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A Ceres of Unfortunate Events

Financialization exposed the grain trade to global economic shocks, driving out small farms that couldn’t handle the volatility. But there was no going back.

A Pisa Work

Today, the tilting tribute anchors an entertainment district whose main attractions include a solid brewpub and a trendy members-only club called Costco.

AI and Dry

The White House, the stock market, and every other podcast ad seem to agree that AI is an inevitable step forward.

Google Drome

In the latest renderings the building has traded PoMo for corporate minimalism, cocaine and double-breasted suits for microdosing and gray T-shirts.

Keck Support

Follow the lakeshore southeast from Chicago and you’ll soon arrive at a landscape that feels more Martian than Midwestern.

Kino Royale

2828 North Clark isn’t the loveliest lovely, but it offers some vague hope and embodies a distinct Midwestern swag.

Old Glory

As an architectural device, the gloryhole facilitates connections in unassuming places. Torn from its substrate, however, it’s less than nothing.

Palace Intrigue

Had I not been asked to volunteer to help with crowd control, I would be one of the thousands of people in line.

Paradise Sauced

The Rainforest Cafe at North Clark and West Ohio was not just a café or a simulacrum of a rainforest or a slice of service industry purgatory. It was a pocket of manufactured wonder in an increasingly disenchanted city.

Sox Hop

Not only is moving the Sox to a Nebraskan tourists’ idea of the Big City a terrible idea, but Ishbia didn’t even get there first.

Tunnel of Love

If you’re a frequent flyer, you’ve no doubt encountered Michael Hayden’s electronic mural Sky’s the Limit, although you probably know it as that neon splatter between the B and C concourses in Terminal 1 at O’Hare.

IIT Girl

The only image I could find of her was a blurred black-and-white photocopy so degraded I could make out little more than a pair of thick-framed glasses and, perhaps, the silhouette of a qipao.

All Pillar No Killer

Advocates of adaptive reuse still face a kind of ew-my-peas-are-touching-my-mashed-potatoes aversion to the idea of integrating new and old construction.

Boerum Decorum

On offer is a labyrinth of amenities for the introverted minotaur.

Burp Your Building

The Victorian-era eggheads to whom the book introduces us readily equate walls with porous skin and rooms with mechanical lungs.

Frankophile

Upon arrival, you are welcomed as a “fellow human” by the whole entourage, sporting matching plastic daisy chains and faux-dharmic printed pants (an homage, presumably, to the “East-meets-West” sensibility central to Wright’s oeuvre).
New York Review of Architecture
reviews architecture in New York
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