every City Needs a Crank":

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Download: this episode

Paul Goldberger writes on the mysticism of Louis Kahn

2017-07-21T14:07:00-04:00

Kahn led a generation of architects away from the standard-issue modernism of glass and steel boxes, but his route was gentle, thoughtful, philosophical, and sometimes vaguely mystical, which is part of the reason that he never really became famous. Kahn’s semi-obscurity didn’t just extend to the cops at Penn Station: The Times obituary had to be written on deadline the night his death became known, because the obit editors hadn’t considered him important enough to merit one in advance.

In his essay on Kahn, Goldberger examines methodologies of biographical writing, and explores the enigmatic aspects of the architect's identity and work.

"You get his essence almost as much through his words as his buildings. Both are somewhat spare and cryptic, and both are rich in meaning. Who else but Kahn could have said, “A great building must begin with the unmeasurable, must go through measurable means when it is being designed and in the end be unmeasurable…. what is unmeasurable is the psychic spirit.” Or, “The sun never knew how great it was until it struck the side of a building.” Or, “I want to give the wall a consciousness.”

Kahn’s writing could dance on the edge of psychobabble, and we almost certainly would have been less forgiving if his architecture hadn’t been as good as it was. But at their most evocative, Kahn’s words don’t give us insight into his buildings so much as they do him and the reasons behind his designs. Kahn spent his life in pursuit of the distinct...