The Palestinian Museum opens its inaugural exhibition this weekend focusing on the holy city of Jerusalem, a city that both Israel and Palestine claim as their capital. The wide-ranging, overtly political show focuses on the realities of living in Jerusalem as well as the idea that despite being seen as the original global city, it also serves an example of how globalization has failed worldwide. — The Arts Newspaper
The Palestinian Museum, located in Birzeit, Palestine’s West Bank, opened last May. Back then, however, the $24 million structure designed by Heneghan Peng Architects had no exhibits to show due to a sudden resignation of the museum's former director. Its first show, Jerusalem Lives (Tahya Al... View full entry
Gregory Ain, a midcentury champion of modern architecture whose students included Frank Gehry, is virtually unknown outside Los Angeles today. His left-leaning politics made him the object of decades-long F.B.I. surveillance [...]
Even the fate of his most important commission — an exhibition house in the garden of the Museum of Modern Art — is a mystery. That house is now the subject of “This Future Has a Past,” an installation at the Center for Architecture in Greenwich Village.
— The New York Times
This Future Has a Past opened in July at the Center for Architecture in New York and still runs through September 12. The accompanying event Who Was Gregory Ain? on September 7 will feature the installation's producers, Katherine Lambert and Christiane Robbins, as well as other speakers. View full entry
A Syrian boy hand-built a model of what his hometown might look like after the country’s civil war, and now “Future Aleppo” is on display in Los Angeles. [...]
As he watched his city get demolished, Mohammed carefully crafted his vision for a future Aleppo using paper, wood, colored pencils, and glue. He lovingly recreated destroyed landmarks, like the medieval Citadel and his favorite park, and added imaginary, forward-looking buildings and design features [...].
— KCRW Design & Architecture
"While much of his model was destroyed when Mohammed and his family fled to Turkey, the surviving portion was brought to the U.S. by Alex Kalman, founder of Mmuseumm, a pop-up gallery in Manhattan." KCRW's Design & Architecture host, Frances Anderton, talks to Kalman about the model's... View full entry
Each of the settings on display in the exhibit capture that promise of the future balanced with the starkness of reality. The settings also celebrate a disappearing craft—hand-drawn animation. The anime industry long resisted the shift to computer-generated art that took hold in the West starting in the 1990s, but as technology has advanced, fewer and fewer artists practice the craft traditionally, making the art on display especially striking. — The Smithsonian
London's House of Illustration is currently displaying “Anime Architecture: Backgrounds of Japan”, an exhibition that showcases over 100 of the intricate paintings and drawings used in the production of iconic dystopian anime films like “Ghost in the Shell” and “Akira”. View full entry
The title Clocks and Clouds comes from philosopher Karl Popper’s essay on rationality and freedom, but also describes the dreamy precision, the spirit, and the material of Escher GuneWardena’s art. — UCSB Art, Design & Architecture Museum, Santa Barbara
A gem of an exhibition by Escher GuneWardena whose work meticulously navigates architecture, art and design. The quietly original and meaningful architecture of the firm can be classified as timeless and critical, alluding to philosophy of Karl Popper. The work reflects the best tenets of modern... View full entry
As government officials in Moscow earmark Constructivist buildings for demolition in a massive project to relocate up to 1.6 million of the city’s residents, a non-profit museum dedicated to preserving Russia’s avant-garde architecture has opened in the Shabolovka neighbourhood. — The Art Newspaper
The new Avant-Garde Museum is located in Na Shabolovke Gallery, which is a part of Khavsko-Shabolovsky housing complex built in the late 1920s by the rationalist Asnova (Association of New Architects). It is part of a district with a rich heritage of early Soviet architecture and design... View full entry
The majority of the models were far from pristine. Architectural maquettes are often only used to quickly communicate an idea; longevity of materials such as chipboard or Plexiglas is rarely a concern. So, when Moody set out to restore the 14 models in MoMA’s archive (the museum holds the three-dimensional works of Wright’s massive archive), she was faced with missing elements, acidified paper, warping, and discoloration, among other issues. — Metropolis
