Biber Architects of New York recently announced the groundbreaking of the USA Pavilion, "American Food 2.0: United to Feed the Planet", for the Milan World Expo in 2015. The US pavilion is one of 147 participating countries responding to the expo's theme, "Feeding the Planet, Energy for Life", which addresses global issues regarding food security, access and waste, and the challenging prospect of nutritiously feeding 9 billion people by 2050. — bustler.net
Highlighting America's role in the global food system, the barn-inspired pavilion includes features like a a harvestable vertical farm, food trucks, and a boardwalk.Read more about it on Bustler. View full entry
Traditionally, young people have energized democratic movements. So it is a major coup for the ruling elite to have created societal institutions that have subdued young Americans and broken their spirit of resistance to domination. — FILMS FOR ACTION
In the darkness of the passive and compliant society we are living in, the article by Bruce E. Levine offers some clues to why it is like this. Are we now "WHATEVER PEOPLE?" View full entry
As a nod to skate culture innovation, the New Museum in New York collaborated with U.S. skateboard manufacturer Chapman Skateboards to create a limited-edition skate deck shaped as the iconic staggered-block building that was designed by Japanese firm SANAA.Inspired by a New Museum Store window... View full entry
...In the 1970s, the streets east of Little Tokyo and west of the L.A. River made up a dingy district of hollowed-out warehouses that landlords rented to artists who needed a lot of space for little money [...] Then a decade ago, what started with a new restaurant on this block and then another up that street, turned into an avalanche of development [...] — LA Times
The leading Saudi artist Ahmed Mater, who caused a stir with a series of photographs depicting the rampant redevelopment around Mecca, is due to take part in his first public talk in the UK at Sotheby’s London (12 August). Mater will also discuss this work in relation to other cities such as Jerusalem and Medina during the discussion, entitled “Contemporary photography and hybrid architecture”. — theartnewspaper.com
Related: Mecca's mega architecture casts shadow over hajj View full entry
Rome may be a mecca for Medieval art, but it isn’t every day that conservationists there discover a trove of long-lost frescoes dating to the 1240s. That’s what happened a few years ago in the Gothic Hall of Santi Quattro Coronati convent, after a restoration project funded by ARCUS began in 1996. This summer, for the first time ever, those artworks can be seen by the public [...] [The frescoes] reveal how cardinals’ palaces were “places from which to launch very clear political messages.” — Hyperallergic
Witold Rybczynski, the architect and emeritus professor of urbanism at the University of Pennsylvania, complained recently about “starchitects” who often work in cities they are unfamiliar with, creating buildings that are out of sync with their surroundings. In an interview, he argued in favor of local architectural talent, or “locatecture.”
Are superstar architects ruining city skylines?
— NY Times
In this "Room for Debate" at the New York Times, Allison Arieff, Vishaan Chakrabarti, Beverly Willis, and Angel Borrego Cubero all provide their opinions on the much-used and controversial portmanteau. View full entry
Cities that are growing and cities that are shrinking, climate change, environmental health and equity, resource scarcity, technological change — all demand that we rethink how we plan, design, construct, and maintain the built environment. These challenges also demand that serious design journalism and scholarship move from the margins to the center of the larger cultural discussion. — Places Journal
Last week The New Yorker opened up part of its archive, setting off a mad dash through the corridors in search of great summer reading.The editors at Places Journal have rounded up some of the best articles on architecture and urbanism, including profiles of David Adjaye and Bjarke Ingels... View full entry
When Alfredo Jaar’s glittering “A Logo for America” video first played on a Times Square billboard in 1987, it riled up New Yorkers. [...] shows the words “This is not America” inside the outline of the United States. “A Logo for America” will receive a second life this week; beginning on August 1, the video will pop up on Times Square signs and screens between 11:57 pm and 12:00 am. But this 2.0 version loses some of the video’s original intent to reach a broad—and hopefully attentive—audience. — artfcity.com
The Hemakcheat was once one of Cambodia’s most beloved cinemas and Meas Sopheap one of its star dancers. Today it is a notorious slum, and Meas one of hundreds who shelter there. [...]
Hundreds of men, women and children shelter here, many on the ground-floor auditorium where they are shrouded in permanent darkness among hundreds of bats that screech and flap their wings constantly. [...] More waste falls from makeshift floors constructed above. The rotten stench of sewage is overpowering.
— theguardian.com
Leading British archaeologist and member of the House of Lords, Colin Renfrew, says the destruction of historic mosques in Mosul, northern Iraq, by Islamic state militants (Isis) “is a disaster for the cultural heritage of Iraq, and indeed of Islam”. The Prophet Jirjis mosque and shrine in Mosul was destroyed on 27 July, according to unconfirmed press reports. The 14th-century mosque was the latest in a series of holy sites targeted by the jihadist group. — theartnewspaper.com
Previously: Islamic State jihadis destroy ancient mosque in Mosul View full entry
"Star Wars" creator George Lucas on Monday will announce an architectural team for his controversial planned museum on Chicago's lakefront: an avant-garde Chinese designer whose credits include Toronto-area skyscrapers dubbed the "Marilyn Monroe Towers" and Chicago's Jeanne Gang, shaper of the undulating Aqua Tower here. — chicagotribune.com
Read our recently published interview with Ma Yansong of MAD View full entry
The Cranbrook Educational Community Board of Trustees announced today that after a comprehensive one-year search, Christopher Scoates has been named Director of Cranbrook Academy of Art and Art Museum. He begins his tenure August 1.
Scoates is a graduate of Cranbrook Academy of Art, having received his Master of Fine Arts degree in Photography in 1986. Scoates succeeds Reed Kroloff, who is stepping down after seven years in the position.
— cranbrook.edu
People often compare Minecraft to LEGO; both support open-ended creation (once you’ve mastered the crafting table, you can build nearly anything) and, of course, they share an essential blockiness. But I think this comparison is misleading, because a LEGO set always includes instructions, and Minecraft comes with none.
Minecraft is a game about creation, yes. But it is just as much a game about secret knowledge.
— Medium
The North Carolina Museum of Art on Tuesday received a $1.9 million grant from the State Employees’ Credit Union Foundation for art education research. The grant will establish a high-tech education center that will serve as a portal for accessing the museum’s collection, exhibitions and programs. — WRAL