Articles
Reviews
Crafting Modernity: Design in Latin America, 1940–1980, organized by Ana Elena Mallet and Amanda Forment, is on view at the Museum of Modern Art through September 22.
A shockingly unfeeling and vague idea of home
On the Appearance of the World: A Future for Aesthetics in Architecture by Mark Foster Gage. University of Minnesota Press, 80 pp., $10.
For Mark Foster Gage, the main issue with suburbanization is its ugliness, for which the alleged failings of architectural education are held responsible.
The Architecture of Influence: The Myth of Originality in the Twentieth Century by Amanda Reeser Lawrence. University of Virginia Press, 280 pp., $50.
Is the myth of “pure originality” still a worthy target of criticism in 2024?
The Murder Factory: Life and Work of H. H. Holmes, First American Serial Killer by Alexandra Midal. Sternberg Press, 96 pp., $20.
In his fanaticism for capitalist optimization, H. H. Holmes was the equal or better of any industrial baron.
Walls, Windows and Blood was on view at Lehmann Maupin in New York City from February 8 through March 9.
harmony is fraught was on view at Regen Projects in Los Angeles from January 11 through March 3.
Once radical in their challenge to religious and monarchical power, the assumptions undergirding the liberal humanist tradition—and its artwork—now feel
entrenched and flawed.
Vincent Scully: Architecture, Urbanism, and a Life in Search of Community by A. Krista Sykes. Bloomsbury, 278 pp., $115.
His supreme, tweedy confidence was softened with a vulnerability and kind of underdog spirit.
Stalin’s Architect: Power and Survival in Moscow by Deyan Sudjic. MIT Press, 320 pp., $40.
Stalin’s Architect: The Rise and Fall of Boris Iofan by Vladimir Sedov. DOM Publishers, 304 pp., $40.
With each new draft—one more improvident than the last—Boris Iofan allowed the Palace of the Soviets to float higher into an illusory realm.
Filterworld: How Algorithms Flattened Culture by Kyle Chayka. Doubleday, 304 pp., $28.
Algorithms are more our mirrors than our captors.
What Design Can’t Do: Essays on Design and Disillusion by Silvio Lorusso. Set Margins’, 352 pp., $24.
Designers, Silvio Lorusso stresses, have not properly plumbed the depths of their own uselessness.
The Robert Olnick Pavilion at the Magazzino Italian Art museum in Cold Spring New York, was designed by Alberto Campo Baeza and MQArchitecture. It opened last fall.
Conceptual art and contemporary architecture lack the beguiling allure I find in brazen displays of Americana.
Perfect Days, directed by Wim Wenders, was given a limited North American release in February.
What should we expect from narratives about civic infrastructure?
Old Buildings, New Ideas: A Selective Architectural History of Additions, Adaptations, Reuse and Design Invention by Françoise Astorg Bollack. RIBA Publishing, 176 pp., $48.
Our built heritage should not become fossils enshrined in amber, but fertile, motley canvases on which to build anew.
Beyond Digital: Design and Automation at the End of Modernity by Mario Carpo. MIT Press, 208 pp., $30.
Beyond Digital has an epochal story to tell.
The Advanced School of Collective Feeling by Nile Greenberg and Matthew Kennedy. Park Books, 176 pp., $40.
Funny ideas hitch a ride on rivulets of sweat.
Sleep No More is on at the McKittrick Hotel through May 27.
The cast changes; the choreography stays the same; what holds infinite interest is being there.
Copy Machine Manifestos: Artists Who Make Zines, organized by Branden W. Joseph and Drew Sawyer with Marcelo Gabriel Yáñez and Imani Williford, was on view at the Brooklyn Musuem from November 17, 2023, to March 31, 2024.
Black-and-white xeroxed collages given away for free, or highly-curated, glossy magazine–style publications, or anything in between.