Besides the thing itself, architecture concerns itself with two kinds of sign about it: iconic signs and symbols. Iconic signs resemble the thing itself. They are the plans and elevations and isometrics. The more symbolic architecture is that of language, the word, the logo and so forth. The postmodern turn shifted the emphasis from the iconic to the symbolic.
I think [Eyal] Weizman has created an architecture about a whole other kind of sign – the index.
— Public Seminar
"Indexical signs are traces of events: where there is smoke there is fire. The smoke does not resemble the fire. It is not an icon. Nor does it have a code like a symbolic sign system. Forensics is a matter of working backwards from the index to the event of which it is the sign, like in a... View full entry
Until an earthquake in 226 BCE knocked it down, the Colossus of Rhodes, a 98-foot-high iron and bronze statue of the Greek god Helios, sat near the harbor of Rhodes, Greece, for 54 years.
Now a plan put forth by a small team of scientists seeks to rebuild the ancient statue and boost tourism and local jobs in the process. [...]
The proposal also includes an interior library, museum, cultural center, exhibition hall, and, of course, a crowning lighthouse
— uk.businessinsider.com
Learn more about the initiative on the Colossus of Rhodes project site:The idea of building a contemporary Colossus of Rhodes begun to arise in the ideas of some young professionals, after the break out of the economic crisis in Greece. As unemployment rose and destroyed dreams and ambitions of a... View full entry
How do designers experience their cities as locals? No two people, let alone architects, perceive even the most frequented cities in the same way. There's no city that embodies that like the way Los Angeles does it. Beyond the ample sunshine and smog, juice diets, drought consciousness (or not)... View full entry
You might have already heard that Amazon opened its first physical bookstore earlier this week, called (in very non-SEO fashion) Amazon Books. Located in Amazon’s hometown of Seattle – ironically within a mall that used to house a Barnes & Noble – most everything in the brick-and-mortar... View full entry
It’s a reminder that decommunisation is a project which might actually be physically impossible to execute in full, which hopefully begs the question — if Soviet Ukraine can't be wished away, what should be conserved, and what should be rejected? [...]
The nationalist purging of any traces of socialism from the landscape is a fool’s errand at best, gross historical revisionism at worst.
— calvertjournal.com
Related on Archinect:Owen Hatherley on the mass housing history of Moscow’s suburbsMoscow skaters reclaiming hidden spaces on top of Soviet-era buildingsParadise lost? The enduring legacy of a Soviet-era utopian workers’ district View full entry
Virgin Media has joined forces with Chiltern District Council in the U.K. to blanket Chesham’s high street with super-fast Wi-Fi. The unlimited service is available to all 21,000 residents and businesses in the town as well as visitors [...]
The Smart Pavement enables those in the area to ‘streetsurf’ with speeds of up to 166Mbps, which is seven times the average U.K. broadband speed.
— psfk.com
More on the internet and civic infrastrucutre:China's New Weapon to Censor the Internet'Internet Slowdown' Campaign Aims to Raise Awareness of Threats to Net NeutralityMap Plots the World's Internet DevicesInfrastructural Tourism View full entry
The [Lower Manhattan Development Corp's] latest take envisions a roughly 80,000-square-foot building, rising three to four stories aboveground, where new works of theater, dance, music and digital art would be produced, said the center’s director, Maggie Boepple.
Over the past few months, center officials have been working with consultants and an unnamed architectural firm to revamp the plan.
— Wall Street Journal
The new plan for the center won't be formally unveiled until the next board meeting of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation. However, this smaller, less expensive version is still expected to function as a "a gathering place for downtown residents" according to Catherine McVay... View full entry
November 5th marks the celebration of Guy Fawkes day in the U.K., in which bonfires are lit to celebrate the capture of the titular royal traitor and the subsequent preservation of the life of King James I in 1605. Of course, lighting things on fire to commemorate dates isn't limited to the... View full entry
With the issues of serving openly in the military and same-sex marriage now largely resolved, the fight for all-gender restrooms has emerged as the latest civil rights issue in the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (L.G.B.T.) community — particularly the “T” part.
Schools and universities (...), museums (...), restaurants (...) and even the White House (...) are recasting the traditional men’s/women’s room, resulting in a dizzying range of (often creative) signage and vocabulary.
— the New York Times
Each year, Critical Halloween celebrates a feared ghost of art and architectural production. This year, we explore DEMO, which operates simultaneously as an abbreviation, a prefix, a verb, and a noun.
From acts of collective will (DEMOnstration) to institutional erasure (DEMOlition), DEMO invites guests to intellectually examine ideas, issues, and objects in art, architecture, and design with a focus on those that should get a dose of DEMO.
— Storefront for Art and Architecture
Critical Halloween, an annual event hosted by the Storefront for Art and Architecture, is a hybrid party, critical debate, and costume contest. Each year, the organizers announce a "spooky" architectural issue or concept, which is then interpreted by design aficionados and practitioners from... View full entry
Selldorf and the curators were forced to strategically navigate the strict installation stipulations attached to each piece — and still create a dynamic space for viewing. [...]
“We wanted a very calm background,” Selldorf says. “It is the quality of the work that makes the show exciting, so rather than creating additional noise, we really focused on making spaces that were quiet and measured in such a way that the focus of attention was on the paintings.”
— nytimes.com
More on Annabelle Selldorf:Give and Take: Michael Kimmelman and Annabelle Selldorf discuss architectural ethics in urban environmentsNYC Landmarks Commission Debates New Annabelle Selldorf BuildingQ&A: Annabelle Selldorf On the New Clark Art Institute View full entry
First, there was a competition: specifically, the What-To-Print-In-3D? design contest, in which Planbureau studio won a Makerbot Replicator 2 capable of printing 100 micron resolution samples for the molds of their LOGIPLACES 3D concrete puzzles. So far, they've created 16 to 36 piece puzzles of... View full entry
NCARB is phasing out the ARE 4.0 and introducing the ARE 5.0 in late 2016, which means that depending where you are with your licensing exams, you'll probably need to figure out how your ARE 4.0 credits apply to the new version. Anticipating this need, the NCARB has released a "Transition... View full entry
“Pedagogy and Place: Celebrating 100 Years of Architecture Education at Yale”... will present YSoA alumni work and archival documents tracing the development of architecture education at Yale and the buildings that have housed the architecture program. [...]
An auxiliary installation ... depicts more than 30 architecture schools from around the world to further illuminate the evolution of architecture education and the relationship between pedagogy and place.
— news.yale.edu
The free and public exhibition “Pedagogy and Place” opens December 3 and is on display through May 7, 2016, located in Yale's Rudolph Hall gallery at 180 York St.More news from the Yale School of Architecture:Get Lectured: Yale, Fall '15Deborah Berke named Dean of Yale School of Architecture... View full entry
In the microbial metropolises that thrive in and on the human body, underground networks of viruses loom large. A closer look at human skin has found that it's teeming with viruses, most of which don't target us but infect the microbes that live there.
Almost 95 percent of those skin-dwelling virus communities are unclassified...Those unknown viruses may prune, manipulate, and hide out in the skin’s bacterial communities, which in turn can make the difference between human health and disease...
— Ars Technica
Further reading: Architecture of the Anthropocene, Pt. 2: Haunted Houses, Living Buildings, and Other Horror StoriesBetween Sampling and Dowsing: Field Notes from GRNASFCKStudy finds antibacterial soap no more effective than regular soapEven bacteria are architectsCities Of The Future, Built By... View full entry