After we wrapped our first live-podcasting series, "Next Up", held at Jai & Jai Gallery in Los Angeles' Chinatown and at the opening weekend of the Chicago Architecture Biennial, we had over four hours of live interviews to release. Now, we're letting them loose as "Mini-Sessions", leading... View full entry
Peyton-Jones joined the gallery in 1991 and was sole director for 15 years until she was joined by Hans Ulrich Obrist as co-director in 2006. The pair’s ethos for the gallery was “to think the unthinkable”. [...]
Since 2000, she has also commissioned some of the world’s most sought-after architects to design a temporary pavilion for the gallery each year, which has become a highly popular annual attraction, drawing thousands of visitors to the park.
— theguardian.com
More recent news from the Serpentine gallery and its famed annual pavilion:Serpentine Galleries launch Build Your Own Pavilion for (really) young architectsHot Work in the Summertime: From Helsinki to London to NYC, Archinect Sessions #35The Serpentine Pavilions from the past: Where are they... View full entry
Archinect recently wrapped its first live-podcasting series, "Next Up", held at Jai & Jai Gallery in Los Angeles' Chinatown and at the opening weekend of the Chicago Architecture Biennial. Now, we're releasing those 4+ hours of "Next Up" interviews as "Mini-Sessions", leading up to the... View full entry
Rows of white tents in an otherwise sparse landscape are often featured in the media, but the reality is that 80% of Syrian refugees have sought refuge outside of camps, and the majority of these are living in urban areas – whether in “informal tented settlements”, rented rooms, or half-finished buildings. [...]
While the majority of Syrian refugees are not in camps, the bulk of humanitarian resources are channelled towards maintaining camps.
— theguardian.com
More on the Syrian refugee crisis:The "suffocating" life in a Syrian refugee tentWhat Does the Syrian Refugee Crisis Mean to Architecture?Refugee Camp for Syrians in Jordan Evolves as a DIY CityHow to Build a Perfect Refugee Camp View full entry
Istanbul is a city constantly evolving and forever feeling the pull of east and west, of tradition and modernity, and defined by its contrasts. Poised at the edge of the Bosphorus on the European side of the city, the Istanbul Modern museum situates itself at the center of it all.Currently the... View full entry
Connal...is one of the most active members of China’s approximately 200-strong urbex community. Worldwide, the pursuit – which some describe as “recreational trespass” – is estimated to have about 20,000 adherents, the majority in Europe and the United States.
Connal’s urbexing has taken him into derelict science museums, “haunted” pre-Revolution hotels, ghostly amusement parks, and a half-finished shopping centre that he calls the Great Mall of China.
— The Guardian
For more on abandoned, decaying sites worldwide, check out Archinect's coverage: Abandoned schools = new development opportunitiesThe Mysterious, Abandoned Silos of Washington, DCChinese Fun: Photographer Stefano Cerio captures the eerie side of empty amusement parks View full entry
Spiffing up materials the city puts out to promote safe driving “is definitely not what this is about,” Reynolds said. “It's going much deeper into the way we think about designing the streets. Art has the power to get people to sit up and pay attention and jolt them out of their normal ways of thinking. We can infuse unexpected elements into the design of the streets and the way of moving through the streets.” — The Los Angeles Times
For more on the (changing) art of street navigation: • What Do Pedestrian Traffic Icons Say About Your Culture?• Los Angeles has Created the Perfect Parking Sign• Seeking identity through city fonts• From California to Texas, car culture is losing its monopoly View full entry
[Kundig] builds houses that look like rustic jewels atop glacial rock in the Cascade Range of Washington state, or along the San Juan Islands waterfront or in the California high desert.
Typically made of some combination of weathered wood, concrete and rusted steel, the structures also include generous stretches of glass [...]
The son of Swiss émigrés, Mr. Kundig was strongly influenced by the rugged topography of the Pacific Northwest, where he was raised.
— wsj.com
More on Tom Kundig's work in the News:Tom Kundig loses lawsuit against his Washington valley cabinLawsuit Filed Against Architect Tom KundigTom Kundig on the Frey House II View full entry
A presentation about a world that is increasingly mediated by screens and digital conceptualizations of space on three screens with digital conceptualizations of space is not just meta: it was the engaging and immersive format of Liam Young's lecture/performance Wednesday night at SCI-Arc, "City... View full entry
Our ability to form and maintain friendships is shaped in crucial ways by the physical spaces in which we live. [...]
in America we have settled on patterns of land use that might as well have been designed to prevent spontaneous encounters, the kind out of which rich social ties are built. [...]
We do not encounter one another in cars. We grind along together anonymously, often in misery.
— vox.com
More on the repercussions of sprawl:Urban sprawl costs the American economy more than US$1 trillion per yearThe true costs of sprawlSeven Myths About New UrbanismWhy sprawl may be bad for your health View full entry
Hippie modernism focused not on rigorous form but rather on a kind of socially inspired bricolage. Hippie modernism has been not only misunderstood but also underestimated. Buckminster Fuller’s concept of a ‘design science revolution’ inspired the hippie bricoleurs to shoulder their generation’s emerging notion of environmental stewardship. — PLACES JOURNAL
Greg Castillo pens a great article about one of the most overlooked and often dismissed role of hippies in what we have today greedily claimed by the millenials and known as "environmental movement."“Hippie Modernism” is published in coordination with the Walker Art Center... View full entry
I would like to argue that a more potent threat to the ongoing political viability of historic preservation is the perception that the preservation industry has become a conservative, indeed revanchist force; that it is elitist and sometimes even racist in its abetment of gentrification.
How did this happen?
Historic preservation in New York, according to the favored creation myth, was born in the postwar era as a progressive grassroots movement...
— Places Journal
"Steelhenge," BUREAU A's design for the inaugural BIG biennale for independent art spaces, isn't just 50 blue shipping containers arrayed to mimic Stonehenge's layout in the center of Geneva: it was also the site of a four-day party in June to celebrate the open-spirited biennale, which... View full entry
It’s 2040, and Los Angeles has just begun to recover from a devastating epidemic that wiped out much of its population. Former residents slowly trickle back, alongside new immigrants drawn to the city’s surplus housing stock. But at a lab in Westwood, epidemiologists fear the disease is... View full entry
James Corner Field Operations (JCFO) has been selected to design the National Building Museum's Summer Block Party 2016 installation. The National Building Museum selected JCFO after the success of 2015's "The BEACH," an installation designed by Snarkitecture that allowed 180,000 Washington... View full entry
