Architecture, we forget at our peril, is inherently violent. It invariably subtracts from the range of available possibilities, especially the perennially attractive option of building nothing at all. In this sense, construction sites are crime scenes.
—Herbert Muschamp, NY Times
— Numéro Cinq
Three quick takes on architecture, with links, of relevance to a certain tower. View full entry
Weizman’s new book, 'The Conflict Shoreline' (Steidl in association with Cabinet Books, 2015), a richly illustrated volume produced in collaboration with American photographer Fazal Sheikh about the displacement of the Bedouins in the Negev/Naqab desert. — Los Angeles Review of Books
George Prochnik and Eyal Weizman discuss the latest work by the Forensic Architecture team, Bedouin displacement in the Negev and "threshold of detectability." View full entry
In order to avoid participation in architecture and urban design becoming merely a politically required token of democratic involvement - a kind of fake participation that does not actually engage the participants in any meaningful way - architects, planners, and designers need to commit themselves and relinquish control, as Jeremy Till claims in an interview with us entitled "Distributing Power".
(Bernd Upmeyer, Editor-in-Chief, October 2015)
— http://www.monu-magazine.com/news.htm
In order to avoid participation in architecture and urban design becoming merely a politically required token of democratic involvement - a kind of fake participation that does not actually engage the participants in any meaningful way - architects, planners, and designers need to commit... View full entry
If you come across an article that wrongfully excludes the name of an architect, send a link to props@aia.org. — AIA
I fear this poor author, Matt Tinder, is going to be inundated with emails. We've all seen the article in the local newspaper announcing a new development along with a gleaming rendering of the building with the credit tag "Artists rendering". This makes steam come out of my ears!Matt's article... View full entry
Many [university presses] have a storied history of amplifying voices that were long ignored...The litany is endless, underscoring the audacity of university presses in believing that every city deserves the best ideas possible. We need that. As we make choices about our modern cities, as policymakers, advocates or citizens, we need these books to ground our vision, to help us imagine what is possible. And that’s why the tenuous future of university presses is so alarming. — nextcity.org
More on Archinect:Pump Out the Volumes: 50,000 free books form 1 art installationBradley Garrett on the importance of gonzo journalism for understanding citiesWilkinson Eyre-renovated Weston Library at Oxford now reopenedArchinect's Screen/Print series View full entry
To prepare our cities for the emergence and growth of transnational lifestyles we need to invent new urban and architectural forms that are adapted to these new ways of life. This is what the French sociologist and assistant Mayor of Paris, Jean-Louis Missika, emphasized in an exclusive interview with MONU entitled “Liberté, Digitalité, Créativité” on the topic of “Transnational Urbanism”.
(Bernd Upmeyer, Editor-in-Chief, April 2015)
— http://www.monu-magazine.com/news.htm
To prepare our cities for the emergence and growth of transnational lifestyles we need to invent new urban and architectural forms that are adapted to these new ways of life. This is what the French sociologist and assistant Mayor of Paris, Jean-Louis Missika, emphasized in an exclusive interview... View full entry
For many longtime readers of The Times, Thursday was tinged with sadness. One of their favorite weekly sections, Home, was no longer in the paper. The section was discontinued after the March 5 edition, almost exactly 38 years after its debut. — publiceditor.blogs.nytimes.com
thresholds 44: workspaceeditors: christianna bonin | nisa ariCALL FOR SUBMISSIONSWhen an employee at Google’s Mexico City office takes a post-lunch plunge into the on-site ball pit, is she working or playing? And when an employee in one of Foxconn’s factory sites in China leaps from his... View full entry
After a highly publicized five-month battle, the dust has finally settled on the lawsuit that Zaha Hadid filed against New York Review of Books (NYRB) and critic Martin Filler. — archrecord.construction.com
The following announcement was released:On January 22, 2015, following extensive settlement negotiations, Ms. Zaha Hadid withdrew her lawsuit against the New York Review of Books and Mr. Martin Filler. Under the terms of the settlement agreement, which remain confidential, Ms. Hadid has... View full entry
In 1969 Reyner Banham in his book The Architecture of the Well-tempered Environment marked the shift between the concept of interior to that of an artificial environment. Technology and new human needs in fact had become an integral part of architecture, defining a new paradigm to describe indoor... View full entry
In a letter to employees Wednesday, Time Inc. announced that it had sold Sunset’s serene seven-acre Menlo Park, Calif., campus of carefully designed gardens and 1950s ranch-style buildings to Embarcadero Capital Partners, a San Francisco real estate investment and management company. — New York Times
This is so sad, as it very likely means the demolition of Cliff May's beautiful and quintessentially Californian design. I would have loved to have visited the campus.I can easily credit Sunset Magazine with being a major influence on my decision to become an architect: as a pre-teen I pored... View full entry
Sinan’s life was extraordinary, spanning the rule of three sultans, responsible for hundreds of buildings and for shaping the face of Istanbul even to this day, and he was considered on a par with Michelangelo in the West. — The Independent
In Elif Şafak's (pronounced Shafak)new novel The Architect’s Apprentice the city is the real star, the teeming bustle of the streets, the whorehouses and palaces, the markets and mosques, the dungeons and bridges. And as the narrative progresses, the work of Sinan, Jahan, and Chota the... View full entry
Last year the Graham Foundation awarded Jimenez Lai with a grant for a proposal "Manifestos, Summits, and Gangs", a collective publication of "monographic manifestos featuring a small cluster of young and relatively unestablished yet daring architects". There seems to be a new class of... View full entry
Hong Kong's Kowloon Walled City was the densest place on the planet before it was torn down 20 years ago. In this Wall Street Journal interactive, you can take a trip through the city, explore its history and hear from the people who lived there.
The WSJ has developed an impressive rich-media piece on the Kowloon Walled City using photography, video, audio, text and interactive features to tell the stories of the history, environment and inhabitants. View full entry
Contrary to the simplified linear causality of the environmentalism of the past, which posited that natural geography shapes urban patterns, it is now thought that contemporary urbanization shapes the surface of the earth. Nikos Katsikis explains this tremendous current shift in the meaning of physical geography for cities in his contribution "On the Geographical Organization of World Urbanization".
(Bernd Upmeyer, Editor-in-Chief, April 2014)
— http://www.monu-magazine.com
Contrary to the simplified linear causality of the environmentalism of the past, which posited that natural geography shapes urban patterns, it is now thought that contemporary urbanization shapes the surface of the earth. Nikos Katsikis explains this tremendous current shift in the meaning of... View full entry
