This biennale was not perfect. None are. And frankly I wonder whether Venice can ever be a fit venue for a serious interrogation of issues more profound than the Campari or Aperol conundrum. The vernissage is, at heart, a schmoozey, boozey networking knees-up in which the architectural great and good cheek-kiss their way down Via Garibaldi occasionally glancing in a pavilion. Arevena knew this all too well when he set out to give the festival some bite. — Architecture Foundation
Architecture Foundation Deputy Director/Turncoats founder Phineas Harper gives his two cents on critics' self-righteous reactions to the Venice Biennale.Find more Archinect coverage on the 2016 Venice Biennale in News and Features. View full entry
The new building design introduced massive 40 foot sliding glass doors that could one day turn that store into an iCar showroom if they wanted to.
The estimated breakdown of the costs started with the shell of the building costing Apple $19 million. Some of the other costs included $1 million on the staircase alone. If there's 30 stairs that $33,333 per stair.
— Patently Apple
While Norman Foster's "spaceship" design for the Apple Campus has attracted its own share of critiques for possibly reviving older corporate design models, this newly refurbished Apple Store appears to be heading for a far more multi-faceted (and luxurious) future. In an era where many prefer to... View full entry
...Mussolini, at least for his first decade in power, wasn’t quite as interested in architecture as his fellow dictators. While enthusiastically censoring film-makers, writers, academics and journalists, he let architects do as they please [...]
The resulting architectural output, between Mussolini’s rise to power in 1922 and the late 1930s, when he began to exert more control, embodies an accidentally healthy pluralism.
— The Guardian
"While Hitler rejoiced in the traditional völkisch kitsch of his imaginary master race, and Stalin revelled in over-iced baroque confections, Mussolini sat back and let historicist revivalism compete with the crisp forms of forward-looking modernism."For more on the architecture of... View full entry
the destruction of the Bavinger House is not surprising. Back in 2011, the home appeared to suffer damage in a storm, and when a crew with News 9 attempted to see the house, they were “greeted with gunfire.” [...]
the house remained something of a mystery (it sat on private property, accessed by a rural road) until last July, when PraireMod reported that it had been contacted by Bob Bavinger’s son, Boz, who claimed to be putting the property up for sale for the price of $1.5 million.
— hyperallergic.com
Our own Donna Sink reported on the 2011 damage to the house: Goff's Bavinger House collapses. See below for a shot of the demolition scene:Related on Archinect:No guarantees for historic residential architecture in "real-estate limbo"It's easier now to tear down "historic homes" in Beverly Hills... View full entry
The Forum on European Culture, an initiative of DutchCulture and De Balie, is hosting "1 Night, 12 Hours, 100 Questions," a marathon of interviews centered around the question: What is Europe?Moderated by Rem Koolhaas alongside political theorist Luuk van Middelaar and De Balie’s director Yoeri... View full entry
For decades, bosses [in certain professions] have groomed their assistants to be the next generation of big shots by working them long hours for low wages.
Call it the “Devil Wears Prada” economy, after the novel depicting life working for a fictionalized Anna Wintour, the longtime Vogue editor.
But now, with the Obama administration moving to require time-and-a-half overtime pay for most salaried employees making less than $47,476 a year, that business model is suddenly under assault.
— The New York Times
"The change presents more than an economic challenge for the companies that rely on the willingness of young, ambitious workers to trade pay and self-respect for a shot at a prestige job down the road." The article doesn't explicitly reference architecture, but as Archinect's past coverage on the... View full entry
Girls Inc. was looking for ways to get their girls interested in fast-paced, high-paying jobs where women traditionally have been left out. Architecture and engineering certainly fit the bill. [...]
the girls will travel to various construction sites and talk to professionals in the field. Girls Inc. also is looking to build a new, bigger facility, and the summer camp girls will play a large part in the initial design, even being given a chance to pitch their project
— newsherald.com
More on the gender gap in architecture:How sexist is architecture? Female architects share their experiencesWhy Zaha Hadid's gender and ethnicity mattered so muchResults from The Architectural Review's 2016 Women in Architecture Survey are... not hearteningWhere are the women? Measuring progress... View full entry
The original plan [for a new park in Brooklyn] would tear down the graveyard of rusting oil refineries that sit on the site, which stretches from Greenpoint to Williamsburg along the East River, and return the reedy riverbank to something closer to nature. The new idea, called Maker Park, would keep the refineries and turn them into a sort of industrial theme park — “a beautiful and otherworldly industrial topography,” according to the website of its advocates. — the New York Times
The plot of land in question is along the Bushwick Inlet in Brooklyn.The times keep a-changin' in Brooklyn. In related news:LPC Approves Brooklyn’s First 1,000+ Foot Tower; New Renderings and DetailsAn apartment boom grows in BrooklynExplore the history of Brooklyn in "One... View full entry
Much will be published over the coming days about the Biennale's national pavilion winners—Spain’s “Unfinished” (with the Golden Lion) and Japan’s “en: Art of Nexus” and Peru’s “Our Amazon Frontline” (with special mentions). It is a phenomenon that conceals the terrain... View full entry
Aravena’s main show, though full of timely and meaningful projects, doesn’t succeed terribly well strictly as an exhibition — as a sensory and visual experience on its own terms...
In part this weakness may be explained by the quick time frame; it also seems to flow from Aravena’s generous sensibility, his interest in opening his arms wide to the architecture of the moment and featuring a range of voices usually not heard in Venice. In that sense a desire for inclusion is his Achilles’ heel.
— Christopher Hawthorne | Los Angeles Times
"Some architects — some architects left out of the show, that is — complained in Venice that what Aravena has produced is little more than a politically correct biennale [...] Yet the tone is more tolerant and curious than strident or doctrinaire. Ultimately the PC charge is a caricature, a... View full entry
Alejandro Aravena’s brief for the Fifteenth International Architecture Exhibition at the 2016 Venice Biennale calls for projects that “are scrutinizing the horizon looking for new fields of action, facing issues like segregation, inequalities, peripheries, access to sanitation, natural... View full entry
A Labour MP has formally asked the government’s independent spending watchdog to investigate how the trust behind London’s proposed garden bridge has spent almost two-thirds of the government funding for the project before construction has begun.
“We’ve had millions of pounds of public money spent and we have no idea what it’s actually been spent on, and it was spent before it even got full planning permission,” Hoey said.
— theguardian.com
Although Khan originally showed reservations, it was revealed last week that he would back the project pertaining to certain conditions. Read more on the controversial project here:Why are Heatherwick's proposals succeeding in New York but tanking in London?Sadiq Khan investigates troublesome... View full entry
Decided at Dinner (When Digestion Begins)The theme of this year’s Nordic Countries’ Pavilion, “In Therapy: Nordic Countries Face to Face,” captures a quality underpinning this year’s Biennale positioning and consistent across its many contributions. Finland, Norway, and Sweden, by... View full entry
The lady on the ladder chosen as the image for the 2016 Biennale Architettura sees, amidst “great disappointments[,] creativity and hope,” states Paolo Baratta, president of the Venice Biennale. “[S]he sees them in the here-and-now, not in some uncertain aspirational, ideological future.”... View full entry
When I talk about small spaces, I’m not talking about photogenic shelters constructed from found materials by Silicon Valley billionaires. I am not talking about cabin porn. I am talking about the universal human instinct to burrow, regardless of your personal dimensions. — NYT
Molly Young penned a Letter of Recommendation: for Tiny Spaces. She opens by noting that many of the homes she grew up in, shared a commonality - "smallness".On a related note, earlier this year Orhan Ayyüce pointed out The Tiny House Fantasy. View full entry
