The Museum of Design Atlanta (MODA) has announced their upcoming exhibition Design for Good: Architecture for Everyone, curated by John Cary. Opening on September 23, the museum will showcase projects featured in Cary's book Design for Good. Women’s Opportunity Center in Kasungu, Rwanda, by... View full entry
Bold and unforgiving, the Brutalist landmarks and modernist housing estates which sprang up across Europe in the wake of the Second World War still dominate cities in the former Eastern bloc. [...]
The Calvert Journal talked to designers and creatives across the New East who are now reclaiming socialist-era Brutalism as a driving force behind their work, changing mindsets, updating old designs for the modern age and making their own statements on gentrification, nostalgia and innovation.
— The Calvert Journal
The Brutalism-inspired design products by (mostly Eastern) European creatives Calvert Journal talked to range from stylish Russian flower vases to nostalgic Slovak pre-fab panelák furniture, German post-war housing cuckoo clocks, a Modernist Belgrade Map, and Polish miniature tower block... View full entry
With flawless blue skies and the latest landmarks of cutting edge design, postcards from across the Soviet Union were miniature propaganda posters for the success of the communist system.
Showcasing brutalist hotels, futurist TV towers, and bold concrete tower blocks, each image is a snapshot of the transformative decades between 1960 and 1990: from the endless optimism of Khrushchev's Thaw, to the closing years of the Cold War.
— calvertjournal.com
These Soviet Union postcards have been collected as part of a book project, Brutal Bloc Postcards, featuring some of the most iconic brutalist landmarks within the Eastern Bloc. Many of these structures are now abandoned, derelict, or completely gone. Take a look at this unique glimpse into the... View full entry
The buildings aren’t the work of celebrated modernist architects such as Ludwig Mies van der Rohe or Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. They bear no resemblance to the towering glass and steel monuments to postwar rationalism that you see downtown. They house doctors’ offices and dry cleaners, furniture stores and accounting firms. Some are vacant, their prim hedges and topiary gone to seed. — chicagomag.com
Architectural photographer and critic Lee Bey discovered a group of quirky modernist buildings on a section of Chicago's Peterson Ave. Overlooked and unkempt, these low-rise gems draw from Southern California's modernist vernacular prompting an unexpected, sunny and 60's nostalgia on... View full entry
Elon Musk has revealed Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa as the potential first passenger to be launched to the moon by Musk's private aerospace company, SpaceX. Ranked the 18th richest person in Japan, Mr. Maezawa is the founder of the online fashion retail website Zozotown. He is also known... View full entry
“As a teenager I became very interested in street-dance culture and was active on the Scandinavian breakdance scene,” the artist Olafur Eliasson tells his friend and collaborator Anna Engberg-Pedersen in our new book, Olafur Eliasson Experience.
This admission is a slight understatement. In 1984, the nascent artist’s three-man troupe, Harlem Gun Crew, actually won the Scandinavian breakdancing championships.
— phaidon.com
Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson discusses his teenage breakdancing years in relation to how he thinks of architecture and space. Eliasson links the body awareness of moving through an urban landscape in dance to his development in spatial thinking as an artistic practice in design and... View full entry
The Architectural League of New York is getting ready to host this year's Beaux Arts Ball, a benefit for their programs taking place September 28 at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Attendees will enjoy a night of festivities around the site-specific installation, 16 Salt Tarps, Half Red Half White, a... View full entry
On August 13, a brand-new town in Southern California welcomed its first residents [...] on a light-industrial stretch of Main Street in Chula Vista, a San Diego suburb. Then they emerged in Town Square®—a 9,000-square-foot working replica of a 1950s downtown, built and operated by the George G. Glenner Alzheimer’s Family Centers. Unlike the businesses around it hawking restaurant supplies and tires, Town Square trades in an intangible good: memories. — citylab.com
The new 50's replica town in San Diego is the largest US investment in reminiscence therapy for dementia and age-related cognitive impaired patients. The industrial warehouse has been transformed into a fake town of 14 storefronts complete with a diner, a movie theater, a pet store, a park-like... View full entry
She says the way you live and the way you get energy is different from what you have to do to make a collection; there is no connection between the way she lives and the way she makes clothes. — the guardian
A rare interview indeed with one of the fashion world's rare designers. “She said I should explain to you the amount of work she has to do, the shops she has to design as well as the collections. It never stops,” Joffe says. What elements of the job do you enjoy? She shakes her head on... View full entry
Mass Lab has renovated Pinheiro Manso Apartment, located in the center of Porto, Portugal, for an integrated flow of space. The dwelling was previously a disconnected 2 floor typology with small, closed off rooms seeing little sunlight. Pinheiro Manso Apartment by Mass Lab, located in Porto... View full entry
The 100-foot-long skybridge connecting two of Detroit's most iconic buildings has been brought back to life with the colorful, site-specific work of Phillip K. Smith III, who has transformed the abandoned passageway into a floating bar of light hovering above the streets of downtown Detroit... View full entry
The UNStudio Futures Team (UNSFutures) recently announced plans for a 'Station of the Future' at the first edition of HyperSummit. Organized by Hardt Hyperloop, the summit took place in Utrecht, Netherlands focusing on urgency, research, and collaboration to realize a European hyperloop. ... View full entry
One of the most recognizable buildings in Downtown Los Angeles—the Frank Gehry-designed Walt Disney Concert Hall—will be used as a canvas later this month.
To celebrate the start of the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s new season, colorful patterns will be projected onto the metallic surface of the wavy concert hall for a little more than a week, courtesy of artist Refik Anadol.
— Curbed LA
For the LA Philharmonic projection series, called WDCH Dreams, internationally renowned media artist Refik Anadol dug deep in the digital orchestra archives—nearly 45 terabytes of data—and applied Google Arts and Culture's machine intelligence to it, which parsed the files into millions of... View full entry
As with every single other thing about Seattle, there’ve been some developments in residential design since 2008 [...] Here are five opportunities, in the form of developments in residential architecture over the past 10 years as identified — and expressed — by some plugged-in visionaries. — The Seattle Times
The Seattle Times tracked 5 developments in residential design addressing housing issues in the city. For each trend they spoke with an architecture professional working in the field. Below are Seattle's identified trends and some of the visionaries addressing them: 1. Multifamily Housing Moves... View full entry
The historic State Savings Bank in downtown Detroit will soon play host to the award-winning artist Doug Aitken's latest site-specific work. Opening to the public on October 10th, the former bank building will see a ranch-style suburban home erected inside its century-old walls. The project titled... View full entry