Skyline!
Skyline
2021
12/15
Modern Traditions
Zoom —
“The building becomes landscape.”
12/15
Tense Times in Chinatown
Chinatown —
As artists, architects, and passerbys filled the sidewalk and the gallery in Chinatown, the air was abuzz with calls to sign petitions, analysis of competing opinion pieces, and artists weighing how far to push the very system upon which they depend for a living.
12/14
The Design of Health
ZOOM —
Hospitals, Michael Murphy explained, offer unique opportunities for exploring how architecture adapts to the needs of both the individual and the public.
ZOOM —
"If John Lindsay's New York was tragedy then Mike Bloomberg's New York was farce"
Zoom —
Through a series of anecdotes, Mitchell Schwarzer highlighted the short-sighted and self-interested decisions that facilitated a transition from de jure to de facto racism, a reliance on the automobile, and a scarcity of public spaces and public housing.
Zoom —
“Why is it that architects think they don’t have something to offer to the marginalized?”
New York City —
“The spectacle of ‘man’s achievements ...progress, optimism, power.’”
Basel —
I don’t think it matters what anything looks like because nothing looks like anything because who can see anything for what it actually is?
Zoom —
The introduction of the public library's equivalent in 2021, Eric Klinenberg argued, would be seen as a revolutionary (and hardly fundable) proposition. This alone should make us realize that the notion that we need to invest in each other already exists.
11/3
Grounds for Play
Brooklyn —
The villains of the night weren’t risk-averse designers, but the reality of what it takes to maintain and care for exciting spaces for kids in a changing world.
New York City —
It’s hard to square the fuzziness of a term like “enough” in a conversation around a building’s legibility.
Waterloo —
Using examples of changes in design in parks, bus shelters, and bank machines, Rinaldo Walcott illustrated how urban form creates systemic fear towards “people who are deemed to be outside of the norm.”
10/28
Confronting Cities
Zoom —
“How do we situate the problem of the modern?” asked Elisa Iturbe.
Zoom —
“Mobility is in the service of creating a fully sedentary domesticity.”
Zoom —
Emanuel Christ emphasized the importance of a final, built design, stating, “it’s not so much about the process it’s about the result,” which he said derives from an ideal image of “an almost perfect architecture.”
10/16
A Looser Fit
Upper East Side —
“It’s hard to say what function is.”
Brooklyn —
The Aamnt Foundation‘s new arts campus may be large on paper, but in person the campus still feels contained and private, almost mysterious in how unobtrusive it is.
10/6
Form Versus Flow
New York City —
“What if architects dealt primarily not with form but with flow—material flow, energy flow, human flow?”
10/4
Skyrise for Harlem
New York City —
“Architecture is the European art of building...it projects the future, it claims the future...it does not do well with the present at all...June Jordan, by contrast, is about the now and how to build the future in relationship to it.”
Brooklyn —
The Van Alen Block Party hosts a long delayed opening party.
9/30
Membrane Mechanics
Cambridge —
“We are really going to need [these interventions] because we are facing huge challenges; we need more floor space, we have much bigger loadings, and we don't want to create any waste when we are building,” says Sigrid Adriaenssens. Simply put: “We need to change.”
9/22
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.”
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.”
9/21
Rise Up, Fly-Over
Brookings —
As a native of the Great Plains, this symposium underscored a growing feeling inside myself: Our region does not need acknowledgment, much less validation, from the coastal institutions. We have everything we need to do great architecture right here.
9/13
Reviving the Sublime
Boston —
For the architect, Robin Winogrond, enchantment speaks to the emotional, even metaphysical sensation of encountering a natural space for the first time.
New York City —
Drawing inspiration from Sesame Street creator Jim Henson, the sculptor Alexander Calder, writer Italo Calvino, and singer-songwriter Donna Summer, Alex Da Corte’s floating bird conjures feelings of nostalgia, innocence, and curiosity
Zoom —
Through testimonials from domestic caregivers and floor plans of the Roma house, Frida Escobedo questioned the invisibility of reproductive labor—most frequently performed by women—and their mirrored hiddenness in residential design.
Zoom —
The conversation between content creators showcased how sharing architecture can create community and sharpen our collective attention, even when it’s hosted on platforms that are doing their best to steal it away.
Zoom —
Working to address planetary challenges like the climate crisis, these architect-researchers are designing at new scales and reevaluating the fundamental stuff of building.
Zoom —
The talk amounted to long-winded pap, detailing the marriages, land acquisitions, and leisure activities of yesteryear’s super wealthy. Thrilling stuff.
Zoom —
Compared to the saccharine green-washing that has run rampant within architectural discourse, Barry Wark’s celebration of decay is a breath of fresh air.
6/28
Back in the Water
Chicago —
“SIX MILLION DOLLARS!” she hollered over and over. “Six million dollars, and they didn’t do nothin’!”
Zoom —
“The nature of architecture is outmoded in today's world; it tries to connect the physical water within human beings to the physical water surrounding them. But trying to forge this connection, this is my continued purpose in being an architect.”
