Things are changing fast in New York — granted, when haven’t they? — but the next few years in particular seem filled with promise to bring fresh architectural and design ideas and monuments that will transform this place into something new. Here are a few thing we’re looking forward to in the coming years.
Rem Koolhaas
Posted inNews
Required Reading
This week … why are the Coptic churches of Egypt burning, Paul Goldberger is cynical of Rem Koolhaas, video of Alexander McQueen at the Met, profile of Cory Arcangel, tour of the 2011 Contemporary Furniture Fair, want to live on a houseboat on the Gowanus, Luna Park’s Berlin pics, an interview with the Met Opera’s conductor and 8 NYers are suing Baidu for censorship.
Posted inArt
Festival of Ideas Animates a Gentrified Bowery
Obama laid a wreath at the base of the former World Trade Towers right after Osama had been buried at sea. And, as if on cue the utopian “Festival of Ideas For the New City” launched, vowing to “harness the power of the creative community to imagine the future city and explore the ideas destined to shape it.” Starchitects, visionaries, the homeless, mayors, artists, foodies, freegans, the playskool crowd, beggars, actors, bakers, and 100 plus organizations bulwarked by the combined might of the New Museum, The Architectural League, The Bowery Poetry Club, C-Lab, Columbia University Center for Architecture, Cooper Union, The Drawing Center, NYU Wagner, Storefront for Art and Architecture, and the Swiss Institute looked around their own post-recession backyards to tackle sustainability and revitalization, declaring “yes we can.” And for four days, they did.
Posted inArt
The 20 Most Powerless People in the Art World: 2010 Edition
This month we add another 20 to the growing list of the Powerless 20 we published last year to mark the painful rite of passage that is Art Review’s hilarious Power 100 list.
Here’s to hoping you’re not on it!
Posted inOpinion
Superheroes & the Modern City
Star Wars Modern has posted an extensive essay on the evolution of American superheroes, particularly Batman and Superman, and their relationship to modernity and urbanism. His post incorporates many figures that loom large in the 20th C. American urban imagination and he focuses mainly on pop culture as a barometer of changing public attitudes. The essay, titled “The Urbanism of Superheroes,” careens across many ideas and suggests there is more that binds these seemingly disparate things than may be evident at first glance.
Posted inOpinion
Why Can’t the World’s Best Architects Build Better Web Sites?
Writing for Fast Company, Alissa Walker sings the praise of the new architectural ”Facebook” called Architizer, but that’s not the extent of her post and she goes on to ask, “Why Can’t the World’s Best Architects Build Better Web Sites?” Good question.
