Articles
Reviews
The Pacific Circuit: A Globalized Account of the Battle for the Soul of an American City by Alexis Madrigal. Picador, 384 pp., $32.
For activists of air, the atmosphere is not only “up there” but comes from, and returns to, the ground.
Lawrence Lek: NOX High-Rise is open at the Hammer Museum through November 16, 2025.
NOX presents consciousness not as humanity’s exclusive domain, but an emergent property that brings with it inevitable suffering.
Franklin D. Israel: A Life in Architecture by Todd Gannon. Getty Research Institute, 256 pp., $60.
Franklin D. Israel embraced the “intensification of uncertainty” on the long slide toward oblivion of the American Century, with Los Angeles, as always, glittering on the precipice.
Tesla Diner, designed by Stantec, opened at 7001 Santa Monica Boulevard in July.
In July, Tesla opened its own neo-Googie Diner on Santa Monica Boulevard, giving Los Angeles a slice of Muskian techno-utopia.
The Small Lots, Big Impacts initiative is a collaboration between cityLAB-UCLA, LA4LA, and the City of Los Angeles. The winners of its inaugural design competition were announced in May.
There’s room aplenty within LA’s vast sprawl, where interstices of immanent potential have been left unbothered for the last hundred years.
“Something to wrap the herring in” by Esther McCoy appeared in the February 1986 issue of Progressive Architecture. The magazine published Roger Corman’s response in August of that year.
McCoy takes shots at MGM Studios, Mel Brooks, and the director Herbert Ross—La Mesa property owners all—but reserves the bulk of her disgust for Roger Corman.
Shade: The Forgotten Promise of a Natural Resource by Sam Bloch. Random House, 336 pp., $32.
On our own, we are defenseless against the fireball we happen to depend on for existence.
Twentieth Century Architects and Victorian Architects, published by various authors beginning in 2009. RIBA Books/Liverpool University Press/Historic England, $34.
Everywhere ought to have a series like this.
Emergent City, directed by Kelly Anderson and Jay Arthur Sterrenberg, was on at DCTV’s Firehouse Cinema from April 25 through May 18, 2025.
Five years on from its conclusion, the fight over Industry City continues to have repercussions in New York’s political firmament.
Severance is created by Dan Erickson and executive produced by Ben Stiller. Seasons 1 and 2 are streaming on Apple TV+.
Saarinen’s caliginous Crystal Palace is the ideal headquarters for Severance’s vision of corporate supremacy.
Laura Owens was on view at Matthew Marks Gallery from February 14 to April 19, 2025.
Laura Owens has long held an interest in the possibilities of installation. But what did she do with that here?
Joyspace by Adam Rolston. Pacific, 112 pp., $35.
This is diet Debord, a sort of scrollable Situationism delivered through Canva slides with the nasty political economy taken off.
CECOT, El Salvador’s mega-prison, opened in January 2023.
The image of CECOT tempts critique only to anesthetize it.
The Twilight of Bohemia: Westbeth and the Last Artists of New York by Peter Trachtenberg. Black Sparrow Press, 344 pp., $30.
The Westbethians will turn the lights off on Village bohemia.
The Politics and Poetics of Everyday Life by Kristin Ross. Verso, 320 pp., $30.
The Commune Form: The Transformation of Everyday Life by Kristin Ross. Verso, 144 pp., $20.
Shifting her focus away from the French capital, Kristin Ross dares her readers to look anew at the capital-E Event we tropify as May ’68.
The MTA redesigned subway map was released in April. It is adapted from the Unimark map (1972) by Massimo Vignelli, Bob Noorda, the Unimark International Corporation, et al., and the Weekender digital map (2011) by Vignelli, Beatriz Cifuentes, and Yoshiki Waterhouse.
Somewhere in the MTA, someone was listening.