The installation uses ordinary objects to bring together the history of the museum, Tabet’s personal memories and the quick succession in Lebanon of a revolution, a pandemic, a massive explosion, a seemingly endless recession and increased tensions with Israel
Category Archive: architecture
Avril Corroon’s new project uses the water collected from ultra damp homes to make visible how the prevalence of damp within homes has become an indicator of social inequalities in the UK
While sparsely occupied ultra-thin “pencil towers” develop in our cities, functioning as speculative wealth storage for the superrich and cavernous “iceberg” homes extend architectural assets many stories below street level, communities around the globe are blighted by zombie and ghost urbanism, marked by unoccupied neighbourhoods and abandoned housing developments
advertising
Building on a long-shared history in the region, the projects covered in this volume use design and architecture to address social, political and ecological concerns along the shared border between Mexico and the USA
Part school, part shelter and part folly where people came together to learn how to live in a post-collapse scenario
How do contemporary artists explore Nonuments, the spaces or objects that trigger uneasiness, public debates and polarised opinions
social
When decay, ruin porn and gentrification emerge in place of glorification and remembrance
The book challenges the normal understanding of modern architecture by proposing that it was shaped by the dominant medical obsession of its time: tuberculosis and its primary diagnostic tool, the X-ray
Avril Corroon gave a pungent visibility to the problem of rogue landlords and poor living conditions in rented accommodation by making artisan cheeses using bacteria cultures collected from the mould growing in London housing
What do outer space capsules, submarines, and office buildings have in common? Each is conceived as a closed system: a self-sustaining physical environment demarcated from its surroundings by a boundary that does not allow for the transfer of matter or energy
The book portrays the routine cruelties of the twenty-first century through a series of detailed non-fictional graphic illustrations. None of these cruelties represent extraordinary violence – they reflect day-to-day implementation of laws and regulations around the globe
Some 100 contributors document around 120 key buildings from this period, including many previously unpublished discoveries that are in acute danger of loss through neglect of intended demolition. Moreover, the book features overviews of brutalism in architecture in twelve regions around the world
I was expecting the curator’s ideas of transience, instability and uncertainties to be translated into powerful works that directly engage with some of today’s most pressing and depressing concerns. I got very little of that. I got plenty of clouds (including a couple of atomic ones), foam, puddles, waves and fountains though.
Fortunately, the biennale also features a surprisingly high number of sound works, extraordinary visual and emotional experiences and, here and there, a couple of more politically-minded artworks
Public Space? Lost and Found considers the role of aesthetic practices within the construction, identification, and critique of shared territories, and how artists or architects—the “antennae of the race”—can heighten our awareness of rapidly changing formulations of public space in the age of digital media, vast ecological crises, and civic uprisings
Allan Wexler’s works can be broadly described as tactile poetry composed by re-framing the ordinary. They sustain a narrative about landscape, nature, and the built environment that highlights the intriguing and surprising characteristics latent in the elements and rituals that pervade daily life
Socle du Monde, the oldest Danish biennale is one of the most aesthetically pleasing art events i’ve attended over the past few years. But because the event is inspired by the masterpiece of a renowned exponent of conceptual art, it is also a biennale that conveys ideas, provocations and moments for reflection. I’ll get back next week with a post discussing these ideas and provocations but right now, here are some visual impressions of the biennale
The case studies in this volume include the analysis of the shrapnel fragments in a room struck by drones in Pakistan, the reconstruction of a contested shooting in the West Bank, the architectural recreation of a secret Syrian detention center from the memory of its survivors, a blow-by-blow account of a day-long battle in Gaza, and an investigation of environmental violence and climate change in the Guatemalan highlands and elsewhere
Colonialism is not an era, it is a system of military/police, legal, administrative, social, and cultural system of domination; and, architecture is not (only) an aesthetic vessel, it is an apparatus organizing and hierarchizing bodies in space
Björn Wallsten explores subsurface infrastructure systems and in particular the no longer functioning cables and pipes that are continuously disconnected and left behind. These hibernating quantities form a metal deposit below the cityscape and are evidence of society’s persistently wasteful handling of mineral resources. He calls them urks…
This book is not about war, nor is it a history of war. Avoiding the shock and awe of wartime images, it explores the contemporary spatial configurations of power camouflaged in the infrastructures, environments, and scales of military operations
Short list of publications worth buying/downloading. Because there’s a world out there that refuses to give in to bigots, idiots and predominant dogmas
Since 2007, American photographer Jade Doskow has been documenting the remains of World’s Fair sites, once iconic global attractions that have often been repurposed for less noble aspirations or neglected and fallen into decay
We need to take better care of bees. Either we leave that task to governments and hope they’ll be fast, efficient and impervious to the influence of lobbies and corporations. Or we try and make an impact at grassroot level. Which is exactly the kind of attitude that the Pixelache Festival in Helsinki has been fostering for years
Brutalist architecture not only distinguishes itself through an expressive application of concrete but through a distinct social element; brutalist architecture stands for social housing, municipal educational establishments, cultural centers, and universities. Aiming to change society, brutalist architecture virtually gave shape to utopia
The shopping mall was invented in the United States just less than sixty years ago and quickly spread throughout the world. Due to urban planning’s increasing orientation toward the automobile, the mall became a substitute for lost urbanity. Yet what direction is the development of the shopping mall taking today?
