Thursday, July 24, 2014
EDITOR'S NOTE: Just a reminder that we're on our summer schedule now, and not posting on Fridays and Mondays. We'll be back Tuesday, July 29.
Click here to see today's news:
Silverberg reports on the eviction of residents from Caracas's Torre David, which "does nothing to address the chronic poverty and housing shortages that led to its establishment in the first place." -- Urban-Think Tank (which won a 2012 Venice Biennale Golden Lion with Justin McGuirk and Iwan Baan for their Torre David exhibit) responds to the evictions: "Our concerns do not arise from a desire to see it remain as it is, but because the details that have emerged do not necessarily suggest a positive outcome for those affected." -- Lepeska offers an in-depth look at how Istanbul's "gentrification by force" is leaving locals feeling "overwhelmed and shunted aside" by "disappearing green spaces, overpriced apartments, forced evictions, endless commutes." -- Adanali of Reclaim Istanbul offers a report from the front about the "real estate gold rush" that is transforming his "city of contradictions": "The major problem is the intense level of commercialization and threat of forced eviction" (he's already been evicted once - and may be again). -- King reports on a "gasp-inducing plan for San Francisco's skyline," courtesy of Foster + Partners and Heller Manus, with a "startling public space." -- Kamin x 2: Stern has a towering plan for Chicago: "While he admires the work of Mies van der Rohe, he turned for inspiration to 1920s Chicago skyscrapers - 'Not that Mies is bad, but Mies is not me.'" -- He cheers plans for the Chicago Biennial: "The interplay between the biennial's highflying architectural experiments and the grit associated with Chicago's real-life urban laboratory could make for a bracing ideas fest." -- Hall Kaplan channels Moses and Olmsted, who "are relevant to the emanating melodrama of the revitalization of the Los Angeles River." -- Brussat begs "halt this attack" on Providence's Kennedy Plaza bus station that "beats the pants off most civic squares around the world for beauty. Now it appears we can say good-bye to all that - and hello to the ugly urban duckling." -- Anderton has a thoughtful conversation with O'Herlihy re: his very blue "Blue Dot" bus stops in Santa Monica, and the logic behind his design in answer to "a barrage of complaints from locals" (he's also designing billboards!). -- DRMM wins the job to design a floating village in east London's Royal Docks. -- The rather sad saga of NYC's Museum for African Art - though a revised plan "offers something that the original did not: the possibility that it will actually be built." -- Winners all: Williams, Tsien, and Jones are among a stellar list receiving the National Medal of Arts and National Humanities Medal + The $50,000 Canada Council 2014 Prix de Rome goes to Halifax-based Omar Gandhi. -- Weekend diversions: -- Zara cheers Gehry's "dancing architectural models" in a giant garage in Arles, France: "'Solaris Chronicles' follows few norms of an architecture exhibition" and "foreshadows the high-concept subversiveness that the directors of LUMA Arles have in mind." -- Hess hails "No Further West: The Story of Los Angeles Union Station" at the L.A. Central Library. -- Heathcote finds "Bridge" at the Museum of London Docklands to be "a delightful little exhibition that manages to avoid nearly all the big questions but does, at least, illustrate how central bridges are to the city's image of itself." -- Moore gives two thumbs-up to "Radical Cities": McGuirk's "fascinating study - he's at his best with places he knows best, like Torre David. But these weaknesses are occupational hazards of what is an important task, to give a glimpse into the present and future of the world's cities." -- Lange lauds Rohan's "The Architecture of Paul Rudolph": it is "well-argued, well-illustrated, well-edited," and "a timely publication, as Rudolph, embattled in life, has become a central character in present-day discussions of how, why, and when to preserve Brutalist buildings."
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