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Residents of Mexico City are decrying a decision by officials to remove a statue protesting gender violence that had been mounted by activists last year.
El Universal reported that Claudia Sheinbaum, who serves as Head of Government in Mexico City (a position akin to a state governor), had made the call to remove the feminist “anti-monument.” The statue currently appears in a roundabout in the city, and will soon be replaced by another monument
— ARTnews
Sheinbaum has previously announced the commission of artist Pedro Reyes to replace a colonial-era sculpture by Frenchman Charles Cordier that depicted Christopher Columbus in light of the International Day of the World's Indigenous Peoples protest last summer. Previously on Archinect... View full entry
Concerns about the university’s association with and commemoration of Ryerson had been voiced by its Indigenous students, staff and faculty for years. How the university addressed those concerns with statements on its website or revised plaques placed next to Egerton Ryerson’s statue fell short of the steps necessary to speak to his legacy or the continued harm it was causing — University Affairs
Egerton Ryerson’s name is inextricably linked to the legacy of murder and abuse within Canada’s residential schools, as he is often cited as the system’s principal designer through his role as the country’s first Chief Superintendent of Education starting in 1844. This relation made the... View full entry
The Metropolitan Museum of Art has announced that Hew Locke will be the next artist featured in its provocative Facade Commission series. The Guyanese-British artist’s effort is titled “Gilt” and will follow recent interventions by Carol Bove and Wangechi Mutu for the third version of the... View full entry
As part of an International Day of the World's Indigenous Peoples celebration in Mexico City on Sunday, Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum announced a major new addition to a space in the city’s historic Paseo de la Reforma recently vacated by a monument to its colonial past. Artist Pedro Reyes has now... View full entry
The long-awaited opening of Berlin’s Humboldt Forum took place yesterday afternoon, ending a years-long wait that saw a torrent of missives, protests, and other public backlash against the €680 million ($800 million) project hosted by the city’s Museum Island. © Stiftung Humboldt Forum... View full entry
Two statues of queens on the grounds of the Manitoba Legislature were pulled down Thursday during a rally aimed at replacing Canada Day celebrations with actions in memory of hundreds of Indigenous children buried in unmarked graves at residential schools across the country. [...]
The grounds were the destination of an Every Child Matters walk in Winnipeg on Canada Day afternoon to protest the fallout of Canada's residential schools system.
— CBC
The demonstrators were part of a Canada Day protest meant to draw attention to issues surrounding the forced removal and integration of 150,000 indigenous school children begun during Victoria's rule of the former UK Dominion. 6,000 of the children are reported to have died, and the recent... View full entry
Despite widespread opposition, the Indian prime minister Narendra Modi has begun a £2bn overhaul of Delhi's grand complex of government buildings in a bid to sever the nation from its colonial past.
At a ceremony held last week, Modi laid the foundation stone for a new building to replace Parliament House, designed by English architects Edward Lutyens and Herbert Baker, which upon its completion in 1927 became the seat of power for British-ruled India.
— The Art Newspaper
The ambitious plan by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to overhaul the sprawling complex of historic, colonial-era government buildings in Delhi is off to a rocky start: despite ceremonially laying the foundation stone for a new parliament building on December 10, further spending on the... View full entry
The three-story building, designed by David Adjaye, looks almost like a palace from the ancient Kingdom of Benin.
On Friday, the architect, the British Museum and the Nigerian authorities also announced a $4 million archaeology project to excavate the site of the planned museum, and other parts of Benin City, to uncover ancient remains including parts of the city walls.
— The New York Times
In October 2019, Adjaye Associates was selected to design a new museum to house historic artifacts looted by colonial powers in Benin City, modern-day Nigeria. Designs for this planned Edo Museum of West African Art were unveiled on Friday. "We are proposing an undoing of the objectification that... View full entry
Alongside a wider effort to uncover and rediscover the lost and forgotten histories of historically marginalized groups and populations, Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia has recently taken steps to uncover the 18th century living-history museum's queer legacies. In a recent... View full entry
Architect David Adjaye has been selected to design a new museum in Nigeria that may one day hold cultural and artistic works that were previously looted from the region by colonial powers. Adjaye Associates, who helped design the National Museum of African American History and Culture in... View full entry
All architects must be fully responsible for the political conditions and consequences of the projects they accept; any position that would make them only an executant constitutes an insult to their function and their ability to act. — The Funambulist Magazine
"This Monday, we were many in Algeria, in France, and elsewhere to be shocked when we learned that the Wilaya (prefecture) of Algiers had signed a convention with the region of Île-de-France (Paris’ region) whose President is a conservative Republican politician, and French architect Jean... View full entry
But what is the repertoire of concepts, ideas and visions that inform the work of urban planners in the Global South — in Asia, Latin America and Africa? Are they still under the spell of their colonial and postcolonial masters? Or have they developed their own ideas and their own yardsticks, commensurate with the respective culture of their country and region? — citiscope.org
"This insight leads to the most important quality of sustainable urban planning in countries of the Global South," urban planning expert Einhard Schmidt-Kallert writes in his commentary piece on Citiscope, arguing that "Planners need to develop urban planning visions that take into consideration... View full entry
Classical revival is perhaps the architectural style most identified with colonization. This building, which references Washington architecture, is a building of formal rooms, offices, and hierarchies, echoing structures of European authority. — Royal Architectural Institute of Canada
This June the federal government announced that the US' former embassy building in Ottawa will become a space dedicated to Inuit, Métis and First Nations communities which the task force of the RAIC finds to be a deeply inappropriate space for an Indigenous Centre. "Canada's Indigenous... View full entry
Others are concerned the demolition of its famed French architectural gems will render Ho Chi Minh City indistinguishable from other Asian megacities. "In the 1960s and 1970s it was very much French, but now it's very Americanized, McDonald's on every corner," said Hiep Nguyen, born in Ho City Minh City and author of several books on its architectural history. "A streetscape without a story has no value," he added. — dw.com
"City officials are now writing a nine-point plan to classify buildings and mark some for protection," DW writes, "but admit such a huge task could take years to be implemented." View full entry
“What I realized is that they have very little power,” Mr. Viet, 28, said of his fellow urban planners. “The fates of the buildings were being decided by someone else.”
[...] when Ho Chi Minh City’s property market perked up after a slump that followed the 2008 financial crisis, dozens of prewar buildings — spanning the colonial to modernist eras — were razed to make room for new ones. As the city’s modest skyline grows, residents are watching with a mixture of awe and trepidation.
— nytimes.com
Related stories in the Archinect news:Hanoi's alleys struggle to accommodate their new neighbors: high-rise developmentsAs Myanmar Modernizes, Architectural Gems Are EndangeredInside the famous Phnom Penh cinema that has become a living nightmare View full entry
