When you were growing up and now too, what did you think of a whole Thanksgiving story about Native people helping out Pilgrims?
I wish we had a tougher immigration policy. It's a love story, and it's still a love story. We still love you even, if we really are your battered spouse.
— bitchmedia
A beautiful interview by Sarah Mirk on November 26, 2014, with Sherman Alexie on the meaning of Thanksgiving to Native Americans and to him and his family. He is one of my favorite American writers, the author of Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven.What does it have to do with... View full entry
Los Angeles – FXFOWLE Architects celebrated the release of their new monograph last Thursday night with "Urban Narratives", a panel discussion on, perhaps surprisingly, storytelling. Currently, the trope of describing design disciplines, and many forms of marketing and new media, in terms of... View full entry
“We looked at Frank Gehry designs and a lot of modern architecture with folded planes and fractalized surfaces and kind of riffed on all of that. It looks like it fell from the sky onto this field.” Looking at Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao the influence is clear.
Two other architects immediately come to mind as possible influences. Daniel Libeskind and Greg Lynn are leaders in the field of “folded planes and fractalized surfaces.”
— smithsonianmag.com
“Uneven Growth: Tactical Urbanisms for Expanding Megacities” is, at least nominally, about urbanism and architecture. [...]
The problems, not the solutions, presented in “Uneven Growth” are very real. Before Gadanho and his teams of architects, planners, and researchers can suggest productive solutions, they would do well to acknowledge that their fellow practitioners hold responsibility for the very state of urban affairs they seek to remedy.
— blouinartinfo.com
Previously: MoMA's “Uneven Growth” case studies conclude with exhibition this month View full entry
A hundred and some years ago, an aesthetic force called the City Beautiful movement professed the theory that grand public buildings, lovely civic palaces, could inspire Americans to become good citizens. [...]
Since the 1960s, though, it seems as if great civic architecture has become an embarrassment. Politicians who love to cut ribbons find it hard to justify paying for beautiful on top of functional. The result is a style I call Sunbelt Stalinism [...].
— latimes.com
Josef Albers’s Manhattan, a mural that enlivened the lobby of New York’s Met Life (previously the Pan Am) Building from 1963 until its controversial removal in 2000, could make a triumphant return to the city. Possible sites include the World Trade Center Transit Hub, The Art Newspaper understands. Finding a suitable home for the work is not the only obstacle: the original mural is in a landfill site in Ohio. — theartnewspaper.com
A newly completed 125 ft high mural painted by Stik on a condemned council owned tower block in Acton, West London is the tallest street artwork in the UK.
The artwork depicts a mother and child looking forlornly from their condemned council block at the luxury apartment complexes being built around them. [...]
Charles Hocking House was built for low income families in 1967 and is earmarked to be torn down in 2016.
— streetartnews.net
Between 2008 and 2013, I photographed the branch libraries of New York City’s three public library systems: 212 branches in all[1], spread across the five boroughs. Through arrangements with each of the library systems, I worked mornings before the branches opened to the public. I traveled by subway and bus and made six to twelve pictures of each branch, interiors and exteriors, using a 4×5 inch view camera. My archive, to date, holds over 2,000 negatives. — urbanomnibus.net
Proving that some market somewhere will find a value for anything, a company called Orbital Insight is now tracking "the shadows cast by half-finished Chinese buildings" as a possible indicator for where the country's economy might be headed. — bldgblog.blogspot.com
Good architects strive to balance design and function while listening closely to a client’s emotional needs for the space. Public projects often have the added layers of bureaucratic paperwork, media scrutiny, and community outreach. But rebuilding a school after a shooting presents a unique kaleidoscope of intense feelings. Architects must create an environment that not only promotes learning, but also helps the students—and their towns—heal from tragedy. — theatlantic.com
We call it “destructoporn” (since 2007, according to Urban Dictionary) and it comes, unbidden, via digital media. Where did I see that Tod Williams and Billie Tsien’s Folk Art Museum, just thirteen years old, was down to steel and rubble? The art critic Jerry Saltz’s Instagram. [...]
The dailiness, even hourliness, of social media makes it a perfect vehicle for documenting each thump of the wrecking ball, each crunch of the backhoe. Its visual slant is ideal for activism wrapped up in pictures.
— newyorker.com
When it comes to a high-energy drink giant like Red Bull, most would probably expect their corporate offices to reflect the sporty, frat bro-friendly culture that the brand overwhelmingly attracts. Not a single hint of that can be seen in the company's newly designed office in New York by... View full entry
Not far from the Brandenburg Gate, Potsdamer Platz was a no man’s land during the Cold War. Then the Berlin Wall fell, and the German authorities made it a petting zoo for celebrity architecture. The corporate headquarters of Germany’s new global swagger.
But the ambitions for Potsdamer Platz, like the hopes and fears about a united Germany, turned out differently. The architecture was not so great. Many companies fled.
— nytimes.com
Related: 8,000 Glowing Balloons Recreate the Berlin Wall View full entry
"The pied-à-terre tax is seen by New York’s wealthiest 1 percent as a question of fairness" - James Parrott, the chief economist at the Fiscal Policy Institute — NYT
New data from the Census Bureau’s 2012 American Community Survey, confirms the high vacancy rate in certain "billionaire buildings" and neighborhoods of Manhattan. Some are making the case that an additional tax should be levied for these pieds-à-terres. View full entry
Dubbed “Dementia Village” by CNN, Hogewey is a cutting-edge elderly-care facility—roughly the size of 10 football fields—where residents are given the chance to live seemingly normal lives. With only 152 inhabitants, it’s run like a more benevolent version of The Truman Show [...]
Last year, CNN reported that residents at Hogewey require fewer medications, eat better, live longer, and appear more joyful than those in standard elderly-care facilities.
— citylab.com
Adapting to an unprecedented aging population means adjusting elder-care expectations and forms. So-called "Silver" architecture aims to address this growing population, but what about an urbanism of the elderly? Knowing that active social bonds can actually have long-term health benefits, why... View full entry