Nicholas Raap
Dispatches
6/15/23
Gesture and Response
Gramercy —
An authority on skyscraper design spoke to a crowd at the National Arts Club about the ins-and-outs of this “fundamental building block of the modern city.”
4/16/23
Bruised Egos
Midtown —
A real-life New York archidrama crosses the footlights.
3/16/23
A Moveable Feast
Chinatown —
Design-types flocked to Citygroup for the opening of The Great Outdoors, a taxonomy of New York’s dining sheds.
1/14/23
The Opposite of an Eyesore
Brooklyn Navy Yard —
...many heads buried in fresh issues.
11/3/22
On Architecture’s Limits
LAGUARDIA PLACE —
"...as though architecture qua architecture can do anything about any of that.”
11/2/22
Toward Human Architecture
Lower East Side —
The librarian just wanted to see what it was about.
9/15/22
Endlessly Congenial
Laguardia Place —
“I came more from conceptual art, and the thing lived and died on its own merits. Before you theorized it, it had to be done first.”
HUDSON YARDS —
“Well, it moved.”
5/13/22
Talk to the Residents
MIDTOWN —
“It’s about you speaking to the residents,” Karen Blondel told the architects in the audience. "You really have to do your work and talk to the residents.”
1/15/22
At Home in Confrontation
Zoom —
The discursive ghosts of well-worn debates occasionally lingered
12/4/21
“The Great Ruins of Saturn”
New York City —
“The spectacle of ‘man’s achievements ...progress, optimism, power.’”
10/28/21
Confronting Cities
Zoom —
“How do we situate the problem of the modern?” asked Elisa Iturbe.
9/22/21
Mapping Atrocity
Zoom —
“I think what’s powerful about what we were able to do is that we have provided rigorous evidence of the scale of this detention program, showing where it is, doing this work to calculate the capacity [of the camps]…but also tell the human stories that show what the impact of this is on a human level. I think that is a very powerful way of telling people what is happening and why it is important.”
9/21/21
Portrait of the Architect
NOLITA —
“What I wanted do to”, said Justin Beal, “was to write about architecture in a way that felt closer to my own experience of it, which is quite personal…and most architectural writing isn’t terribly personal.”
4/8/21
Climate Comforts
Zoom —
“If an architect is building a building from the ground up in 2060, they’re either going to be really rich or super stupid.”
4/7/21
Universal Ornament
Zoom —
“What is more important is that ornament is perhaps timeless and transcends specific culture.”
4/6/21
Voices From the Archives
Zoom —
We have written a nerdy archival account on a canonical building designed by a famous architect. Looking only at the building and the archival documents pertaining to it, somehow I believe allowed us to undermine the obvious and I hope new views are emerging.
3/26/21
On Strike
Zoom —
The 3,000+ strikers had five primary demands…
3/16/21
Punching the Cracks
London —
“Critique means that you are transforming the framework, exploring its contradictions…and every crack you see, you punch it.”
3/19/21
The Order of Cyberspace
Zoom —
For Patrik Schumacher, cyberspace is another infrastructure—like architecture—which sustains societal order and communicative systems, and so its design should be the purview of the architect.
3/11/21
Gardening as Political Practice
Zoom —
“Cultivation is often an expression of power.”
3/15/21
Contagious Divides
Zoom —
According to Nayan Shah, racial and class differences have been woven into policies and perspectives about health security.
2/18/21
So long, Corona Shacks?
New York —
What was it about Streeteries—those outdoor dining structures variously known as Corona Shacks, COVID Shanties, or Pandemitecture—that gave rise to dozens of Instagram accounts and Twitter threads documenting them?
Events
25 Oct 2023
⬤
Book Talk
6:00 p.m. EDT
Oct 25, 2023
NY