[...] British architect Sir David Chipperfield has said that he regards private investment’s hold over new architecture in London as an “absolutely terrible” means of building a city.

In Berlin, where he employs an office of 90, “there is still an idea of the public realm. We have given that up in London. We have declared the public realm dead; the question is how to get stuff out of the private sector. We are unbelievably sophisticated at that.” — theguardian.com

Can billionaires remake the Manhattan shoreline? Apparently so, in light of the news that a new park will be just offshore in the Hudson River, largely financed by the media mogul Barry Diller and situated, conveniently, a short walk from his office in Chelsea.

The new park will also be near the High Line, allowing for an easy tour of how private wealth is remaking the city’s public spaces. This trend isn’t unique to New York [...] — NY Times

"The tradition I’m coming from is not pleasure. It’s a certain shamanistic excess" — NYT

When you were growing up and now too, what did you think of a whole Thanksgiving story about Native people helping out Pilgrims?

I wish we had a tougher immigration policy. It's a love story, and it's still a love story. We still love you even, if we really are your battered spouse. — bitchmedia

“We looked at Frank Gehry designs and a lot of modern architecture with folded planes and fractalized surfaces and kind of riffed on all of that. It looks like it fell from the sky onto this field.” Looking at Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao the influence is clear.

Two other architects immediately come to mind as possible influences. Daniel Libeskind and Greg Lynn are leaders in the field of “folded planes and fractalized surfaces.” — smithsonianmag.com

“Uneven Growth: Tactical Urbanisms for Expanding Megacities” is, at least nominally, about urbanism and architecture. [...]

The problems, not the solutions, presented in “Uneven Growth” are very real. Before Gadanho and his teams of architects, planners, and researchers can suggest productive solutions, they would do well to acknowledge that their fellow practitioners hold responsibility for the very state of urban affairs they seek to remedy. — blouinartinfo.com

A hundred and some years ago, an aesthetic force called the City Beautiful movement professed the theory that grand public buildings, lovely civic palaces, could inspire Americans to become good citizens. [...]

Since the 1960s, though, it seems as if great civic architecture has become an embarrassment. Politicians who love to cut ribbons find it hard to justify paying for beautiful on top of functional. The result is a style I call Sunbelt Stalinism [...]. — latimes.com

Josef Albers’s Manhattan, a mural that enlivened the lobby of New York’s Met Life (previously the Pan Am) Building from 1963 until its controversial removal in 2000, could make a triumphant return to the city. Possible sites include the World Trade Center Transit Hub, The Art Newspaper understands. Finding a suitable home for the work is not the only obstacle: the original mural is in a landfill site in Ohio. — theartnewspaper.com

A newly completed 125 ft high mural painted by Stik on a condemned council owned tower block in Acton, West London is the tallest street artwork in the UK.

The artwork depicts a mother and child looking forlornly from their condemned council block at the luxury apartment complexes being built around them. [...]

Charles Hocking House was built for low income families in 1967 and is earmarked to be torn down in 2016. — streetartnews.net

Between 2008 and 2013, I photographed the branch libraries of New York City’s three public library systems: 212 branches in all[1], spread across the five boroughs. Through arrangements with each of the library systems, I worked mornings before the branches opened to the public. I traveled by subway and bus and made six to twelve pictures of each branch, interiors and exteriors, using a 4×5 inch view camera. My archive, to date, holds over 2,000 negatives. — urbanomnibus.net

Proving that some market somewhere will find a value for anything, a company called Orbital Insight is now tracking "the shadows cast by half-finished Chinese buildings" as a possible indicator for where the country's economy might be headed. — bldgblog.blogspot.com

Good architects strive to balance design and function while listening closely to a client’s emotional needs for the space. Public projects often have the added layers of bureaucratic paperwork,  media scrutiny, and community outreach. But rebuilding a school after a shooting presents a unique kaleidoscope of intense feelings. Architects must create an environment that not only promotes learning, but also helps the students—and their towns—heal from tragedy. — theatlantic.com

We call it “destructoporn” (since 2007, according to Urban Dictionary) and it comes, unbidden, via digital media. Where did I see that Tod Williams and Billie Tsien’s Folk Art Museum, just thirteen years old, was down to steel and rubble? The art critic Jerry Saltz’s Instagram. [...]

The dailiness, even hourliness, of social media makes it a perfect vehicle for documenting each thump of the wrecking ball, each crunch of the backhoe. Its visual slant is ideal for activism wrapped up in pictures. — newyorker.com