New Investigations in Collective Form, an exhibition at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, presents a series of design experiments by The Open Workshop, a Bay Area design research office founded by architect and urban designer Neeraj Bhatia. The Open Workshop: New Investigations in... View full entry
"Are architects at risk of losing their relevance to the client?" asks Beatriz Ramo in her contribution "Sympathy for the Devil" for MONU's issue #28 that we devote to the topic of "Client-shaped Urbanism".
(Bernd Upmeyer, Editor-in-Chief, April 2018)
— http://www.monu-magazine.com/news.htm
“Are architects at risk of losing their relevance to the client?” asks Beatriz Ramo in her contribution “Sympathy for the Devil” for MONU’s issue #28 that we devote to the topic of "Client-shaped Urbanism". We consider “clients” to be crucial participants in the shaping and creating... View full entry
Capital Hill Residence is the only private residence designed by Zaha Hadid that was built in her lifetime. Vladislav Doronin, the owner of the house, speaks on working with Hadid to build his unique residence in Moscow. Zaha Hadid Architect's Patrik Schumacher, who worked on this project... View full entry
Gates just opened at the 2018 Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, and for the next two weekends, droves of festival goers will flock to the small town of Indio, California to see their favorite bands, performers (Beyoncé, anyone?)—and a host of large-scale art installations by emerging... View full entry
This week Ken, Donna and I talk about some topics in recent architecture news, along with a little discussion about dealing with criticism. Listen to episode 120 of Archinect Sessions, “Radical Candor”. iTunes: Click here to listen, and click the "Subscribe" button below the logo to... View full entry
Hjältarnas Hus (House of Heroes) is a new facility by White Arkitekter functioning as a temporary home for families with young children suffering from long term illness. The project is a collaboration between the Sweden Västerbotten healthcare council and the organization “Hjältarnas... View full entry
Brutalism is having quite the moment right now. What was once seen as the architecture of the lower class, has today, become the proud badge of aesthetic quirkiness for the creative one. Embraced by a band of architects, architecture enthusiasts, and preservationists, these concrete structures... View full entry
Oscar Niemeyer's Communist party headquarters in Paris was recently captured by photographer Denis Esakov. Take a new look at the Brazilian architect's concrete achievement, one of his first in Europe. View full entry
And now he’s going to float a 150-tonne sculpture on a lake on London.
Is it an allegory of the west’s oil dependency, an indictment of how we’re polluting the planet, or both? Christo shakes his locks and smiles. “I have no reason to justify myself as an artist. I cannot explain my art. Everything I do professionally is irrational and useless.” This, he thinks, is exactly as it should be. “I make things that have no function – except maybe to make pleasure.”
— The Guardian
Artist Christo chats about his new Mastaba sculpture coming to London this summer: a giant trapezoidal prism of 7,506 stacked steel barrels to float on the Serpentine Lake. It will be his first large artwork in Britain. Christo, The Mastaba (Project for London, Hyde Park, Serpentine Lake), Collage... View full entry
Can design keep you safe from crime? Architects and urbanists have been making that claim since urban crime — or the threat of it — reached crisis proportions in the 1960s. [...] But with scant evidence to support those claims, at what cost do we build “defensible space”? Architectural historian Joy Knoblauch looks back at sixty years of attempts to secure space and asks whether safety lies in the design of the built environment, in our social structures, or in our heads. — Urban Omnibus
Geography is getting stranger: the map is breaking up. Now we need to attend to the unnatural places, the escape zones and gap spaces, the places that are sites of surprise but also of bewilderment and unease. — Places Journal
Negotiating the hostile architectures of the modern city — from the anti-pedestrian cobbles of a median strip to the unloved landscape of a traffic island — geographer Alistair Bonnett reflects on the increasingly disciplinarian nature of public space, and by crossing roads and planting... View full entry
In March, the Bank of Canada unveiled a new $10 bank note [...] The laurel leaf signifies justice, and the Canadian Museum for Human Rights building, designed by New Mexico architect Antoine Predock, is featured prominently. To contrast its striking modernism, the Library of Parliament’s vaulted ceiling is reproduced with a metallic sheen, as is the Arms of Canada insignia. — azuremagazine.com
Canada's new $10 note depicting Antoine Predock's Canadian Museum for Human Rights building on the back of the bill, along with an eagle feather and the laurel leaf. Canadian Museum for Human designed by Antoine Predock, located in Winnipeg, CA. RightsImage: Bob Linsdell/Wiki Commons. The front... View full entry
The Smithsonian Institution has confirmed that it will work with the Victoria and Albert Museum to set up a joint gallery and exhibition programme in East London, on the former Olympic site. Yesterday (9 April) the Smithsonian’s regents (trustees) gave formal approval for their first base outside the US. — The Art Newspaper
We first reported about the Smithsonian Institution's interest in setting up its first-ever satellite gallery outside of the U.S. back in 2015. A lot has changed since then, and evolved, scaled-back plans now foresee a collaboration with the V&A. View full entry
Welcome to Homewood, Illinois, a suburb of 20,000 that is marketing itself to urbanites as a hidden hipster gem.
The town, which is about 25 miles south of downtown Chicago, just launched a new advertising campaign called “Think Homewood.” Ads posted inside trains on the L’s Blue Line and elsewhere in Chicago contrast the laid-back vibe of Homewood to the stress of city living. The ads are comic strips drawn by illustrator and Homewood resident Marc Alan Fishman.
— citylab.com
The Chicago suburb Homewood harnessed the graphic skills of a local artist to launch their comic-strip ad campaign, Think Homewood, in order to attract millennials. Joining the list of suburban towns that must now work to attract the demographic they were originally intended for, Homewood strives... View full entry
On Harvard's campus, students in their Graduate School of Design programs are pressuring the administration to respond to an anonymous spreadsheet that catalogued incidences of assault, harassment and other abuses in the industry. The spreadsheet, known as the Shitty Men in Architecture list, was... View full entry
