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A Berlin-based artist who put up billboards advertising fake real estate projects in protest against runaway property development received more than 200 calls from would-be investors who didn’t get the joke. [...]
At a distance, the adverts look plausible but closer inspection of the images visualising what the new properties would look like reveals odd details.
— The Guardian
Treptown Visions, billboard in public space, Treptow, Berlin, 2019 by Dorothea Nold. Image: Dorothea Nold/aussenwelt "Citizens are not being asked for their permission when investors make such drastic changes in their city, that’s why I thought it is okay to put them without permission up to... View full entry
Widespread protests focused on countering China's quasi-colonial reign over Hong Kong continued over the weekend, as demonstrators began to take aim at the city's widespread surveillance infrastructure, The Guardian reports. Organizing in response to reports that Chinese... View full entry
After years of protests and legal battles, Hawaii officials announced Thursday that a massive telescope which will allow scientists to peer into the most distant reaches of our early universe will be built on a volcano that some consider sacred.
The state has issued a “notice to proceed” for the Thirty Meter Telescope project, Gov. David Ige said at a news conference. In October, a state Supreme Court’s 4-1 ruling upheld the project’s permits for the $1.4 billion instrument.
— HuffPost
Meanwhile protests continue by a group of native Hawaiians who see the telescope's site on top of Mount Mauna Kea as sacred ground and have been trying for years to block the project at this location. View full entry
Hawaii's Supreme Court has sided with scientists in a battle to build one of the world's largest telescopes, rejecting efforts by native Hawaiians to block its construction atop what some consider a sacred volcano.
In 2015, a construction permit for the Thirty Meter Telescope, or TMT, to be built on Mauna Kea, was invalidated amid protests and court appeals, claiming the dormant volcano is sacred land that would be violated in the building process.
— NPR
The embattled TMT astronomical observatory project on Mauna Kea previously in the Archinect news: Hawaii's Thirty Meter Telescope could be moved to the Canary IslandsHawaii protesters block construction of giant telescope on sacred mountain Mauna KeaThe $1.5B 30m telescope (TMT) will be the... View full entry
Enter the Illuminator, a New York-based art activist collective, whose shifting membership has mastered the legal grey zone that regulates projection in public.
[...] the Illuminator takes the normally stationary technology out of the classroom and onto the streets, affixing a high-powered, 12,000-lumens projector atop a van — or, when special nimbleness is required, a trolley — to ignite urban façades with political statements that are as bold as they are temporary.
— Urban Omnibus
Image: The Illuminator Collective.For this recent Urban Omnibus feature, digital media scholar Eli Horwatt interviews art-activist collective The Illuminator. Since capturing the public attention with their Occupy-inspired 99% Bat Signal projection in 2011, the collective has been, quite... View full entry
After a horse race ad was projected onto the structure’s iconic roof earlier this week, protestors took to the streets in objection to the commodification of their beloved building. — CityLab
Hundreds of protesters had gathered in the evening hours of October 9 when the, usually, off-white iconic sails of the Sydney Opera House were used as a video projection canvas to promote a major upcoming horse race in New South Wales. The crowd booed and tried to interrupt the projection with a... View full entry
Thousands of union construction workers gathered Wednesday at the NFL HQ in New York City to protest the founder of Related Companies, the developer behind the large-scale redevelopment of Hudson Yards. Wearing t-shirts that read "Step down Steve Ross," the workers were calling on the... View full entry
[...] historians were dumbstruck last week when Chase announced plans to demolish the 52-story glass-curtain-wall skyscraper, which opened in 1961, and replace it with an even bigger structure.
The news prompted two immediate responses. The first was an outcry by preservationists. That part was predictable; what is surprising this time around was their wistful sense of resignation.
News of the Union Carbide building's demolition a little over a week ago has incited commotion, yet there is a level of resignation to many of the outcries. Jeffrey Lieber takes a deeper look into why this relinquishment may exist around the Skidmore, Owings & Merrill skyscraper. The... View full entry
Since last Thursday, thousands of educators and students across the UK have been protesting changes made to the pensions of university workers—a 40% cut to their USS pension scheme that the University and College Union says could cost staff up to half of their retirement income. The downgrade... View full entry
Earlier today, news broke that the De Blasio administration has hashed out a deal with JPMorgan Chase to demolish its existing headquarters at 270 Park Avenue, and replace the structure with a shiny new 70-story building. The deal was negotiated in the wake of the Midtown East rezoning, which loosened zoning regulations for the area in exchange for developers providing street-level and infrastructure improvements. — Curbed New York
Not so fast! said architecture critics and preservationists when news broke that the midcentury 270 Park Avenue tower in Manhattan's East Midtown, currently home of banking giant JPMorgan Chase, had quietly been selected—not for landmark designation—but for the chopping block. Designed by... 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
An interactive map of the former Soviet Union’s Constructivist architectural heritage went online just days before the city of Moscow published a list of 4,500 apartment buildings proposed for demolition as part of a plan to relocate up to 1.6 million residents. Describe by many residents as a property grab [...] the demolition plan has proven so unpopular that thousands turned up for a demonstration against it in Moscow on Sunday 14 May carrying signs with slogans like “My house is my castle”. — The Art Newspaper
"The plan has also alarmed preservationists," The Art Newspaper writes. "Initially described as an effort to upgrade residents from pre-fabricated mass housing built under Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, the architectural targets have broadened and fears are mounting that it has become a... View full entry
Protests in Paris in the aftermath of the vote have turned violent with smoke grenades, flares and glass bottles thrown at police. More rallies, dubbed the “night of the barricades,” are expected to take place in 13 cities across France. — COURTESY: RUPTLY video agency
Live event cameras covering the night of French elections. The footage follows night time streets and other public spaces romancing the dreamy city with shadowy elevations, silhouettes and the sounds of the Parisian architecture and urbanism. Considering the French tradition of protest, this is... View full entry
This post is brought to you by Reality Cues. Architecture is historically complicit with the policies of those in power, both symbolically and functionally. It offers not only representations of power, but also vehicles for enacting power in its most grandiose, oppressive, and physically enduring... View full entry
As the Department of Homeland Security prepares to officially launch the RFP for Trump's proposed border wall on March 6, the Architecture Lobby is calling on all architects and engineers across the U.S. to participate in a national day of action to boycott the... View full entry
