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The caption to the photograph reveals that this isn’t New York at all, of course, but Sweden: a life-size replica of Harlem in a forest in the west of the country, near Gothenburg. The asphalt and snow are real enough, but nearly everything else is fake. The streets are void of people and cars; the store fronts are life-size photographs, printed on canvas and hung on steel frames. Welcome to the Potemkin village: a place of clones, impostors, facsimiles, frauds. Maybe don’t plan to stay. — The New York Times
Why is there a life-size replica of Harlem in Sweden? This bizarre space turns out to be a test track for self-driving cars. Why Harlem? Even Austrian artist Gregor Sailer who photographed the space doesn't know. Sailer traveled around the world to capture 25 of these false architectural... View full entry
“Designing from Instagram for Instagram seems like a snake eating its own tail. Everywhere looks like everywhere else and the eye grows tired of bananas or concrete tiles or mirror rooms.” — The Guardian
The built environment, this article from Bella Mackie suggests, is increasingly being designed as a 'backdrop;' a stage for those masses which might otherwise be disinterested in the fields of aesthetics and art production. This phenomenon can be felt when traveling the world just as apparently... View full entry
Danchi—which translates literally to "group land" but has come to refer to Japan's public housing blocks—emerged in the 1960s as the country was faced with rapid modernization and urbanization. A period of high-growth, the government built these apartment complexes in many suburban areas to... View full entry
Taking a photograph of architecture by using a camera is tantamount to placing a small architecture against another large architecture and having the small one swallow the larger one. — Places Journal
The Japanese word for buildings, tatemono, means “things that are standing.” On the occasion of a major career retrospective at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, Naoya Hatakeyama considers the meaning and the practice of photographing the built environment, and the distinction between the... View full entry
Photographer Francois Prost's recent photo series, Paris Syndrome, reveals just how far China's "duplitecture" went in the city of Tianducheng. Pairing images of China's replica city with its Paris equivalent—side by side it can be initially unclear which is the original. ... View full entry
MAD Architects recently completed their massive Chaoyang Park Plaza, a 220,000 square meter, 10 building complex which draws on classic Chinese landscape paintings in its design. Completed just in time for the end of the year, this recently released set of images by acclaimed architectural... View full entry
"Buildings are just giant sculptures after all!" describes George Byrne, the Los Angeles-based photographer who points his camera towards architectural compositions as subject matter for his work. The Australian born artist has now been a resident of Los Angeles for eight years and it shows. ... View full entry
“I’m looking for subtle signifiers of an exuberant bygone optimism,” [Photographer Tag Christof] said. “Whether people realize it or not, the things I photograph are the direct result of a system that defines progress only in economic terms.” Christof...has spent the last five years crisscrossing the country in an effort to document architectural sites vanishing from the landscape. — The Outline
Whether you spent your teenage years moodily occupying the food court or have experienced malls primarily as ruin porn, the architectural significance of these former bustling commercial centers can't be overstated. A kind of high water mark of capitalism, the shuttered and demolished malls... View full entry
Instead of the usual snap of people lounging in the sun in Bryant Park, visual effects artist Rod Bogart has created a Voronoi diagram of the outing and posted it to his Twitter account. When asked how he had placed the center points of the diagram, Bogart tweeted that "I used Illustrator to drop... View full entry
If you've ever wanted to see the original physical model of the Guggenheim Museum in New York City in person, you're in the luck: starting June 12th (with a live-streamed press preview on June 8th, which you can watch here), the Museum of Modern Art will display its Frank Lloyd Wright archive to... View full entry
Photographer James Ewing was given a studio and several weeks to creatively photograph architectural models made by students of the Columbia GSAPP between 1994 and 2003. The resulting work will form a show, "Stagecraft: Models and Photos," that opens at the GSAPP on February 9th.Featuring... View full entry
Mr. Margolies, who died on May 26, at 76, was considered the country’s foremost photographer of vernacular architecture — the coffee shops shaped like coffeepots; the gas station shaped like a teapot (the Teapot Dome Service Station in Zillah, Wash.); and the motels shaped like all manner of things, from wigwams to zeppelins to railroad cars — that once stood as proud totems along America’s blue highways. — The New York Times
In memoriam, here are a few of Margolies' idiosyncratic finds, many of which were compiled into the 2010 book "John Margolies: Roadside America":Other architectural photographers who are still doing their signature thing:Photographer captures the beauty of Beirut's architectureBêka &... View full entry
The way a building is envisioned to interact with people versus the way it actually does can be dramatically different, which is why the 16 films of Ila Bêka and Louise Lemoine are both aesthetically stunning and humanistically delightful. MoMA has acquired the pair's entire collection of work... View full entry
These buildings aren't from a distant galaxy far, far away. They're here on Planet Earth, specifically in Belgrade, Serbia. Locally based photographer Mirko Nahmijas wanted to give a new perspective to some of his hometown's historically-loaded Brutalist structures in his photo series... View full entry
Graham Fink has been documenting the demolition sites of Shanghai for five years, trying to capture the state of flux during this period of rapid urbanisation. His Ballads of Shanghai exhibition is at London’s Riflemaker gallery until Sunday. — the Guardian
With an eye for the juxtaposition of graphic imagery and demolition sites, Graham Fink takes fascinating images of a city under the midst of mass transformations. His camera is drawn, in particular, to remnants of street art and commercial advertisements. For other depictions of the built... View full entry
