“In Florence, he immersed himself in Masaccio, Fra Angelico, and Donatello, whom he rates higher as a delineator of sculptural volume than Michelangelo. The beautiful spaces of the Hagia Sophia, in Istanbul, and Le Corbusier’s chapel at Ronchamp made lasting impressions on him. For an... View full entry
The June newsletter from Architecture for Humanity includes job opportunities in South Africa and the US, info on 5 $1000 Open Architecture grants and a call for community partners for the Open Architecture Challenge. View full entry
You wait years for a really good international art festival - and then four come along all at once. The Independent reports on the conjunction of events. Article + "Don't Complain" by Hüseyin Alptekin, my friend from teenage years in Izmir. Congratulations Hüseyin, you're the best... View full entry
Ai Weiwei, in short, may be the only Chinese artist to have transcended the role of “Chinese artist” in an international context. And while much of his recent work suggests the ironies and tensions inherent in such a position...ArtForum l related View full entry
May ’68 and the twin towers were both far more formidable in their abrupt disappearance than they ever were in actuality. Indeed, after the latter event, Jean [Baudrillard] claimed that architecture had lost its ability to define space or acquire symbolic power. Architecture had nothing... View full entry
Who's been splashing the city's most prized graffiti? The hunt for the radical, young—and possibly lovelorn—conceptual-Marxist street-art supervillain. | nuyrk View full entry
Slate has a slide show essay about Richard Serra on the occasion of MOMA's new exhibition. An online version of the exhibition is available here. View full entry
“Ernst Jünger once wrote about overcoming nihilism, that optimism and pessimism should not be considered as opposites, but can rather be complementary ways of moving forward to new possibilities. Thus, disgust and enthusiasm are both feelings which have their legitimate place when we... View full entry
As pointed out by Enigmatic Mind in the discussion forum, a new theme park is planned to open in Florida, based on the Harry Potter series. I wonder if this will ever inspire another architecture exhibition...? Press release | Images View full entry
Writer Roxana Robinson’s brief but illuminating encounter with meaning of literature in a taxi, as the subject brought up by a 'Curious Cabbie' from Bangladesh who sets her right... NYT View full entry
Forty years after the war that gave Israel full control of Jerusalem, the dream of a united city remains merely that. Jews and Arabs live bitterly apart, their schism one of the key obstacles to peace. LATimes View full entry
“Alarmed by the obsolescence of celluloid film, Hugo Boss prizewinner Tacita Dean visited a Kodak factory in France on the eve of its closing. Kodak, her 45-minute film, lovingly documents the miles of machinery cranking out luminous sheets of her chosen medium. But it’s the watery... View full entry
Democracy Now takes a look at the life of the woman that spawned a million little al gores View full entry
David Markus considers trouble in art market paradise or rather the "crisis" of art criticism as defined by Irving Sandler. Is art criticism or even architectural criticism relevant today? Brooklyn Rail View full entry
“Gordon Bell who…by means of custom programs and gadgets, now collects the daily minutiae of his life so emphatically that he owns the most extensive and unwieldy personal archive of its kind in the world.”New Yorker | Slideshow | Related View full entry