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Photographer Francois Prost's recent photo series, Paris Syndrome, reveals just how far China's "duplitecture" went in the city of Tianducheng. Pairing images of China's replica city with its Paris equivalent—side by side it can be initially unclear which is the original. ... View full entry
A Korean-born architect on Wednesday sued a major architecture firm over the design of Manhattan's One World Trade Center, claiming that the building bears a "striking similarity" to a tower he designed in 1999 while in graduate school.
Jeehoon Park accused Skidmore, Owings & Merrill of falsely claiming design credit for the 104-story One World Trade Center, whose 1,776-foot (541 m) height including the spire makes it the Western Hemisphere's tallest building.
— Reuters
Park is president of Qube Architecture, a Georgia-based practice. His design, shown below, was made when he was getting a masters from the Illinois Institute of Technology. Park is seeking unspecified damages. According to the architect, Skidmore has access to the design through an associate... View full entry
...the [Architectural Works Copyright Protection Act] is a [comparatively] recent development. Architecture shares certain myths with art that influence its commercial value, such as that of the singular author and singular work, but these are also relatively recent: Renaissance architects believed the peak of civilisation existed in antiquity, and so imitated ancient ruins.
The commercial and social value of “new” and “novel” and even “original” are, arguably, products of modernity.
— the Guardian
In pre-industrial days, copying used to be a positive act. It was seen as a skill. Artists were looked upon as handworkers. Copying became a negative notion with the cult of the individual artist and the arrival of mass production, which made replication extremely cheap and easy. Copyright and intellectual property laws were created to protect the original. In those days, the amount of new products reaching the market was relatively small. — rennyramakers.com