New York —
“Drop [your] computer mouses and pick up intellectual machetes and bushwhack [your] way into the difficult-to-penetrate forest of the ecosphere.”
6/15
Housekeeping
New York —
Liz Gálvez focused on the act of “Making House”, both the gendered labors implied by the term, but also the technical systems that enable inhabitation. Reflecting on spaces of Black domesticity, like porches and stoops, Germane Barnes sees these as narrative spaces, in the sense that stories are told within the space but also by the spatial arrangement itself.
5/17
Keep off the Grass
Lincoln Center —
The contradictions of privately owned public space are irreconcilable. So long as powerful institutions can say “keep off the grass,” then it isn’t truly public, is it?
4/10
Mischievous Lines
New York City —
Using the tricks of perspective, Ames dissolved the walls of the narrow gallery to take on the appearance of a much larger space.
Zoom —
The breakout rooms were intimate and personal, with a sense of enthusiastic urgency from everyone.
4/9
Cooperatization
Zoom —
“The true goal of cooperatizing is not just the empowerment of architects, but the empowerment of communities.”
4/8
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.”
Zoom —
“What is more important is that ornament is perhaps timeless and transcends specific culture.”
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.
3/30
Carving Space
Zoom —
“Imagination is super political. We need imagination from places of difference rather than just a developmental and problem solving approach.”
3/26
On Strike
Zoom —
The 3,000+ strikers had five primary demands…
Zoom —
“While everyone says vernacular architecture is declining, vernacular urbanism is growing immensely.”
Zoom —
“In this new world, we are in dire need of a new form of criticism.”
3/19
Future Fiction
Zoom —
The subjects of Liam Young’s investigations—networks of extraction, exploitation, and information circulation—are hardly new to film or academic criticism, though their quality of production, and Young’s specific approach to speculation, takes the imagination on a trip that Hollywood and J-Stor just can’t muster.
3/19
In the Zone?
Zoom —
But the reality is that Soho has become a squeezed carnival of tourists, shopping and more shopping, and high-end pop art that can only be purchased with a bag of cocaine. Within its cast iron buildings, residents sleep in million dollar shoe boxes.
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.
Zoom —
Pratt’s Karen Kubey, explaining that “housing justice is racial justice,” highlighted that the project— Christmas tree farm and all—is a highly replicable one
3/18
Timber!
Zoom —
With the upcoming version of the International Building Code expanding to include three new timber construction types, as well as broader changes to allow for high-rise mass construction, timber appears to be on a solid trajectory to the mainstream of building practice.
3/17
Digital Resurrection
Zoom —
Tradition can be combined with invention to rediscover lost classical heritage.
Zoom —
For an audience reckoning with finding better, more just ways of living and practicing—the horrors of yet another act of racial violence fresh on their minds—Huang Sheng Yuan’s pure and defiant approach of “standing by the weak, fighting against the forceful” was a much needed palliative.
3/16
Punching the Cracks
London —
“Critique means that you are transforming the framework, exploring its contradictions…and every crack you see, you punch it.”
Ithaca —
The brick buildings that emerge from this sensitivity are soft, breathing, flexible structures that respond and listen to their occupants and surroundings.
3/15
Contagious Divides
Zoom —
According to Nayan Shah, racial and class differences have been woven into policies and perspectives about health security.
Zoom —
Urban planners gather to espouse humane urbanism and radical care as an antidote to today's winner takes all dynamics.
Zoom —
“Cultivation is often an expression of power.”
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?
2/11
Leading the Charge
Zoom —
The excitement Christine Williamson generates in explaining such topics as water management in wall assemblies demonstrates how far architecture still has to go in pulling back the veil of egoism that limits the advancement of women and others who don’t feel comfortable faking it until they make it.
2/11
The Big Picture
New York —
Why the focus on space at a design school? To quote the about page of Dr. Thomas Moynihan's host, the ‘New School Policy and Design for Outer Space’ (NS-PDOS), “because it’s fucking cool.”
2/10
Crystal Palaces
New York —
There was one glaring omission: The speaker neglected to acknowledge the colonial violence that procured much of the wares for the host countries’ displays.
New York City —
What was made clear throughout the all-day symposium on January 30 is that twenty-first century civic space is not centered around institutions, but is instead being shaped by architects, urban planners, and activists across the globe.
Midtown —
If you ride Amtrak and are seated in the back of the train, which is usually reserved for Business Class and the Quiet Car, you will exit into the new Moynihan Hall. But if you ride in the front or middle of the train, you will exit into the old Penn Station, which ultimately will drop you closer to the subway.
Zoom —
“If you’re out for blood, you already know what to do.”
Zoom —
It’s not just developing the idea, but executing it, which Ada Tolla stresses relies on a network, a “very tight connection with fabrication, with who does the work.
1/27
The Landowning 1%
Zoom —
One percent of owners hold almost half of the land in West Virginia, most of the landowners are outsiders, and things get worse when you go underground