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One of Denmark’s most highly publicized cultural projects has now officially begun its public operation after being previously inaugurated in a soft opening last June. Set amongst a massive new public park that opened earlier in the fall, Kengo Kuma and Associates’ design for the new... View full entry
The personal has never been a hallmark of Diller’s work in architecture and design. But working with de Waal’s emotionally charged travelogue, she said, had a transformational effect. “Seeing the world of his family through Edmund’s eyes,” she said, “I saw my family history also.” “Edmund dug into his past,” Diller added. “I didn’t. I couldn’t bear it.” Designing an exhibition based on de Waal’s book has changed that. — The New York Times
Six rooms designed by Elizabeth Diller give viewers a glimpse into de Waal’s inner world informed by his relatives, the Ephrussis, who, like the architect’s own Polish family, was forced into exile during the Holocaust. Diller said she wanted the exhibition spaces to reflect the displacement... View full entry
This is the second time the Architecture Department will offer "Topographical Stories: Architecture, Literature, and Cities," a seminar taught by Architecture professor David Leatherbarrow. Leatherbarrow said students in the class will examine texts from authors writing about specific cities, comparing them to pieces of architecture from the same city and the same time period. — The Daily Pennsylvanian
The UPenn Benjamin Franklin Seminar will be offered this spring. According to Professor Leatherbarrow, "the goal for the course is to get students thinking about architecture in a new way by looking at the discipline using many approaches," reports The Daily Pennsylvanian. Some of the... View full entry
The pitch-perfect paean to the only city we knew could have been taken straight from Exodus, or the Voluntary Prisoners of Architecture: The Avowal (1972) by Rem Koolhaas and Elia Zenghelis with Madelon Vriesendorp and Zoe Zenghelis [...] No wonder, then, that of all the images from this project, a photocollage of musicians posing in the “strip of intense metropolitan desirability” resonates with my memories of Houston and its eclectic punk scene. — Enrique Ramirez, Harvard Design Magazine
Inspired by the confusing yet formative years of adolescence, Harvard Design Magazine's “Seventeen” issue explores “teens of all sorts—humans, buildings, objects, ideas—and their impact on the spatial imagination”. In the poetic “Life Begins at the Apocalypse Monster Club” by... View full entry
Tension and compression often meld into each another. In this building, two volumes are interwoven by strong connecting rods, extended columns and daring beams, with one of the two seemingly suspended from the other. With its mass and swirled dynamism, the suspended volume (that we will call Lila) seems to be slipping away from the one that is holding it up (that we will call Elena) making it extend and stretch as if it was Lila that was shaping Elena and providing her with her dynamic energy... — The Paris Review
The name of this architectural complex is My Brilliant Friend, after Elena Ferrante’s novel in which the relationship between its two protagonists (Elena, the narrating voice, and her childhood friend Lila) is a constant, alternating flux of blurred identities and imperfect dreams. View full entry
So I’d argue that the birth of the middle class, or the managerial middle class, is in some ways tied to the invention of the skyscraper. — JStor
Before the skyscraper, looking down at people from great heights was more of a figurative state of mind than an actual experience. But afterwards, the notion of people as dots on a landscape went beyond just a slangy Georges Seurat reference and became a Thing. But what were the ramifications of... View full entry
In this fascinating piece by Rumaan Ali for Slate, he explores how children's picture books offer a fun historical survey of the ideal architecture and interior decor for each place and time, spanning from the early 20th century to contemporary times. Although the books usually incorporate some... View full entry
But supplementing that aesthetic of “the future” sketched in imaginary edifice, the full SF vision of the future city is a mosaic, constructed from fragments of the cities that we recognize, including symbols that are decidedly from the past. [...]
If SF functions by taking the world we know and altering it with a constructed future fantasy, the Statue of Liberty serves as the junction point, the axis where the speculative fantasy begins and ends.
— motherboard.vice.com
The writer and the architect aren't so different from each other when you consider each one as builders of an environment, and what better way to introduce that concept than to a class of high school students. After reading about Matteo Pericoli's "The Laboratory of Literary Architecture" course... View full entry
Great architects build structures that can make us feel enclosed, liberated or suspended. They lead us through space, make us slow down, speed up or stop to contemplate. Great writers, in devising their literary structures, do exactly the same.
So what happens when we ask writers to try their hand at architecture?
— New York Times
Gotham City is undergoing one of the most expansive construction booms in its history. The most prestigious architects from across the globe have buildings in various phases of completion all over town. As chairman of the Gotham Landmarks Commission, Bruce Wayne has been a key part of this boom, which signals a golden age of architectural ingenuity for the city. And then, the explosions begin. — io9.com
826 opens up its second Los Angeles area center, designed and built by archinector, Scott Mitchell. 826 is a "free literacy and writing center for kids that was started by author Dave Eggers in San Francisco," with centers in New York, Chicago, Ann Arbor, Seattle, and Boston. 826 is always... View full entry
