“Whether there is or is not a Northwest regional style of architecture is debatable,” said John Yeon in 1986, “but what is certain is that lot of people want to think there is.” — Places Journal
In "A Fortuitous Shadow," Keith Eggener is inspired by the Portland Art Museum's recent exhibition on John Yeon's life and legacy to explore the concept of regionalism in architecture, beginning with the doubts expressed by the architect long associated with Pacific Northwest regional modernism. View full entry
This week we're joined by Inga Saffron, the Pulitzer Prize-winning architecture critic for the Philadelphia Inquirer. If you haven't read her latest piece on Henry Wilcots, the relatively unknown architect responsible for finishing Louis Kahn's masterpiece in Dhaka, go read it now. We talk with... View full entry
Kahn led a generation of architects away from the standard-issue modernism of glass and steel boxes, but his route was gentle, thoughtful, philosophical, and sometimes vaguely mystical, which is part of the reason that he never really became famous. Kahn’s semi-obscurity didn’t just extend to the cops at Penn Station: The Times obituary had to be written on deadline the night his death became known, because the obit editors hadn’t considered him important enough to merit one in advance. — The Nation
In his essay on Kahn, Goldberger examines methodologies of biographical writing, and explores the enigmatic aspects of the architect's identity and work. "You get his essence almost as much through his words as his buildings. Both are somewhat spare and cryptic, and both are rich in meaning. Who... View full entry
Rooting himself less in a strictly academic tradition and more in an observed, on-the-street context, architecture author and researcher Christopher Gray catalogued what he considered to be beautiful and surprising for The New York Times from 1987 to 2014 in his "Streetscapes" column. He also... View full entry
Blair Kamin, Pulitzer Prize-winning architecture critic for the Chicago Tribune, has had a tempestuous relationship with Donald Trump for years. As a developer working in Chicago, Trump's buildings have been critiqued by Kamin, and as often happens when Trump is criticized, he does not shy away... View full entry
The aptly named "McMansionhell" tumblr has taken the time to carefully note just what makes a McMansion an ugly, terrible, no good architectural atrocity. Skipping over frothy diatribe and going straight into meticulous point by point dissection, the tumblr notes that McMansions fail in four key... View full entry
He seems hungry for a serious discussion on everything from the refugee crisis – “a really bad combination of European arrogance and North African ignorance” – to the state of contemporary architecture – “the vast majority of architects are just filling up our society with trash” – and has a habit of speaking about his art in overwhelmingly conceptual terms. “Are we consumers of space?” he asks himself at one point. “Or are we in fact producers of space?” — telegraph.co.uk
Related stories in the Archinect news:Olafur Eliasson to storm VersaillesOlafur Eliasson wins a Crystal Award for "improving the state of the world"Olafur Eliasson opens ship-themed pedestrian bridge in Copenhagenand in a way: Frank Gehry gives the crowd a piece of his mind (and his middle finger) View full entry
What is the role of creative exploration in architecture? From the L.A. Times to The New Republic, this question is very much on critical minds. In a piece entitled "How to Make Architecture Human," Anna Wiener reviews Witold Rybczynski's latest collection of essays, Mysteries of the Mall, which... View full entry
The published renderings that accompanied the announcement were not terribly reassuring, as they depicted a very long curved terminal with gangly tentacles raised over plane taxiways that hinted at torsos of praying mantises: an awkward rather than a graceful vault. — 6sqft.com
Related: A new LaGuardia is the "airport that New York deserves", says Gov. Cuomo View full entry
Taken out of its high-profile context, the BIG design for Two World Trade Center initially appears to be a graduate school placeholder: here are the initial seven blocks of program, with a light dusting of foliage on the exposed step-backs. The internet's critical reaction to the renderings... View full entry
The review is about speculation as much as evaluation. Critics are not enemies, and they don’t know everything. Admitting a level of uncertainty that necessarily occurs within design education completely changes how one imagines the review moment. — sectioncut.com
What is 'serious criticism' in architecture? This is a vital topic, since architecture critics often shape public opinion as much as architects themselves do, if not more so. — Huffington Post
Derived from John Ruskin's 1849 essay "The Seven Lamps of Architecture", architect Lance Hosey compiled a list of comments from the small group of architecture writers pictured above about what they believe are the defining characteristics of good architectural criticism and its role in today's... View full entry
The architect, who implicitly exempted himself from that 98%, might have been arrogant, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t right.
[...] many if not most buildings are the work of contractors, not architects, and that this has been and will likely always be the case. Unfortunately, architectural education and criticism tends to focus on important buildings at the expense of the common and ordinary.
— forbes.com
“It’s not so bad,” offered an architect who has a window facing the building.
Alas, it is.
Like the corporate campus and plaza it shares, 1 World Trade speaks volumes about political opportunism, outmoded thinking and upside-down urban priorities. It’s what happens when a commercial developer is pretty much handed the keys to the castle.
— The New York Times
In Screen/Print #26: an interview with Jessica Walsh, currently half of design firm Sagmeister & Walsh, was excerpted, from the 2nd issue of Intern Magazine (devoted to "intern culture" in the creative industries). Darkman was confused "Strange choice to interview the most hated... View full entry
