Archive for the ‘Critic Under The Influence’ Category
The Pritzker Prize Laureate for 2011 will be announced in April, and here is my list of favorites. I missed my chance to do this last year, but given that the last two laureates were on my 2009 shortlist (Peter Zumthor [12:1] and Kazuyo Sejima [10:1]) I decided it would be fun to try again this [...]
The author is dead. Long live the algorithm. So says The Alphabet and the Algorithm, Mario Carpo’s addition to the “Writing Architecture” series (edited by Cynthia Davidson of Anyone), recently published by The MIT Press. Carpo is known for crosswise cuts to the history of architecture, and here he aims to reframe our still-nascent transition toward a digital [...]
In Reinhold Martin’s second book on postwar architecture, he vividly reconsiders what is categorized as postmodernism from many angles and on many levels. The eponymous “ghost” of utopia, Martin argues, continues to haunt the fractured, juxtaposed narratives of postmodern architecture, despite the architects’ best intentions… (go to article)
I attended a conference at the Ohio State University Knowlton School of Architecture last month titled Envisioning Organization, and athough it fell short of my high expectations, it’s worth commenting in depth. It was difficult to discern a curatorial position, but the conference seemed to be about the instrumentalization of graphic design and architecture, interrogating the [...]
Plain Dealer architecture critic Steven Litt recently wrote a rather positive reviewof the Roe Green Center for Theater and Dance on the main campus of Kent State University, and my own opinions about the building renovation are so strong I feel the need to weigh in. For some reason, I can’t look at Holzman Moss Botino [...]
It may be a bit early, but I don’t anticipate anything from Daft Punk’s Tron soundtrack to come close to making this list, so in no particular order here are my 20 favorites from 2010. “Home” & “Dance Yrself Clean” // LCD Soundsystem It’s difficult to put into words how great these songs are. It’s also hard [...]
Plucked from an essay titled “Browsing for Utopia,” originally written in 2008: Browsing is a compelling way of relating to cultural materials because of its capacity to surprise and its unpredictability. Nothing attests to the importance of browsing quite like the continued appeal of vinyl records. Since hardly any are presently produced, the vinyl enthusiast becomes [...]
The proletarian revolution is that critique of human geography whereby individuals and communities must construct places and events commensurate with the appropriation, no longer just of their labor, but of their total history.[1] Without pretense to revolution, many in Cleveland, Ohio are taking it upon themselves to critique the physical and social geography of their [...]
I experienced a curious bit of symmetry today between an article I discovered yesterday and some music I purchased this morning. The article was “Ornament from grime: David Adjaye’s Dirty House, the architectural ‘aesthetic of recycling’ and the Gritty Brits” by Ben Campkin, and the music was James Blake’s Klavierwerke EP. Campkin, a Lecturer in Architectural [...]
I’m a Minnesota Twins fan. Always have been. Always will be. This season they moved into a new ballpark, Target Field, and on the occasion of its postseason debut, I decided to publish a few thoughts about baseball, architecture and the city… (go to article)
Me and Frank Gehry go way back. I’ve never met him, don’t get me wrong, but I’ll make an analogy: Y’know how the music of your teenage years is first to be ejected once you reach maturity, how the anger and angst of youth just seems trite and adolescent once you’re reprogrammed by the liberal [...]
I tried to pick my favorite albums, but I couldn’t, so in no particular order, these are my favorite songs of 2009. I realize I have up until now not been a music blogger, but I’m trying to keep things multimedia… (go to article)
This was originally written for a seminar taught by Lisa Hsieh at the Ohio State University (it’s been heavily edited since then), but it seems appropriate for this format as well. It’s a bit longer than usual, but I’ve been sitting on this piece for a while and want to just get it out there. [...]
Among the things that so fascinate me about the work of German architect and designer Jurgen Mayer is his obsession with the data protection patterns we all find within secure mail from our banks, our employers and government agencies. His recent monograph contained a scattering of reproduced envelopes, inserted as chapter dividers but also as [...]
Once upon a time there existed a genre of popular music collectively know as “Post-Rock.” It was loud, it was cerebral, it was novel. But most of all it felt important, like your big brother in a rock band was now all grown up. Undeniably “grown-up” influences popped up as fluidly and organically as did rock [...]
What is Cleveland’s recommended daily intake of architecture? All You Can Eat posits that Cleveland is of a high metabolic rate, that it burns through ideas faster than they can be generated. In response, All You Can Eatpresents a binge of possible futures excessive in scale and exhaustive in scope, ideas both raw and cooked, half-baked [...]
The Mountain Dwellings were completed last year in Copenhagen and published widely, but have remained immune from real critical analysis; thousands of words have been written about this unconventional building, but far too many of them have been gushing. I too think Bjarke Ingels Group’s building is deserving of praise, but by extension it requires more attention, closer reading. Projects like Mountain, however, [...]
“It looks like it’ll be feast or famine with this thing, but I’ll try to get back in the swing this week. I’ve got a couple ideas… Remember the Villa NM? UN Studio’s house for upstate New York, completed a couple years ago and destroyed by fire not a year after its widespread publication? Haven’t [...]
“Last night I attended the opening of Coop Himmelb(l)au’s Beyond the Blue exhibition at the Wexner Center in Columbus, a retrospective of forty years of work by Wolf Prix and his firm taking the form of a large model collection and detailed displays on the Akron Art Museum and Musee de Confluences in Lyon, France. [...]
“The architect who proposes to run with technology knows now that he will be in fast company, and that, in order to keep up, he may have to emulate the Futurists and discard his whole cultural load, including the professional garments by which he is recognized as an architect. If, on the other hand, he [...]
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