Sounds from bridges, ventilation systems and other industrial spaces. An interview with Jonas Gruska
When Jonáš Gruska is not busy giving workshops on urban sonification, creating his own recording instruments, making electromagnetic fields audible or organizing a solar-powered (experimental) music festival called SVUK, you’ll find him under bridges, inside bridges, in ventilation systems or near oil refineries exploring the psychoacoustic properties of sound in industrial spaces
Syuko Kato and Vincent Huyghe from the Interactive Architecture Lab have designed a robotic system that turns dance into architectural forms
The mobile ecosystem has a robotic core wrapped in twelve garden modules. Whenever the lowermost plants require more sunlight, they ‘vote’ to have the sphere gently roll over. If it becomes too hot for the majority of them, they will steer the structure towards the shade
Martin Roemers’ photographs take us to abandoned army bases and bunker complexes, military training areas, technical installations, monitoring facilities and military cemeteries
Second and last chapter of my report from the GAMERZ festival, one of the very few French festivals that doesn’t play it safe nor stiff with a programme that endorses the unexpected, a laid-back atmosphere, a few famous names but also an impressive line-up of fresh talents. Plus, it’s in Aix-en-Provence so as the French say “y’a pas photo!” (which means something like ‘it’s a no-brainer.’)
Nicolas Grospierre has a rare talent for producing images that deliver a sharp and unexpected commentary on utopias that have lost their spark and on architectures that fascinate less for their intrinsic elegance than for the collective memories that still inhabit them
The first issue of The Funambulist Magazine argues that all cities contain a certain degree of militarization. From Lahore to Oakland, CA, the use of walls and other architectural apparatuses of control vary; yet, they all bear witness of the will for architecture to organize bodies in space
For 5 years, the Gulf Labor Coalition, a group of artists and writers, has been pressuring Saadiyat’s Western cultural brands to ensure worker protections. Gulf Labor has coordinated a boycott of the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi and pioneered direct action that has involved spectacular museum occupations. As part of a year-long initiative, an array of artists, writers, and activists submitted a work, a text, or an action
Short-term, community-based projects–from pop-up parks to open streets initiatives–have become a powerful and adaptable new tool of urban activists, planners, and policy-makers seeking to drive lasting improvements in their cities and beyond. These quick, often low-cost, and creative projects are the essence of the Tactical Urbanism movement
“Furl” combines Electroencephalography (EEG) with advances in soft silicone casting of “air muscles”. The introduction of soft robotics replaces the mechanical principles in interactive architecture through a biological paradigm. EEG allows sensing of human brain functioning so that our environments begin moving and responding to our very thoughts
A young generation of creatives sees the urban landscape as the starting point for their work. When these illustrators, sculptors, or photographers engage with architecture, their art overrules conventional doctrines on the use of space. They use buildings as a medium for their ideas, breaking norms and triggering new tensions
Concentrating on the work of 18 leading photographers from the last 80 years, the exhibition begins in 1935 with Berenice Abbott, who captured New York’s transformation into modern metropolis. From there, it journeys through affluent California in the 1940s, India’s independence in the 50s, the decline of industrial Europe in the 60s and 70s and culminates in an exploration of the contemporary urban experience
What makes the city of the future? How do you heal a divided city?
In Radical Cities, Justin McGuirk travels across Latin America in search of the activist architects, maverick politicians and alternative communities already answering these questions. From Brazil to Venezuela, and from Mexico to Argentina, McGuirk discovers the people and ideas shaping the way cities are evolving
The Wind Tunnel project filled with site-specific commissions two wind tunnels buildings, known as R52 and Q121, that were built to test planes, from Spitfires to Concorde, from the first world war onwards. These buildings were decommissioned after the 1960s and have remained closed to the public ever since
Most people are fascinated by ruins. The appeal of the crumbling and the decaying is such that it has its own term in photography. It is called “ruin porn” and Detroit is one of its most celebrated subjects. Tate Britain currently has an exhibition about the mournful, thrilling, comic and perverse uses of ruins in art. It is called Ruin Lust. Not because Tate curators are prude and proper but because they are erudite, the title of the show, i read, comes from the 18th-century German architectural word ‘Ruinenlust’