Articles
Reviews
Julie Becker (W)hole, curated by Jay Ezra Nayssan, was on view at Del Vaz Projects in Santa Monica, California, from February 4 to April 8, 2023.
Julie Becker spent her life in Los Angeles. She ended it there too.
Mass Support, curated by Curatorial Research Collective and designed by Office ca, was on view at the Bernard and Anne Spitzer School of Architecture from March 21 to May 7.
Unlike the city’s current modes of participatory planning, a recent City College exhibition seemed genuinely concerned with realizing the desires of residents.
Modern Architecture in Japan by Manfredo Tafuri. Mack Books, 256 pp., $28
Manfredo Tafuri’s first book—a study on Japanese modern architecture—offers a picture of a brilliant historian as a young critic.
Who Is the City For?: Architecture, Equity, and the Public Realm in Chicago by Blair Kamin, with photography by Lee Bey. University of Chicago Press, 312 pp., $29.
Blair Kamin’s “activism” is carefully modulated and deeply liberal in that it wants to preserve the status quo—in this case, a beautiful city skyline.
Working-Class Utopias: A History of Cooperative Housing in New York City by Robert M. Fogelson. Princeton University Press, 408 pp. $40
Freedomland: Co-op City and the Story of New York by Annemarie H. Sammartino. Cornell University Press, 320 pp., $33
A pair of new books takes stock of Co-op City’s idealistic origins, brutal challenges, and lasting successes.
Radical Pedagogies, edited by Beatriz Colomina, Ignacio G. Galán, Evangelos Kotsioris, and Anna-Maria Meister. MIT Press, 416 pp., $60
Architecture builds norms, and Radical Pedagogies’ project is to question the discipline’s fundamental assumptions.
Vacant Spaces NY by Michael Meredith, Hilary Sample, and MOS Architects. Actar, 608 pp., $50
Peeling back the brown paper on Manhattan’s vacant retail spaces
Edward Hopper’s New York, curated by Kim Conaty with Melinda Lang, was on view at the Whitney Museum of American Art from October 19, 2022, to March 5, 2023.
For Edward Hopper, New York was a fount of sights that he never tired of seeing or, indeed, painting.
The Architecture of Disability: Buildings, Cities, and Landscapes Beyond Access by David Gissen. University of Minnesota Press, 224 pp., $25.
The Architecture of Disability uses the lens of disability to reevaluate received architectural histories and speculate on a more inclusive architectural environment.
New York: 1962–1964 was on view at the Jewish Museum from July 22, 2022, through January 8, 2023.
On the too-muchness of “New York: 1962–1964”
Straight Line Crazy, a play by David Hare, ends its run at the Shed on December 18.
A Robert Moses play plays the hits.
The Storefront for Art and Architecture once approached serious topics with buoyancy and a sometimes tongue-in-cheek attitude. What happened?
Bernd and Hilla Becher was on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art from July 15 to November 6.
The Bechers didn’t edit their photos the way contemporary photographers might, making the aesthetic continuity between each frame that much more impressive.
Model Behavior was on view at the Cooper Union from October 4 to November 18.
“Model Behavior” offers an incomplete model of models.
The Intimate City: Walking New York by Michael Kimmelman. Penguin Press, 272 pp., $30
If New York was going down, we thought, we wanted to go down with it.
When Eero Met His Match: Aline Louchheim Saarinen and the Making of an Architect by Eva Hagberg, 2022 (Princeton U. Press).
On the life of Aline Louchheim Saarinen, the wife and PR pro who wrote Eero into fame