The second main exhibition in this year's Rem Koolhaas-directed Venice Architecture Biennale is a "scan" of Italian cultural, political, and economic life in a sprawling series of work. The show, titled Monditalia, fills the Corderie in Venice's Arsenale—a long, brick-columned space once used to make rope for the Venetian navy. It includes views of Italian architecture, but it also includes art, film, dance performances, and other programming presented in conjunction with the organizers of Venice's other biennial exhibitions. The goal, according to Koolhaas, is to present a portrait of Italy as a "fundamental" country, a characterization he explains as a
Rem Koolhaas and a team of researchers make a case for architecture’s essentials. The entrance to Elements of Architecture in the main pavilion in Venice’s Giardini. When Rem Koolhaas announced what the theme for the 14th Venice Architecture Biennale would be, he went with a characteristic provocation. Fundamentals would forgo the typical, temperature-taking displays of contemporary architecture and focus on historical exhibitions. The Biennale, which began previews yesterday and opens to the public on Saturday, hinges on two major shows: Monditalia, a long-form survey of Italian culture (more on that in a later post), and Elements of Architecture, a show
The development includes 18 residential units on a one-acre lot. Blackbirds, an 18-unit residential project in Los Angeles, designed by local architect Barbara Bestor, broke ground this spring, and its developers hope it becomes a new prototype for adding to the city’s density while preserving a sense of community. Built on a hillside in Echo Park, by sustainably-minded development company LocalConstruct, Blackbirds is a mix of houses ranging from 1,350 to 1,950 square feet on a one-acre lot (made possible because of a 2004 small lot ordinance that allowed a number of home lots to be subdivided). All of the
This article first appeared on ENR.com. Buoyed by the progress of its performance-based Living Building Challenge (LBC) green-building certification program, the International Living Future Institute (ILFI) is casting a net beyond the LBC. The Institute, through the recently-announced umbrella Living Future Challenge, says it is developing even more ways to rethink "the way humanity designs its systems, products, buildings and communities." Related links International Living Future Institute WELL Building Standard "It's the Living Future Institute, not the Living Building Institute, because it's not just about buildings," said Jason McLennan, ILFI's CEO. "The Living Future Challenge is a framework for
Mobile Homestead was developed by Kelley with Artangel and the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit as a community space, and is based on the artist's childhood home in the Detroit suburb of Westland. The notion of a house as our most private sanctuary is obliterated with Mobile Homestead, the work of the late contemporary artist Mike Kelley, which has made its way from its permanent home at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (MOCAD) to the lot in front of The Geffen Contemporary at the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles (MOCA). This is the mobile home’s first journey outside
In 1967, while I was an architecture student at the University of Washington in Seattle, my History of Architecture professor Hermann G. Pundt presented an hour-long lecture to the class on the Glasgow School of Art and the work of Charles Rennie Mackintosh.
Richard Meier, Peter Eisenman, and Paola Antonelli pay tribute to their collaborator and mentor. From left: Tadao Ando, Lella Vignelli, Richard Meier, and Massimo Vignelli, in January 1990. Massimo Vignelli, one of the leading graphic artists of his generation who designed some of the most recognized logos and branding materials of the second half of the 20th century, died Tuesday after a long illness. He was 83. Vignelli applied his strict minimalist aesthetic to some of America’s most iconic brands, designing the austere American Airlines logo, consisting of sans-serif AAs, introduced in 1967 and used until it was replaced last
A design exhibition in New York introduces a neglected genre. Installation view of the exhibition, Norwegian Icons, in Manhattan. Of all the places where modernism put down roots, Norway provided particularly fertile ground: with its union from Sweden dissolved as recently as 1905, a new international language signaled independence. Recovering from World War II occupation, the country harnessed the principles, technologies, and idioms of modernism to return to normality quickly and affordably. Modernism bloomed, but unlike the distinguishable and celebrated work of its 20th-century architects—think of the functionalism of Erling Viksjø versus Arnstein Arneberg’s conservatism, or the fame of
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