Designing the Future With Children
The “future” is a topic of concern even for young children as stories about the world burning, massive floods sweeping people off of their homes and livelihoods, and countless numbers of people drowning while trying to flee into safer zones, have become the new normal on our news screens.
https://platformspace.net/home/desi…
The British Museum’s Blockbuster Scandals
While facing renewed accusations of cultural theft, the institution announced that it had been the victim of actual theft—from someone on the inside.
https://newyorker.com/magazine/2024…
Shibboleth
Nothing like a quiet breakfast.
https://newyorker.com/news/essay/sh…
The Bauhaus Nazis: the collaborators – and worse – among the design icons
They were seen as heroes and martyrs who defied the Nazis. But a new show in Weimar reveals horrifying details about some Bauhauslers, one of whom designed the crematoriums at Auschwitz
https://theguardian.com/artanddesig…
Iris Murdoch, The Art of Fiction No. 117
I knew very early on that I wanted to be a writer. I mean, when I was a child I knew that.
https://theparisreview.org/intervie…
Encyclopedia Brown
A Story for My Brother, Philip Seymour Hoffman.
https://theparisreview.org/blog/202…
Helen Vendler Believed Poetry Matters
She devoted her life to showing us how and why.
https://nytimes.com/2024/04/25/book…
Anni Albers Transformed Weaving, Then Left It Behind
Her textiles are quiet revelations, but even her later prints show how restraint can generate ravishing beauty.
https://newyorker.com/magazine/2024…
Conserving Culture: A Conversation with David Wessel on Rebuilding Ukraine
As of January 2024, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has destroyed nearly a quarter of a million buildings, most of them private homes, according to the Kyiv School of Economics.
https://savingplaces.org/stories/fi…
Voices of Mourning
What do we owe the dead?
https://thebaffler.com/latest/voice…
A Dutch Architect’s Vision of Cities That Float on Water
What if building on the water could be safer and sturdier than building on flood-prone land?
https://newyorker.com/magazine/2024…
How AI Can Help Us End Design Education Anachronisms
The rise of generative AI has given every design educator sufficient reason to reconsider both what to teach and how to teach it.
https://commonedge.org/how-ai-can-h…
When Richard Serra’s Steel Curves Became a Memorial
The sculptor had a breakthrough in the late 1990s with his torqued metal rings. Then the attack on the World Trade Center, which Serra witnessed, gave them a sudden new significance.
https://nytimes.com/2024/03/28/arts…
Tending Building
To tend a building is to design in consonance with inevitable change — and to understand this change as a desirable expression of material properties, site dynamics, inter-species coexistence, and the behavior of buildings and their contexts over time.
https://placesjournal.org/article/t…
Not Having to Worry about Proportion, Harmony, and Beauty Is a Cop-Out
Even within the world of design media, it was easy to miss the news: In late January, Notre Dame’s School of Architecture announced that Peter Pennoyer, a New York–based architect and author, had won the 2024 Richard H. Driehaus Prize.
https://commonedge.org/not-having-t…
One of America’s Funniest, Gayest Writers Is Finally Becoming Famous
This is wonderful!
https://newyorker.com/culture/perso…
Spencer Finch with Ann C. Collins
For more than thirty years, Finch has chased the evanescence of experience, deconstructing the physics of perception and rebuilding it into work that rebalances the way we see while underscoring the sheer delight of being.
https://brooklynrail.org/2024/03/ar…
The Essential James Baldwin
He wrote with the kind of clarity that was as comforting as it was chastising. Here’s where to start.
https://nytimes.com/article/james-b…
Earlier Selves, Strangers: A Conversation with Robert Glück
Just finished Robert Gluck's recent novel, "About Ed." I found this interview from six years ago and wanted to share it. I remember well the San Francisco Gluck talks about.
https://openspace.sfmoma.org/2018/0…
The art world before and after Thelma Golden
When Golden was a young curator in the nineties, her shows, centering Black artists, were unprecedented. Today, those artists are the stars of the art market.
https://newyorker.com/magazine/2024…
Jewish Identity with and Without Zionism
New books provide sober histories of the conflicts among Jews over Israel and offer alternate ways forward.
https://newyorker.com/books/under-r…
The Artist Holding Valuable Art Hostage to Protect Julian Assange
Using a thirty-two-ton Swiss bank safe, Andrei Molodkin says he will destroy works by Picasso, Rembrandt, and Warhol if the WikiLeaks founder dies in prison.
https://newyorker.com/culture/perso…
Awesome and Affordable: Making the Case for Great Housing
When Brenda Mendoza told an NPR reporter about her commute to work, she became the face of the housing crisis in Los Angeles today.
https://commonedge.org/awesome-and-…
The Road to 1948
How the decisions that led to the founding of Israel left the region in a state of eternal conflict.
https://nytimes.com/interactive/202…
How Might We Talk About the Shoreline of San Francisco?
Just at the moment when urban waterfronts across North America and Europe are being revitalized as public amenities, they’re coming under the threat of sea level rise.
https://commonedge.org/how-might-we…
No More Corn in Egypt
The imminent destruction of a postmodern gem should inspire reflection on those dwindling resources: time and care.
https://nyra.nyc/articles/no-more-c…
