Not in Their Name
Jewish Voice for Peace doesn’t just oppose the war; it challenges the link between Jewish identity and support for Israel.
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/202…
Aesthetic Environmentalism
A new exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art struggles to establish the relationship of architecture to the postwar environmental movement and its relevance to our present-day crisis.
https://placesjournal.org/article/a…
David Sedaris: Punching Down
A Thanksgiving treat from the most delightful man on planet Earth.
https://thefp.com/p/david-sedaris-p…
Necessary Losses: The Life-Shaping Art of Letting Go
“The art of losing isn’t hard to master,” Elizabeth Bishop wrote in one of the great masterpieces of poetry.
https://themarginalian.org/2023/11/…
Toys & Play
In a 1961 magazine article focused on the exhibition, Mathematica: The World of Numbers…and Beyond, Charles Eames responds to the author’s probing by stating, “Toys are really not as innocent as they look. Toys and games are the preludes to serious ideas.”
https://eamesinstitute.org/collecti…
Are For-Profit Developments Consistent With the Values of a Public University?
I am by no means an expert on public-private partnerships. But for about 10 years, as the University of California Berkeley’s campus planner and then campus architect, I watched these developments play out in higher education—sometimes from a front-row seat, sometimes as a participant.
https://commonedge.org/are-for-prof…
Abstract Thinking
In his latest treatise, Pier Vittorio Aureli frames architectural production as a stand-in for the much larger and more complex system of economic production as a whole. The problems start there.
https://nyra.nyc/articles/abstract-…
Simone de Beauvoir on How Chance and Choice Converge to Make Us Who We Are
To be alive is to marvel — at least occasionally, at least with glimmers of some deep intuitive wonderment — at the Rube Goldberg machine of chance and choice that makes us who we are as we half-stride, half-stumble down the improbable paths that lead us back to ourselves.
https://themarginalian.org/2017/01/…
bell hooks on Love
“Had I been given a clear definition of love earlier in my life it would not have taken me so long to become a more loving person. Had I shared with others a common understanding of what it means to love it would have been easier to create love.”
https://themarginalian.org/2023/11/…
Eclipsed in his era, Bayard Rustin gets to shine in ours
The civil-rights mastermind was sidelined by his own movement. Now he's back in the spotlight.
https://newyorker.com/magazine/2023…
Marina Abramovic Thinks the Pain of Love Is Hell on Earth
“I’m all for heroism,” Marina Abramovic says. “I love heroism.” And at 76, after a long and groundbreaking career, she is largely viewed by the art world in heroic terms.
https://nytimes.com/interactive/202…
Agricultural Regeneration
Through centering Black culture, Kamal Bell is reconceiving food systems, inspiring Black youth to farm, and shepherding the future of food justice.
https://eamesinstitute.org/kazam-ma…
Jeanette Winterson has no idea what happens next
The author and former enfant terrible on life after death, breaking the rules, and forging a self through fiction.
https://newyorker.com/culture/the-n…
Why Cities Must Embrace Getting Smaller
The phrase “Demography is destiny” is repeated more than once in Smaller Cities in a Shrinking World (Island Press). This new book by noted urban researcher Alan Mallach tackles, in meticulous and fascinating detail, the “wicked problem” of shrinking cities in the U.S. and across the globe.
https://commonedge.org/why-cities-m…
California Scheming: Nine Unsolicited Design Ideas for the Secret City of Solano County
Investors have been vocal about their visions for the future—but silent about the actual city they’re funding. We asked a creative agency, an architecture firm and our own graphic designer to imagine it for them.
https://theinformation.com/articles…
Ed Ruscha’s Calmly Collapsing America
In “Now Then,” a sprawling retrospective at MOMA, the artist traces the rise and fall of a national language.
https://newyorker.com/magazine/2023…
Peter Zumthor on Paring Back a ‘Beautiful Idea’ for LACMA
The Swiss architect of one of the most polarizing museums in the country says his Los Angeles design has been significantly streamlined. So why have costs kept rising?
https://nytimes.com/2023/10/04/arts…
Ray Johnson’s Elusive Dream: ‘I Want to Dance’
The discovery of a group of early collages tells a new story about Johnson’s ties to dance and the dance world.
https://nytimes.com/2023/09/26/arts…
Apocalypse-Proof
A windowless telecommunications hub, 33 Thomas Street in New York City embodies an architecture of surveillance and paranoia. That has made it an ideal set for conspiracy thrillers.
https://placesjournal.org/article/3…
John Waters is ready for his Hollywood closeup
The director reflects on getting a star on the Walk of Fame and a museum retrospective about his career as a cinematic provocateur.
https://newyorker.com/culture/the-n…
To light, and then return— Edmund de Waal and Sally Mann
This fall, artists and friends Edmund de Waal and Sally Mann will exhibit new works together in New York.
https://gagosian.com/quarterly/2023…
A Novel That Links Climate Change and the Death of Salvador Allende
In Ariel Dorfman’s “The Suicide Museum,” a billionaire with a scheme to save the planet needs to know exactly what happened in the 1973 Chilean coup.
https://newyorker.com/magazine/2023…
What does midcentury modern even mean these says?
Auction houses, secondhand furniture stores, and realtors make small fortunes from a nomenclature that, despite the fuzziness surrounding its indeterminate span and whether everything made during its indefinite duration ought to be stamped with the same label, continues to demand attention.
https://commonedge.org/what-does-mi…
Can Helsinki’s modern architecture grow old gracefully?
The Helsinki skyline is startlingly low for a capital city, its further horizons determined by water and scattered wooded islands.
https://apollo-magazine.com/helsink…
Field Notes on Design Activism: 7
This is the seventh and final installment of a narrative survey in which several dozen educators and practitioners share perspectives on the intensifying demands for meaningful change across design pedagogy and practice.
https://placesjournal.org/article/f…
What Happens to the Workplace When the Workers Become the Bosses?
Employee-owned companies are a growing force in America. What lessons could they hold for workplace designers?
https://metropolismag.com/viewpoint…
