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Today’s News - Thursday, March 5, 2020

EDITOR'S NOTE: To (most of) our readers in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico: Don't forget to spring your clocks ahead one hour Saturday night (an extra hour of daylight - yay!). Also note that tomorrow and Monday will be no-newsletter days. We'll be back Tuesday, March 10.

●  Bernstein pays tribute to the "courtly architect" Henry Cobb, "I.M. Pei's unsung partner for nearly four decades but was responsible for a celebrated body of work in his own right."

●  Just days after announcing the 2020 Venice Architecture Biennale would go forward with May 23 opening, the "coronavirus travel restrictions force it to postpone opening until August 29."

●  Rosenbaum raises the alarm about the Trump Administration seeking to cut "wasteful & unnecessary" spending, calling "to ax support for the arts and humanities - NEA and NEH are allotted what the Administration deems to be sufficient funding for orderly termination of all operations in 2021" (yikes! Contact your Congressional representatives!).

●  Brussat again considers the "Make Federal Buildings Beautiful Again" draft executive order, and wonders "why so many of classicism's leading lights oppose the E.O. There is no plausible reason" (take that, ICAA).

●  Kamin compares plans for a 10-story, metal-clad, windowless Amazon fulfillment center in a Chicago suburb to the rich architectural legacy of the city's industrial buildings - will the Amazon warehouse deliver the same? "Don't bet on it."

●  Moreno reports on Giovanni Vaccarini Architetti's (stunning!) Powerbarn facility in Ravenna, Italy, "expected to produce renewable energy for an estimated 84,000 families while also 'renaturalizing' the industrially damaged" site.

●  Johnston's Q&A with Eleanor Peres re: "her latest research, the role of architecture in a time of climate breakdown and mass biodiversity loss," and why she uses the word "ecology" instead of "sustainability": "I am witnessing a transition in the field from object to system."

●  Gamolina's Q&A with Odile Decq re: "starting out as a young architect in France and advising those just starting their careers to take risks and not follow the status quo": " There is nothing wrong with taking risks - you will fail, but that's OK - just keep going - don't look back."

●  Saval offers a great profile of Sou Fujimoto, "the architect making conceptual art out of buildings" with "his own definition for what design should be" - and why he was "unwilling to brave the gauntlet of auditioning for Toyo Ito and SANAA."

Weekend diversions:

●  Blander on Koolhaas's "Countryside, the Future" at the Guggenheim: "The medium doesn't fit the message - if there is one - it's doomed by an excess of unorganized, sentimentalist content" that "resorts to worn urban/rural dichotomies" with "a kitchen sink of adapted book chapters, recycled conference papers, expanded blog posts" (ouch!).

●  Hagberg, on the other hand, is a bit kinder: "Countryside, The Future" is "vintage Rem, almost a greatest hits collection. It's a bit cheeky, it has its intellectual moments."

●  Wainwright cheers a "bold little show" at RIBA London - Space Popular's "energetic, colorful, poppy history lesson - peppily" titled "Freestyle: Architectural Adventures in Mass Media."

●  Moore catches up with Studio Formafantasma, "the Italian designers who have a way with wood," to talk about "Formafantasma: Cambio" at the Serpentine Sackler Gallery: They "don't claim to save the world" but "'it can have an influence.' Which, with wit and grace, is what their designs do."

●  The University of Oklahoma pays tribute to the educational legacy of Goff, Herb Greene, Mendel Glickman, Elizabeth Bauer Mock, and others who "developed a curriculum that taught students to look beyond the accepted canon of Western architecture" with "Renegades: Bruce Goff and the American School of Architecture."

Page-turners:

●  Lam lauds "Breaking Ground: Architecture by Women" by Assemble Studio's Jane Hall: This book answers the question: "What are women architects building? Most impactfully, it dispels the notion that projects by women have a particular aesthetic - the only commonality is the quality of the work."

●  Stamp brings us "7 examples of centuries-old design that combat climate change" from Julia Watson's "Lo-TEK. Design by Radical Indigenism" that "looks at technologies used by 20 indigenous populations, from Iraq to Tanzania."

●  A great excerpt from Justus Nieland's "Happiness by Design: Modernism and Media in the Eames Era": "Eamesian happiness, circulating through both images and objects, linked the "goodness" of the American good life to the "goodness" of so-called good design."

●  Marcus Field considers Hendrickson's "Plagued by Fire: The Dreams and Furies of Frank Lloyd Wright": It "will not be everybody's cup of tea. The writing is baroque. But the contradictory Wright who emerges, both hateful and human, is probably the truest portrait of the man we have yet."


  


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