The Golden Ratio, a supposed Greek invention, may have African roots
The Golden Ratio, a hallmark of Swiss design and the foundation of everything from Helvetica to Le Corbusier’s meticulous architecture, may have been imported from Africa.
https://fastcompany.com/90616802/th…
It’s Time to Put Alice Neel in Her Rightful Place in the Pantheon
A large retrospective feels at home in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s grandest galleries and should silence any doubt about the artist’s originality or her importance.
https://nytimes.com/2021/04/01/arts…
Architects, Let’s Reaffirm Your Mission Today
ARCHITECT columnist Michael Caton wonders if firms can do good in society and do well in business—and finds the example of Danish Kurani.
https://architectmagazine.com/pract…
Take No Prisoners
Architect Deanna Van Buren is building positive alternatives to the criminal justice system.
https://altaonline.com/dispatches/a…
The Principles of Community CoDesign
We live in divided times. Extreme forces of pandemic and political polarization are challenging not only essential interactions between individuals and institutions, but the very relationship with the ecosystems through which our lives are sustained.
https://commonedge.org/the-principl…
Richard Saul Wurman: “There’s a Louis Kahn Cult, and I’m a Member!”
Dan Klyn, who teaches information architecture at the University of Michigan, is currently researching and writing a biography entitled Richard Saul Wurman’s 5 Lives.
https://commonedge.org/richard-saul…
Stuck in Beta: Amanda Kolson Hurley’s Radical Suburbs
Pal John Parman reviews Amanda Kolson Hurley's new book.
https://arcadenw.org/journal/stuck-…
Hollywood’s Golden Age, As Photographed By Charles Eames
The iconic midcentury polymath documented the making of Billy Wilder’s most famous films.
https://fastcompany.com/3057807/hol…
An Elusive Artist’s Trove of Never-Before-Seen Images
In the years leading up to his death, Ray Johnson took up photography. Now, this body of work is shedding light on his final days.
https://nytimes.com/2021/03/23/t-ma…
The Fantastic Architecture of Niki de Saint Phalle
In her first major museum exhibition in New York City, MoMA PS1’s Niki de Saint Phalle: Structures for Life investigates the artist’s underexplored relationship to the built environment.
https://metropolismag.com/architect…
The Pritzker Prize Honors French Architects Lacaton & Vassal
The modernist hopes and dreams to improve the lives of many are reinvigorated through their work that responds to the climatic and ecological emergencies of our time, as well as social urgencies, particularly in the realm of urban housing.
https://architecturalrecord.com/art…
Architecture has a racist past. These artists radically reimagined it
It’s no revelation that Black Americans have been underserved by architects and urban planners. Systemic racism pervades the built environment–from segregated communities and freeways built on top of Black neighborhoods to prejudiced housing practices and a lack of Black representation in the development process.
https://fastcompany.com/90614610/ar…
Why Bruce Mau still believes design can change the world
A new documentary looks at the career and vision of designer Bruce Mau.
https://fastcompany.com/90616159/al…
Health and Wellness Become Top of Mind for New-Home Builders and Buyers
Our pal, Katie Ackerley, of DBA, is quoted here.
https://builderonline.com/building/…
In a Changing World, Design Studios Find Stability and Social Equity in the Co-op Model
The co-op model offers collectively pooled financial backing, creative autonomy, and social responsibility in a changing world.
https://eyeondesign.aiga.org/in-a-t…
Albers and Morandi: Never Finished
The work that’s never truly done for the scholar of art is to relate an intimate experience of the artist’s task without merely boiling it down to a referential precipitate.
https://brooklynrail.org/2021/03/ar…
Review of ‘Building a new New World: Amerikanizm in Russian Architecture’ and ‘Avant-Garde as Method: Vkhutemas and the Pedagogy of Space, 1920–1930’
Thinking about the historical architectural and technical exchanges between the United States and Russia might not seem like an important topic at the moment, suggesting as it does espionage, nuclear war, and disinformation campaigns.
https://architecturalrecord.com/art…
Louis Kahn’s Society of Rooms
In this video, Architecture with Stewart breaks down the floor plan strategies of Louis Kahn (1901-1974) for how they treat and arrange rooms in servant/served configurations.
https://archdaily.com/958431/louis-…
Architecture ≠ Truth: On the Idea of Buildings as Propaganda
As predicted, President Biden overturned former President Trump’s 10-week-old Executive Order “Promoting Beautiful Federal Civic Architecture.”
https://commonedge.org/architecture…
How Joe Biden and Kamala Harris Can Help Architects
Following their wise cancellation of the Trump executive order on architectural style for federal buildings, the Biden administration promised to promote a better guide for architects working in the public arena.
https://commonedge.org/how-joe-bide…
Obituary: Hugh Newell Jacobsen, 1929–2021
Hugh Newell Jacobsen grew up wanting to be a painter, which may explain the almost surreal flatness of much of his architecture. On the outside, his buildings lacked overhangs; on the inside, there were no moldings, baseboards or trim.
https://architecturalrecord.com/art…
Philip Johnson’s name covered at MoMA for Reconstructions: Architecture and Blackness in America
The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) has yet to take fully-realized steps to strip the name of the late architect and institutional figurehead Philip Johnson from all titles and public spaces at the museum at the demand of seven artists, architects, and designers—due to Johnson’s troubling (yet often skimmed-over) history of racist and anti-Semitic activities.
https://archpaper.com/2021/03/phili…
10 Questions With… Christine McGrath Breuer
Her Midwest roots run deep. Christine McGrath Breuer, principal at Valerio Dewalt Train, is Chicago-born and a practicing architect in the Windy City office of the generalist firm. Like the studio, she does it all.
https://interiordesign.net/articles…
Can Manuals and Toolkits Help Us Design a Safer Present or Future?
Our pals at Studio O+A developed a unique Covid Handbook.
https://metropolismag.com/interiors…
The philanthropic genius of Josef and Anni Albers
Fifty years ago the Bauhaus artists established a foundation to use “minimal means to maximum effect”. A cultural centre, school and, now, hospital in Senegal are a perfect expression of their aims
https://ft.com/content/0c2a118d-eb1…
Active Exclusion
Too often the concept “active transportation” produces environments that are not fully accessible. The history of Roosevelt Island, named for a disabled president who used a wheelchair, offers lessons at once troubling and hopeful.
https://archpaper.com/2021/03/buffa…
