Articles
Reviews
Times Square Remade: The Dynamics of Urban Change by Lynne B. Sagalyn. MIT Press, 440 pp., $40.
How did a seemingly incorrigible part of New York, which countless mayors had promised, but failed, to clean up, change so drastically?
All the Queens Houses: An Architectural Portrait of New York’s Largest and Most Diverse Borough by Rafael Herrin-Ferri. Jovis, 272 pp., $26.
Rafael Herrin-Ferri’s guidebook to Queens’ polymorphous saltboxes, shotguns, and McMansions is a romp through New York’s “global village.”
We the Parasites by A. V. Marraccini. Sublunary Editions, 148 pp., $18.
The most striking thing about A. V. Marraccini’s new book on criticism is not that it is personal, or even intimate—it’s that it is, against all odds, uncynical.
Various architectural exhibitions in 2023
In a time of multiple crises and an increased understanding of architecture’s complicity in spatial injustice, what and who is an architectural exhibition for?
Architecture and Abstraction by Pier Vittorio Aureli. MIT Press, 320 pp., $35.
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.
The Ideal Communist City by Alexei Gutnov, et al. Weiss Press, 192 pp., $25.
Newly reissued, The Ideal Communist City presents an abstract dreamworld whose contemporary relevance is questionable, to say the least.
Some Rockin’: Dan Graham Interviews by Gregor Stemmrich (ed.). Sternberg Press, 384 pp., $28.
Dan Graham’s quirks were the stuff of legend. They’re also key to appreciating his artworks.
The Forest: A Fable of America in the 1830s by Alexander Nemerov. Princeton University Press, 336 pp., $35.
The Forest reads like a heady and roving literary essay, whose forays into art and environment have a “blink and you’ll miss it” quality to them.
Berenice Abbott’s New York Album, 1929 was on view at The Met Fifth Avenue, Gallery 852, from March 2 to September 4, 2023.
Berenice Abbott documented a city that seemed a monument to everything other than what and who had produced it.
On the Street: In-Between Architecture by Edwin Heathcote. Heni Books, 288 pp., $45.
The Financial Times’ architecture and design critic gets his steps in.
Architecture Now: New York, New Publics, curated by Evangelos Kotsioris, Martino Stierli, and Paula Vilaplana de Miguel, ran from February 19 to July 29, 2023.
Architectural impotence at MoMA’s latest
Bold Ventures: Thirteen Tales of Architectural Tragedy by Charlotte Van den Broeck. Other Press, 304 pp., $28.
For the poet Charlotte Van den Broeck, the idea of a building is ludicrous, a bottomless vessel filled by an architect’s unslakable longing.
Discipline Park by Toby Altman. Wendy’s Subway, 109 pp., $18
It is the poet, of all people, who exposes the narratives that architects, critics, and institutions use to justify destruction.
Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains the World by Henry Grabar. Penguin Press, 346 pp., $30.
What stands in the way of creating affordable housing, equitable urban spaces, and an architecture resonant with our climate-sensitive times? Parking policy.
Sublime Ideas: Drawings by Giovanni Battista Piranesi, curated by John Marciari, was on view at the Morgan Library from March 10 to June 4, 2023.
What do we mean when we call something “Piranesian”?
Confronting Carbon Form, curated by Elisa Iturbe, Stanley Cho, and Alican Taylan, was on view at the Cooper Union from March 21 to April 16.
Material Reform: Building for a Post-Carbon Future by Material Cultures with Amica Dall. Mack Books, 144 pp., $22.
Two approaches to weighing carbon form.