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In reality, the central neighborhoods of many major American cities are thriving. [...]
“Inner city,” in short, is imprecise in describing today’s urban reality. It captures neither the true geography of poverty or black America, nor the quality of life in many communities in central cities. But politically, its 1970s-era meaning lingers. [...]
But in any context, it is hard to shake the phrase’s association with an era when American cities looked very different from the way they do today.
— nytimes.com
Republican Presidential candidate Donald J. Trump, in recent debates with Hillary Clinton, had referred to the "inner cities" as “a disaster education-wise, job-wise, safety-wise, in every way possible,” and as places that if "You walk down the street, you get shot."In fact-checking response... View full entry
Architects around the globe got to show some Internet meme-worthy snark in Reality Cues' latest installment, the “Good Walls Make Good Neighbors, Mr. Trump” ideas competition. Based on Donald Trump's xenophobic plans to make the historically controversial U.S./Mexico border wall into a reality, the charrette invited architects to do one thing: Design a wall that separates Mr. Trump from the rest of the U.S. — Bustler
Here are a few of the top entries:First Runner Up: Taco Truck Block Party by Rajiv FernandezSecond Runner Up: The Future is Bleak by Rob AndersonHonorable Mention: Cleansing the Earth by Aly PerezHonorable Mention: Shhhh, Don't Tell Richard by Daniel Rogers(cover image) Best Overall Image... View full entry
Over the years, Trump has courted me, comforted me, criticized me and sent me a handful of sometimes-fawning letters and notes. I saved the correspondence. Wouldn't you? [...]
And the missives are telling. Combined with other things he's said and written, they show that Candidate Trump isn't all that different from Developer Trump. He remains a master media manipulator who can be charming, mercurial and vengeful. Only now he wants to be the most powerful man on earth.
— Blair Kamin – Chicago Tribune
In this relatively personal piece for the Tribune, architecture critic Blair Kamin recounts his tumultuous personal and professional relationship with Trump over 10+ years, talking (as developers and architecture critics do) about buildings. Kamin explains that there were times when Trump was... View full entry
Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump may have a lot of differences in temperament and policy, but common to both campaigns are promises to invest heavily in the country’s crumbling infrastructure. It’ll be a hard task to get the bill through a Republican-controlled, miserly House — particularly... View full entry
Amid everything that Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump continues to recklessly spew, one of the milestones in his circus of a campaign is his apparent plans to build the U.S./Mexico border wall...
Competition creator Reality Cues turns the tables in their newest installment: Good Walls Make Good Neighbors, Mr. Trump.
The objective is pretty straightforward: Design a wall that separates Mr. Trump from the rest of the U.S.
— Bustler
“We want to ask questions more than produce answers,” Reality Cues emphasizes in the brief. Curious? Learn more about their latest snarky competition on Bustler.More on Archinect:Donald Trump, usher of America's postindustrial urban blightDonald Trump is architecture's nightmare... View full entry
Casinos like the Taj Mahal have destroyed Atlantic City’s public space. Gambling’s arrival replaced the outward-looking hotels, shops, and promenades of the mid-century boardwalk with clusters of dark, labyrinthine resorts, set back from the street and enclosed behind monitored security gates. [...]
Atlantic City’s model of a plush, self-contained casino abutting a ruined neighborhood has become a synecdoche for the last forty years of American urban development.
— jacobinmag.com
To dissect the urban effects of Trump's Atlantic City casino, Sam Wetherall traces the city's history as a booming resort town through the early 20th century, and into its current economic crisis:In 2014 alone, casino closures cost Atlantic City more than ten thousand jobs, a staggering figure for... View full entry
Two weeks ago at the Republican National Convention, Donald Trump's daughter introduced him as a man who has overseen the construction of skyscrapers, thereby qualifying him to somehow take stead of the vastly more complex civic architecture of the United States. Never mind that Donald Trump... View full entry
As you may remember from last week, Melania Trump's (and the RNC's) claim that she has an architecture degree was debunked, after scrutiny from multiple news sources:The ensuing wave of critical attention towards Melania Trump [for plagiarizing Michelle Obama] dug up other questionable details... View full entry
the set is a shotgun marriage of Star Trek and Macbook modern, with perhaps a touch — in the rounded stairs, lighted from below — of Art Deco. [...]
The goal seems to be a series of smooth surfaces to which none of the more direct ad hominem verbal attacks or accusations of plagiarism might stick — a slate that can be wiped clean whenever a change in tone or direction is wanted. Call it Teflon minimalism.
— latimes.com
Hawthorne's Teflon comparison is particularly evocative, given one of the latest incidents last night at the RNC, when Ted Cruz didn't endorse Trump during his primetime address. He was booed off the stage.The Republican National Convention's last day in Cleveland is today, themed "Make America... View full entry
When Melania Trump’s much-anticipated address at the Republican National Convention on Monday provoked outrage for plagiarizing Michelle Obama’s speech at the 2008 Democratic National Convention, the typically demure member of Trump’s campaign suddenly became the center of a lot of negative... View full entry
Hillary Clinton's latest ad campaign features an architect who claims Donald Trump almost put his firm out of business."Donald Trump hired my small business to design a clubhouse for the Trump National Golf Club," states Andrew Tesoro of Andrew Tesoro Architects. The ad intersperses Tesoro's... View full entry
..We must expose rather than mask the institutional mechanisms driving uneven urban development. Such a revelation requires a corresponding expansion of our understanding of the scope of architecture itself—can we design human rights, for example? Can social justice become an architectural protocol? In other words, the most important materials with which architects must learn to work are not steel and concrete but critical knowledge of the underlying conditions that produce today’s urban crises. — Art Forum
The article makes reference to the controversy generated a few months ago over a competition to design Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump's proposed border wall between the US and Mexico. The editors of Bustler, Archinect's sister site, decided not to host the competition due... View full entry
A hedge-fund manager on the 28th floor who pretended to be dead when investors asked for their money reported to prison in January. A few weeks later, an investment adviser on the 17th floor was accused of running a Ponzi-like scheme. Thirteen floors up, a lawyer pleaded guilty this month to stealing millions of dollars from clients.
It was all happening at 40 Wall St., across from the New York Stock Exchange, behind golden capital letters proclaiming that this is THE TRUMP BUILDING.
— Bloomberg
For more on the architecture of the current Republican presidential candidate, check out these links:"Glitz and ego" – the architectural legacy of Donald Trump, the developerThe Problem With Designing Trump’s Border WallUS/Mexico border wall competition provokes... View full entry
“Trump ... believes in using expensive materials that convey prestige and wealth, and people buy into that,” said Jerold Kayden, professor of urban planning and design at Harvard University. He said in some ways the legacy of Trump buildings is a matter of taste. “To some they are the height of ambition and the height of prestige and to others they are gaudy, but he has certainly pioneered with some others architecture as brand.” — marketplace.org
"Other New Yorkers view Trump’s investment in luxury buildings in undervalued locations in the '90s as a contribution to New York’s renewal. To them, his construction represented investment at a time when New York was struggling with blight."Related stories in the Archinect news:The Problem... View full entry
An online competition spurred by his proposal has launched a fierce debate among architects and border communities. What do local communities think? — The New Republic
Architect, urbanist, and professor Teddy Cruz, who has been working on both sides of the San Diego-Tijuana border for 25 years, presented the competition as a moment in which architects cannot remain neutral. Sometimes, he said, architects must decide when not to build, since “the politics of... View full entry