Exploring lesser-known parts of Wright’s 70-year-long career, MoMA's new exhibition, Frank Lloyd Wright at 150: Unpacking the Archive (on view through October 1, 2017) presents projects for an experimental farm and a series of rural school buildings in the segregated South. Besides that, the... View full entry
The elegant new museum [...] is the antithesis of its hefty, imposing neighbour [the Tirpitz, part of Hitler’s Atlantic Wall]. A series of incisions appear in the sand dunes, leading to a hidden, airy square from which the exhibition spaces radiate [...] Visitors embark on a “daylight” journey and a “darkened experience” that tell the story of how the tides brought wealth and stability to the area on the one hand, and took lives on the other. — The Guardian
Designed by Bjarke Ingels Group, the new Blåvand bunker hill museum in Denmark's West Jutland region will be opening to the public on June 30. Integrated into a historic sand dune next to the Nazi-era Tirpitz bunker, the elegant museum is a “light antithesis to bunker architecture”, BIG... View full entry
Organized into the three “zones” of Field, Sequence, and Rooms, the exhibition will bring together the minds of artists and designers like Diller Scofidio + Renfro, Yoko Ono, and Olafur Eliasson and researchers such as the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, who will propose solutions and approaches to the ever-pressing issues of environmental and social sustainability. — Bustler
As Chapter 2 of the Shanghai Project, the “Seeds of Time” is a cross-disciplinary exhibition designed by Hong Kong- and Madrid-based COLLECTIVE studio and curated by Dr. Yongwoo Lee and Hans Ulrich Obrist. The exhibition is at the Shanghai Himalayas Museum until July 30.Photo: Katja Lam... View full entry
Think you've seen all of Neil Denari's work? Eleven inkjet drawings featuring unbuilt visions by Denari's studio NMDA will be showcased in his “Displaced Buildings in Aperiodic City” exhibition, opening May 27 at the Steven Holl-designed ‘T’ Space Gallery in Rhinebeck, New York. If you'll... View full entry
La Rinascente, a department store chain headquartered in Milan, has a long and storied history. The descendent of Aux Villes d’Italie—perhaps the first department store in Italy—the business brought modern shopping into the country. Instead of tailors, shoppers could now see garments on... View full entry
Pneumatic architecture—aka inflatables—have been a mainstay of avant-garde and experimental architecture for decades. Back in the ’60s, figures like Buckminster Fuller and Frei Otto, alongside radical practices like Haus-Rucker-Co, Utopia and Ant Farm, pioneered the use of these structures... View full entry
This post is brought to you by Vision 2017.Aimed at architects, designers, specifiers and their clients, Vision 2017 provides an international focus for innovative products and building solutions, bringing together some of the best designs and leading figures from across Western Europe. Across... View full entry
Known for portraying a “clean and analytical minimalist aesthetic” in his work, New York-based photographer Todd Eberle has captured sharp, personable portraits of architectural icons like David Adjaye, Rem Koolhaas, Frank Gehry, Phyllis Lambert, and Philip Johnson...Most recently, Woodbury University's Julius Shulman Institute bestowed its prestigious JSI Excellence in Photography Award to Todd Eberle for 2017. — Bustler
Todd Eberle will be presented with the JSI Photography Award on May 4, during opening night of his “Empire of Space” exhibition at the WUHO Gallery. Previous recipients of the award include James Welling, Hélène Binet, Grant Mudford, Pedro E. Guererro, Catherine Opie, Richard Barnes, and... View full entry
Esther McCoy is best known as the architecture writer who helped shape the story of Modernism in Los Angeles. Less known is the nearly year-long period she spent in Mexico in 1951. During this time, she wrote about key architectural developments in the country...
“The [“Passersby 02: Esther McCoy” exhibition] presents [McCoy] as this kind of bridge,” says Esparza, “from L.A. to Mexico and from Mexico to L.A.”
— Los Angeles Times
Architecture historian and critic Esther McCoy is the spotlight of a micro-exhibition called “Passersby 02: Esther McCoy”, which closes this Sunday at Museo Jumex. The exhibition investigates how McCoy's writings on key architectural developments in Mexico during her extended stay in... View full entry
