A collaboration between the sculptor and performance artist Nick Cave and the architect Jeanne Gang on a site-specific work for Chicago’s Navy Pier is part of the ongoing transformation of the historic waterfront space from tourist trap into cultural destination. — The Arts Newspaper
The performance will involve dancers wearing Cave's silver-colored Soundsuits while interacting with objects designed by Studio Gang as a part of the setting. Fabricating a changeable stage that could be used for other performance groups, Gang was inspired by the idea of a clearing for... View full entry
Southern California boasts the largest concentration of Iranians in the world outside Iran, and the county of Los Angeles houses the vast majority. The Fahrang Foundation—a non-religious, non-political, and not-for-profit foundation with a mission to celebrate and promote Iranian art and... View full entry
The terror cell that brought carnage to north-eastern Spain, killing 15 people and injuring more than 130, was planning attacks on a much larger scale, including the bombing of Barcelona’s Sagrada Família church, a suspect has told a court.
Mohamed Houli Chemlal made the admission after being brought before a judge in Madrid, Spanish media reported, quoting court officials.
— The Guardian
As the hearing progressed, police were attempting to reconstruct the final 96 hours in the life of the member of the cell who killed 13 people and injured more than 130 others when he drove a hired Fiat van along the crowded Las Ramblas last Thursday. View full entry
Australia's creative team for the 16th International Venice Architecture Biennale has been announced at events in Sydney and Melbourne. Baracco+Wright Architects will collaborate with artist Linda Tegg to cultivate and nurture thousands of temperate grassland species within the pavilion alongside... View full entry
The Broad announced today that it will present a new work from Venezuelan-born artist Carlos Cruz-Diez (b. 1923), in collaboration with the Cruz-Diez Art Foundation. Couleur Additive has been commissioned by The Broad as part of the Getty Initiative, Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA, a far-reaching... View full entry
It’s no paradise, as the rats, garbage, arson and violent backstories make clear. Yet against all odds, the men and women we meet in the film have managed to domesticate their underground wilderness. Hardworking and innovative, they cobble together the necessities and even a few small luxuries: a dartboard, toaster oven, dogs, cats and a gerbil named Peaches. — The Conversation
"The number of people facing housing insecurity, already on the rise, began to climb more steeply as a result of the Great Recession. This upward trend will likely be exacerbated if President Trump’s proposed cuts to food stamps, Medicaid and housing subsidies are enacted, which will force... View full entry
The county’s board of supervisors gave the green light to The Granny Flats Motion project on Tuesday, which would give homeowners up to $75,000 to build a backyard home—if they agree to rent it to a homeless family or individual. On top of that, the county will also streamline the permitting process, an arguably attractive incentive considering that most of these “accessory dwelling units” in U.S. cities are illegal. — CityLab
Los Angeles is undertaking a new effort to curb its ballooning homeless population—paying homeowners to build a 'granny flat' for a homeless family to inhabit in their backyard. According to CityLab, "The pilot, for which the county has earmarked $550,000, will grant two or three of such units... View full entry
In this article on the Huffington Post, Lance Hosey writes about the horror of watching white surpremacists marching in the Charlottesville Downtown Mall on August 11th and 12th of this year. The Mall, which was significantly redesigned in the 1970s, serves as a unavoidable visual reminder of the... View full entry
Very rarely does ethics become a selling point for a client or a selling point when you’re talking about a studio project. It’s very rarely the idea generator. I think most practitioners traditionally came from a comfortable or upper-middle-class. It’s the Jeffersonian ideal: the gentleman designer. Architects in this country tend to have clients who are in the upper income level. And I think that has really been a problem. Our students, many of them, come from underserved communities. — LA Times
Back in July, Archinect featured Woodbury's new dean, Ingalill Wahlroos-Ritter, as a part of the Deans List series, in an interview about the importance of economic diversity and the school's commitment to egalitarian and practical education. The Los Angeles Times recently conducted a similar... View full entry
So Yale's new residential colleges, which New York architect and former Yale architecture school dean Robert A.M. Stern designed according to the Rogers model, have a very high bar to meet and some tough questions to confront: Do they refresh the Gothic tradition, as Rogers did, or are they a pastiche? Does it make sense for Yale, which claims to prize diversity and inclusion, to replicate the physical world of Rogers' day, when the university's student body was largely WASP and male? — Chicago Tribune
When expanding, most university campuses follow the strategy of replicating the already established style of the existing architecture. Working on Yale's new residential colleges, A. M. Stern and his partner on the project, Melissa DelVecchio, are, too, striving to not stand apart physically or... View full entry
In the unofficial category of "Creative Pollution Solutions," the Dutch firm Studio Roosegaarde is angling to be the winner: the firm has several projects that introduce innovative solutions to existing infrastructural challenges. First up, in partnership with bike-sharing firm OFO, the studio... View full entry
The project, called Paper Monuments, will entail a series of posters plastered all over the city that detail the people, places, events, and movements of the city’s 300-year history.
“When we make decisions that do embody hatred, whether we mean to or not, it allows for society to grow along those frameworks. Our job should be to acknowledge them and counteract them and produce things that elevate the welfare of the constituents that we serve.”
— Co.Design
“It’s not simply about the ways individuals hold onto ideology, but it is more so about the way individuals embed their ideology into the spaces and places we all frequent. For us the Paper Monuments project is still rooted in the fact that these symbols of oppression need to be countered by... View full entry
As workers prepare to remove the charred debris from Grenfell Tower, the specially erected scaffolding and netting around the building that will block the view of their work from the public may be used as a kind of projection screen for local children's painting and art. At least, that's what site... View full entry
Slated to open in 2018, the Memorial to Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama will seek to tell the truth. Six acres of land owned by the Equal Justice Initiative—the legal services nonprofit Stevenson founded in 1989—will memorialize the more than 4,000 victims of what Stevenson calls racial terror lynching in the American South between 1877 and 1950. A nearby museum will tell the history of slavery, lynching, segregation, and mass incarceration as a single narrative. — Citylab
Designed by MASS Design Group—which has previously worked on the Kigali Genocide Memorial—the memorial stems from a comprehensive report on lynchings released in 2015 by the Equal Justice Initiative. The memorial will feature six-foot columns, each representing counties where lynchings took... View full entry
After fifteen years of development plans tailored to the creative classes, Florida surveys an urban landscape in ruins. The story of London is the story of Austin, the Bay Area, Chicago, New York, Toronto, and Sydney. When the rich, the young, and the (mostly) white rediscovered the city, they created rampant property speculation, soaring home prices, and mass displacement. The “creative class” were just the rich all along, or at least the college-educated children of the rich. — Jacobin Magazine
Richard Frorida's latest book, The New Urban Crisis, represents the culmination of this long mea culpa. Though he stops just short of saying it, he all but admits that he was wrong. He argues that the creative classes have grabbed hold of many of the world’s great cities and choked them to... View full entry
