We need to talk! We at MONU think that the time has come to talk with you about "participation" in architecture and urbanism and re-evaluate and re-examine developments around this topic in recent years and what the future might hold.
(Bernd Upmeyer, Editor-in-Chief, May 2015)
— http://www.monu-magazine.com/news.htm
We need to talk! We at MONU think that the time has come to talk with you about "participation" in architecture and urbanism and re-evaluate and re-examine developments around this topic in recent years and what the future might hold. Our 11th issue on the topic of "Clean Urbanism", around 6 years... View full entry
Last Saturday, a 7.8 magnitude earthquake struck Kathmandu, precipitating catastrophic destruction throughout Nepal and a death toll currently marked at more than 5,000. Reports have been very bleak, with citizens taking to living outside in public spaces, fearful of more damage from aftershocks... View full entry
Richard Serra’s new sculpture, 'East-West/West-East,' is a set of four standing steel plates rolled in Germany, shipped via Antwerp, and offloaded, trucked, and craned into place in the middle of the western Qatari desert...the steel is the same that he’s used in his other pieces, and it will oxidize in the same way, albeit more quickly in the hot, salty conditions of the Brouq Nature Reserve. The plates will [ultimately] turn a dark amber—approximately the same color...as the Seagram Building. — The New Yorker
Related:Richard Serra is the first artist to receive the President's Medal from the Architectural League of New York“Serra Gate” salutes to Taksim Square protests in Istanbul, will tour city next year View full entry
Gilles Vesco calls it the 'new mobility'. It’s a vision of cities in which residents no longer rely on their cars but on public transport, shared cars and bikes and, above all, on real-time data on their smartphones...'Multi-modal' and 'interconnectivity' are now the words on every urban planner’s lips...This model of denser, less car-dependent cities is becoming the accepted wisdom across the developed world. — The Guardian
Writer Stephen Moss talks to urban planners and transportation authorities around Europe to get a glimpse into how cities worldwide continue to wean themselves off car dependency and explore new forms of mobility, all while city density increases. View full entry
As the issue of bee population decline continues to gain more public attention, the United Kingdom's Milan Expo 2015 pavilion, "The Hive", pays tribute to the hard-working honeybees and their essential role of pollination in helping produce the food we eat. Once the 1,910 m2 pavilion officially... View full entry
But supplementing that aesthetic of “the future” sketched in imaginary edifice, the full SF vision of the future city is a mosaic, constructed from fragments of the cities that we recognize, including symbols that are decidedly from the past. [...]
If SF functions by taking the world we know and altering it with a constructed future fantasy, the Statue of Liberty serves as the junction point, the axis where the speculative fantasy begins and ends.
— motherboard.vice.com
Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr. today issued an executive order to establish a California greenhouse gas reduction target of 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030 - the most aggressive benchmark enacted by any government in North America to reduce dangerous carbon emissions over the next decade and a half. "With this order, California sets a very high bar for itself and other states and nations, but it's one that must be reached - for this generation and generations to come," said Governor Brown. — gov.ca.gov
Currently in the midst of four consecutive years of exceptional drought, California is experiencing first-hand the real-life implications of a warming climate. Before the order, the state was already on track to "meet or exceed" targets for reducing CO2 emissions to pre-1990 levels in the next... View full entry
It’s a Thursday morning in Beijing, and the world’s most famous living artist, Ai Weiwei, is sitting with one of the world’s most controversial technologists, Jacob Appelbaum, in the second-floor lobby of the East Hotel. [...]
On a whim, Ai suggests that they call Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, who has been living for the last two years at the Ecuadorian embassy in London. [...]
Ai and Assange talk for several minutes about the mundanities of the dissident life.
— fusion.net
Arts patrons continue to support the restoration of the Painted Hall at the Christopher Wren-designed Old Royal Naval College at the Maritime Greenwich World Heritage Site in Greenwich, London. Over the next three years, the ORNC's three-stage conservation project would clean and restore the... View full entry
Self-driving cars will certainly change our habits on the road. But truly autonomous vehicles will also affect how we work, says Tim Brown, chief executive officer and president of design consultancy IDEO...Without having to navigate city streets, people will be more productive during their commute. IDEO also envisions self-driving trucks...delivering everything from new jeans to grilled cheese. Most radical of all: Your workplace could be set on wheels to travel to you, rather than you to it. — Bloomberg
After claiming he saw his friends injured in pothole-related bike accidents, one anonymous resident has taken matters into his own hands.
He goes by Wanksy. And using what appears to be an industrial level chalk, he draws penises around the potholes, creating moments of visual terrorism that the city can’t ignore. [...]
within 48 hours of Wanksy’s efforts, many of Manchester’s problematic potholes, which had been a nuisance for years, were filled. Within a week, even more were fixed.
— fastcodesign.com
This recent case of vandalism for the public good, albeit juvenile and a bit obscene, seems to have gotten the job done. It's hard to make the case that this is the best tactic for enacting public safety measures, but Wanksy seems to have hit a sweet spot of using public shaming and vandalism to... View full entry
Inside the soon-to-be-demolished A+D Museum in Los Angeles, a small group gathered last week for a conversation with Susan S. Szenasy, the Editor-in-Chief of Metropolis Magazine, followed by a signing of her new book of collected writings, Szenasy, Design Advocate. The talk is likely the last the... View full entry
Frank Gehry will be the stage designer of a new production of the Christoph Gluck opera "Orfeo ed Euridice" for Berlin's Staatsoper, the company announced on Monday in unveiling its 2015-2016 season. [...]
Gehry, one of the world's foremost architects, has engaged in arts projects in the past [...] designed a set for a concert staging of Mozart's "Don Giovanni" in Los Angeles in 2003.
— reuters.com
After past run-ins with the city, the nomadic Nickelsville has shifted from temporary place to temporary place. Most recently, the group struggled with a location, after Seattle decided to authorize and regulate three homeless encampments in the city.
“There’s a need for a transportable, insulated, tiny house that provides privacy and isn’t going to be a huge burden for them when they move,”
— nextcity.org
The powerful temblor measuring 7.9 on the Richter scale on Saturday practically levelled the nation's tangible cultural history, robbing it of its architectural jewels, including the landmark Dharhara Tower, in an eerie reminder of the 1934 quake that claimed over 10,000 lives.
The 19th century nine-storey minaret, a UNESCO World Heritage site, which once offered a panoramic view of the Kathmandu Valley, turned into graveyards for over 200 people.
— ibnlive.in.com
Follow #NepalEarthquake on Twitter for up-to-the minute updates View full entry