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Can Atalay, a lawyer for the Chamber of Architects which brought the lawsuit, said the administrative court ruled in early June at the height of the unrest that the plan violated preservation rules and unacceptably changed the square's identity. It was not clear why it had only now been released. — Reuters
Ayla Jean Yackley reported that a Turkish court has canceled an Istanbul building project backed by Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan which provided the trigger for nationwide anti-government demonstrations last month, a copy of the court decision showed. View full entry
"The protests in Istanbul indicated one simple thing for architects. We need new definitions for architecture in situations when architecture is removed from architects." -Yelta Köm, the organization founder — #occupygeziarchitecture
Group of architects are documenting the temporary structures that were destroyed by the police in Gezi Park, Istanbul. Take it from the Turks, the original nomads from Central Asia. View full entry
I call these projects urbicide because of the social and ecological damages they cause, such as land speculation, expulsion of the lower-middle classes from the urban center, and the zoning of green areas for development. Among the projects is a third bridge over the Bosphorus, a canal bisecting Istanbul in the north-south axis near its western border, and the redevelopment of Taksim Square. — researchturkey.org
As protests have rocked Turkey over the past few days, three Turkish professionals in the U.S. decided on Sunday that they had to take some action. Turning to their technology backgrounds, the trio launched a crowd-sourced fundraising campaign on Indiegogo to buy a full-page ad in the front section of the New York Times in support of their fellow Turkish citizens who’ve clashed with the government across dozens of cities. — forbes.com
For more information on the protests in Istanbul, check Orhan's report with ongoing commentary. Here's a link to the Indiegogo campaign. View full entry
Open letter to Giuliano Pisapia, Mayor of Milan, from the international community of arts & culture... Dear Mayor Pisapia, It is with regret and disappointment that we learn that Stefano Boeri was dismissed from his position as Councillor for Design, Fashion and Culture for the city of... View full entry
Tens of thousands of people resumed mass demonstrations in Bangladesh’s capital Dhaka, on Saturday, intensifying their demands for more severe punishment for war criminals from the country’s 1971 liberation war, while also demanding justice for the slaying of Rajib Haider, an architect and blogger, who had been a leading organizer of the protests. — NYT
Twelve students barricaded themselves inside an eighth-floor room at the top of the Cooper Union Foundation Building at noon on Monday to urge the school not to begin charging tuition to undergraduates.
The school has not made a decision on charging tuition for undergraduates. But in April, it decided to begin charging tuition to graduate students for the first time in its 110-year history.
— cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com
Authorities have demolished a five-story home that stood incongruously in the middle of a new main road and had become the latest symbol of resistance by Chinese homeowners against officials accused of offering unfair compensation.
Xiayangzhang village chief Chen Xuecai told The Associated Press the house was bulldozed Saturday after its owners, duck farmer Luo Baogen and his wife, agreed to accept compensation of 260,000 yuan ($41,000).
— ajc.com
Previously: Chinese Highway builds around "Nail House" protesting development View full entry
Luo Baogen and his wife are the lone holdouts from a neighborhood that was demolished to make way for the main thoroughfare heading to a newly built railway station on the outskirts of the city of Wenling in Zhejiang province.
"Nail house" families occasionally have resorted to violence. Some homeowners have set themselves on fire in protests. Often, they keep 24-hour vigils because developers will shy away from bulldozing homes when people are inside.
— in2eastafrica.net
Like the meeting of the Red and Assiniboine rivers, there’s a compelling confluence of urban activists standing next to each other on the sidewalk of Portage Avenue in downtown Winnipeg. To my right is a group of First Nations flood evacuees protesting (politely) against cuts to their daily living allowance. To my left, below the gleaming, mirror-polished aluminum balconies of the Avenue on Portage mixed-use development... — theglobeandmail.com
The architects Peter Samton and Diana Goldstein can tell you exactly where they were a half century ago, at 5 p.m. on Aug. 2, 1962: out on Seventh Avenue, tilting at windmills.
Pennsylvania Station, the McKim, Mead & White masterpiece, was doomed. They knew it. But they weren’t going to let it go down undefended.
— cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com
We tend to underestimate The political power of physical places. Then Tahir Square comes along. Now it is Zucotti Park. — NYT
Forget petitions: art professionals are showing their support for detained Chinese artist Ai Weiwei in increasingly creative ways. Last week, Milwaukee-based Mike Brenner shaved his head into a style reminiscent of Ai's outside the Milwaukee Art Museum as a show of support for the artist, who has been missing for over two months. — artinfo.com
One of Ai Weiwei’s better known works is “Study of Perspective,” a series of first-person photographs in which the artist gives the finger to various landmarks around the world, including the Forbidden City. A Cuban artist recently made a similar gesture, projecting a massive portrait of Mr. Ai along the side of the Chinese consulate building in New York City. — blogs.wsj.com
