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Archive for the ‘d-crit’ Category
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The Craftsman
by Richard Sennett The American Craft Museum changing its name to the Museum of Arts & Design in 2002, British ceramicist Grayson Perry winning the Turner Prize in 2003, the founding of online craft marketplace and community etsy.com in 2005. These are only three signs of a post-millennial resurgence of ...
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A Bad Type Idea is a Worse Architecture Ideal
Ramses the Great, the Republic of Venice, Napoleon III, John D. Rockefeller Jr, the University of Harvard. The history of architecture can also be read as the history of its commissioners – from small renovations of private buildings to the capitals of nations, visionary patrons have for millennia relied on ...
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Playing Japanese
Kawaee!! That’s what Japanese schoolgirls shriek when they see something irresistibly cute. They make “funny face”, squirm their eyes and hide their giggles behind their hands. Their mothers and fathers find a lot of things kawaii, too. They may not giggle, but they will probably buy the same stuff. ...
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Best Intentions Cast Adrift
While delving through the turbulent history of Brooklyn Bridge Park, I found inspiration in the words of Frederick Law Olmsted, the godfather of park building in America: “There is one large American town, in which it may happen that a man of any class shall say to his wife, when ...
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Humility and Authority
After a reading of Armin Vit’s “Speak Up: Now What?” blogpost (and all its comments), Rick Poynor’s “Easy Writer” text, M. Kingsley’s “Rick Poynor: Ipse Dixit” response to that (plus an even louder cacophony of complaints and pats on the back) and again Poynor’s follow-up/reply, I can’t help but feel ...
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Wake Up Call
I’ve been living in New York since the end of August of 2008, and ever since I got here, people have heard me complaining (we Portuguese like to complain) about paying for incoming calls and text messages on my mobile phone despite the bad reception, getting charged on ATM withdrawals ...
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R.I.P. Tropicana?
The Orange-and-straw Tropicana juice carton left us in the last days of 2008. Another memorable American consumer product icon is gone, another brand metonym is dead. Writing an obituary about a particular iteration of a brand is like mourning the death of a butterfly. Both are short-lived, fleeting glimpses into ...
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Look Around You
A friend reminded me today about the brilliant BBC series Look Around You. Neither of us saw it on TV, but on Youtube, where most of the episodes from its two seasons seasons can be found. Every episode seems like a science lesson from 1981 (even if some are dedicated ...
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Trigger Happy
If looking at friends of friends’ Facebook photo albums or reading TMI Twitter updates is not enough of a time waster for you, try netdisasters.com. It’s as moronic and pointless as throwing water balloons at passersby, but if you liked that you’ll love this. Netdisasters.com lets you destroy – or ...
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There’s Always a Silver Lining
A magazine art director friend of mine recently posted on his Facebook profile a great article by Gabriel Sherman. Sherman is a contributing editor at New York magazine and a special correspondent to the New Republic, and in Slate‘s The Big Money he writes how this may be a tough ...
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The Long Now
One of my favorite presentations at the Design and Film symposium last Saturday was Stuart Kendall‘s talk on the film Rivers and Tides: Andy Goldsworthy Working with Time. The documentary, directed by German filmmaker Thomas Riedelsheimer, focuses on Goldsworthy’s site-specific sculptural work. I was particularly interested in Kendall’s reading ...
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The Unpredictable Fashions of Hugo Chávez
Hugo Chávez, the president of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, is one of the most charismatic leaders of our time. He lead a failed coup in 1992, got elected in a 1998 landslide, was forced out of office for 48 hours in 2002, endured huge opposition pressure, street protests and ...
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(Rejected, Denied or Refused)
Abubakar Akintola couldn’t believe his eyes as he opened the COSCO shipping container that had just arrived to the Apapa container terminal. Akintola had seen the strangest imports arrive at Nigeria’s main commercial port during his 30 years as a customs official. But he couldn’t figure out what these small, ...
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The Tower That Makes No Excuses
The Trump World Tower possesses all the virtues and vices of the buildings that made New York the greatest metropolis of the twentieth century. Like many of the city’s great skyscrapers—such as the Woolworth or the Chrysler building—it’s more than a feat of the architect; it’s a flamboyant statement of ...
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Tactics of Change
True change is coming to New York’s streetscape. Not rhetorical speech change, but the kind of change that inspires real political citizenship, participation and a new belief in the street as the ultimate stage for public life. Over the course of three weeks last Spring, planters, bollards and stone ...
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Desktop World Map
I can’t really remember when I got my first desktop map of the world. I know that Germany was already unified, but I’m not sure if Yugoslavia still existed – both on my desk and on Earth. Knowing that I only started doing my homework at home from 5th grade, ...
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Reflections of Truth
The central gallery of the Palace of Versailles is no ordinary room. It was designed, furnished and decorated to become a luxurious, excessive statement of Louis XIV’s unmatched political supremacy, the salle des visites of the world’s most powerful leader. It boasted lavish silver furniture and dramatic, heroic stuccoed ceilings ...
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Vision Building
In 1928, Joseph Urban created an architectural vision for William Randolph Hearst’s headquarters in New York. A building that would house, in his words, “the industries whose purpose is to exert influence on the thought and education of the reading public.” Today, one can read Norman Foster’s forty-story addition to ...
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Looking for romance on the Roosevelt Island Tramway
I overslept again this morning. I showered, dressed, had breakfast, put on scarf, hat, gloves, left home. I walked to the bus stop, where the 26 stopped only a few minutes later. I got off at Fulton and Flushing Avenues, went down Dekalb Avenue subway station, boarded the B. I ...
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Irma Boom, in 3D
A few days before Irma Boom came to Portugal to give a talk I asked a friend — and true Irma Boom fan — if she was worth seeing. It’s a bit like asking someone if Feist, for example, is good live (I recently did see her live, and she totally ...