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
Uneven, rusted steel is meant to echo the many shades and skin tones of those African-Americans lynched. — 60 Minutes
The National Memorial for Peace and Justice, which Oprah Winfrey visited, opens to the public on April 26, 2018. She talked with criminal defense attorney Bryan Stevenson, founder and Executive Director of the Equal Justice Initiative, which is behind the project. The National Memorial for Peace... View full entry
The boutique hospitality chain, Ace Hotel has announced it will open its first-ever Japanese outpost next year with a Kengo Kuma designed building in Kyoto. According to the company's president, Brad Wilson, "it’s been [a] long-standing dream to put down roots in Japan." "We feel incredibly... View full entry
It's been a few months now since we launched Archinect's latest offshoot, Ed, our quarterly print publication. Issue #1 "Architecture of Architecture" features a conversation with MAIO, a feature from Interboro Partners' new book “The Arsenal of Inclusion and Exclusion”, a special iteration... View full entry
Last April GRAFT was announced as Curators of the German Pavilion at the Architecture Biennale 2018. The exhibition, "Unbuilding Walls", focuses on the parallel of the Berlin Wall's lifespan and Germany's unity both being 28 years. The exhibition responds to current debates on nations... View full entry
If you still haven’t been able to sneak your way into the newest museum on Washington DC’s National Mall, April may be your best bet. Last week, the museum announced that the month would feature Walk-Up Wednesdays, allowing people who haven’t scored entry passes to go into the museum on a first-come, first-served basis, a pilot program to test no-pass entry. — hyperallergic.com
The National Museum of African American History and Culture located in Washington DC opened back in 2016, and has been solidly booked ever since. To help visitors gain entry who were unable to procure tickets, the museum is introducing Walk-Up Wednesdays for the month of April. Founding... View full entry
A source exclusively confirms that architecture and design aficionado Pitt recently met accomplished Oxman through an MIT architecture project and they have since become friends. Pitt was referred to Oxman to collaborate on an architectural project he was working on, we’re told.
As first revealed on “Page Six TV,” a source told us, “Brad and Neri instantly hit it off because they share the same passion for architecture, design and art. This is best described as a professional friendship.”
— Page Six
After a report last month by The New York Times detailing a pattern of sexual misconduct by Mr. Meier, more women have come forward to share their own upsetting encounters with him. But in recounting such experiences, these women said they had also been disturbed by a sense of helplessness that pervaded the firm. Mr. Meier’s behavior was common knowledge, they said, but no one seemed to have the power to stop it. — New York Times
With the #metoo movement, women have come forward exposing Richard Meier's abusive behavior to his employees. Further investigation has explored why this behavior of powerful men harassing or assaulting women went unchecked at their organizations. The common thread is fear of losing a job. Many... View full entry
ODA New York—known for their distinctive residential projects like 420 Kent, 2222 Jackson, and 251 1st Street—has put forth a proposal that would reclaim an underutilized pedestrian island in Manhattan's Chinatown. The 'Dragon Gate' pavilion, a massive steel structure reminiscent of bamboo... View full entry