On the Waning Value of Architecture in an Increasingly Complex World
In the first essay of this series, “18 Ways to Make Architecture Matter,” I described how, despite escalating construction costs, the value of buildings and their environs—as a category of goods among other categories of goods—has been declining in the U.S. for around 80 years.
https://commonedge.org/on-the-wanin…
Black and Proud
In a scramble to award long-overdue recognition to Black artists, galleries and museums over the past few years have at times appeared to be tripping over their shoelaces in an attempt to correct historical wrongs.
https://squarecylinder.com/2022/08/…
It Was a Mystery in the Desert for 50 Years
In a remote Nevada valley, the artist Michael Heizer’s astonishing megasculpture is finally revealed.
https://nytimes.com/interactive/202…
Following Years of Revitalization, Detroit Still Has a Long Way to Go
Metropolis brought together local policy makers, designers, developers, and activists to discuss the city’s uncertain present and contested future.
https://metropolismag.com/viewpoint…
AN speaks with Bruce Mau about a new film on his work and why he has hope for the future
Mau is a documentary film by Benji and Jono Bergmann about Bruce Mau.
https://archpaper.com/2022/08/an-sp…
What Would Donald Judd Do?
The artist turned the remote town of Marfa into a cultural pilgrimage site. Three decades after his death, the foundations charged with preserving his complicated legacy are debating how to move forward.
https://nytimes.com/2022/08/12/arts…
Anish Kapoor’s Material Values
The Palazzo Priuli Manfrin, in Venice, was bought four years ago by the artist Anish Kapoor.
https://newyorker.com/magazine/2022…
Cylinder Meets Square
In a new pavilion for Glenstone Museum, Thomas Phifer and Partners shelters an artwork by Richard Serra.
https://archpaper.com/2022/08/pavil…
German Lessons
How Philip Johnson and Catherine Bauer brought colliding visions of transatlantic modernism to MoMA and ultimately to America: a journey into architecture, aesthetics, and the politics of housing.
https://placesjournal.org/article/p…
Right On! Is a Powerful Little Paperback That Boldly Visualized Student Protest in the 1970s
The data-filled report became an accessible design classic, capturing the energetic spirit of grassroots activism
https://eyeondesign.aiga.org/right-…
How Salman Toor Left the Old Masters Behind
The Pakistani American painter was inspired by Renaissance art, but his work took a powerful turn after he began to experiment with images of his friends.
https://newyorker.com/magazine/2022…
“True architecture is life” says RIBA Royal Gold Medal-winner Balkrishna Doshi
Architecture should seek to respond to human behaviour and not dictate it, says this year's RIBA Royal Gold Medal-winner Balkrishna Doshi in this interview.
https://dezeen.com/2022/07/29/riba-…
Celebrating the Centennial of (Arguably) the World’s First Modern House, in West Hollywood
R. M. Schindler’s austere experiment in communal living is still an inspiration.
https://newyorker.com/culture/cultu…
Design Q&A: Max Lamb
By connecting art and anthropology to materiality and improvisation, furniture designer Max Lamb creates work that embodies new histories of craft.
https://eamesinstitute.org/kazam-ma…
The Historical Present: Collective Solitude at Coenties Slip
For the past five years I’ve been consumed by the story of a group of artists who lived and worked from 1956–1967 in nineteenth-century sailmaking and maritime lofts on a three-block radius at the southern tip of Manhattan, near the Battery and South Street seaport.
https://brooklynrail.org/2022/07/ar…
Los Angeles Architects and Leaders Take on Their City’s Homeless Crisis
Christopher Hawthorne, L.A.’s chief design officer, discusses how a culture of design innovation is helping tackle a growing calamity and provide dignity, shelter, and gracious interior spaces to thousands.
https://metropolismag.com/viewpoint…
Paul Robeson Spent His Life Fighting Against America’s Extreme Right
Paul Robeson, the socialist actor, musician, and civil rights campaigner, dedicated his life to battling against right-wing red-baiting that has echoes in reactionary crusades against progressive education and “critical race theory” today.
https://jacobin.com/2022/07/paul-ro…
What Landscape Architects and Urban Designers Can Learn About Public Space From Cuba
It was certainly what I had come for: I was sitting on broad, cobbled steps, watching people interact in the public realm.
https://commonedge.org/what-landsca…
David M. Roth on Andrew Schoultz
Andrew Schoultz may be tempering his more extravagant theatrical impulses, but his desire for wide-angle views of the human condition remains intact.
https://squarecylinder.com/2022/07/…
Architecture Media in the Attention-Economy Era
Australian sociologist Robert van Krieken has argued that we live in a celebrity-obsessed society driven by an economy where “attention has become a form of capital in the Information and Internet age.”
https://commonedge.org/architecture…
Design practices must lead the way in rethinking capitalism to save the planet
The environmental crisis is rooted in the same systems of oppression as capitalism and colonialism.
https://dezeen.com/2022/07/14/desig…
Wild waves, perfect pipes: Milton Avery, the original abstract expressionist – review
As this brilliant exhibition shows, Avery was an experimental dreamer whose sublime landscapes and beach scenes paved the way for Rothko, Pollock and Newman.
https://theguardian.com/artanddesig…
Why Are We Still Talking About Black Mountain College?
In 1933, a handful of renegade teachers opened a school in rural North Carolina that would go on to shape American art and art education for decades to come.
https://nytimes.com/2022/07/07/t-ma…
Messages from Angel Island: Powerful Personal Histories at a Former U.S. Immigration Station
Around December of 1923, Mrs. Lee (born Jeong Hing Tong) boarded a steamship in Hong Kong, bound for San Francisco.
https://savingplaces.org/stories/me…
Grace Jones: The Design Evolution of a Superstar
So perfect was the cultivation of Jones’ public image that it has become embedded not only in our retinas but in pop culture itself.
https://eyeondesign.aiga.org/grace-…
How Do the Critics of Yesteryear Think About Urban Density?
In the 1960s and 1970s, a series of critiques of the modern city appeared.
https://commonedge.org/how-do-the-c…
