15 December 2008 | Architecture
We belatedly take note of an interesting article published in July on Signandsight.com: The German feuilletons spent the spring debating the relationship between architecture and morality … De Meuron told an interviewer that it would be stupid and cowardly not to build for China on the grounds that it has no democracy. Albert Speer, the [...]
3 December 2008 | Architecture, Conservation
Smithsonian Magazine writes about current attempts to restore and safeguard Hagia Sophia: “For months at a time, you don’t see anybody working,” said [Zeynep] Ahunbay, a professor of architecture at Istanbul Technical University. She had directed a partial restoration of the building’s exterior in the late 1990s and is regarded by conservators as its guardian [...]
5 November 2008 | Architecture, Theory
In caa.reviews, Oleg Grabar considers “the unease most of us feel about traditional categories like Islamic and medieval, which are still the categories in which the field of art history is divided. We can probably agree that national labels are inadequate or misleading when dealing with the past, even though they are essential in identifying [...]
22 October 2008 | Architecture, Theory
In the summer 2008 issue of Cahiers du Musée national d’art moderne, Pierre Chabard reviews Felicity D. Scott’s Architecture or Techno-Utopia. Politics after Modernism: Architecture or Techno-Utopia, presented as an “alternative genealogy of the postmodern turn in American architecture,” could appear at first glance to be a pure product of the powerful university machine of [...]
12 May 2008 | Architecture, Museums
The March 2008 issue of JSAH contains a review by Elizabeth Barlow Rogers of the recent Rizzoli website. (JSAH‘s website indicates that Ballon’s and Alofsin’s editorships are now held by David Brownlee and David DeLong respectively.) Rogers seems inclined to pass judgment on the exhibition’s arguments, but hesitant to follow through. (Its main argument, in [...]
29 February 2008 | Africa, Architecture
The Winter 2007 issue of Africa Today is devoted to “Visual Experience in Urban Africa.” Guest editor Joanna Grabski writes: Cities in Africa, like their counterparts elsewhere in the world, are intensely visual environments … Rather than positioning the city as a backdrop or stage, the articles [here] explore the relationships and processes connecting visual [...]
28 February 2008 | Americas, Ancient, Architecture
From the AP: A team of German and Peruvian archaeologists say they have discovered the oldest known monument in Peru: a 5,500-year-old ceremonial plaza near Peru’s north-central coast … The discovery is further evidence that civilization thrived in Peru at the same time as it did in what is now the Middle East and South [...]
21 November 2007 | Architecture, Journals, Theory
In the latest issue of New German Critique (99), editor Andreas Huyssen writes: Since the waning of the debate about “postmodernism” and the rise of “globalization” as master signifier of our time, the discourses of modernity and modernism have staged a remarkable comeback. Jean-Francois Lyotard’s provocative quip that any work of art has to be [...]
16 November 2007 | Architecture
In the July 2007 issue of Material Religion, Jeanne Halgren Kilde writes In recent years, the critical study of sacred space has stake a new and prominent claim on the landscape of religious studies … Critical approaches to the study of religious space vary widely: hermeneutical analyses informed by the neo-Eliadean perspective of Lindsay Jones; [...]
13 June 2007 | Architecture, Journals
Another angle of the ongoing Robert Moses re-evaluation can be considered in the March 2007 Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians. Christopher Klemek writes: “a Manichean narrative depicting an epic clash of the titans — [Jane] Jacobs the Defender versus Moses the Destroyer — has become a popular trope about the salvation of New [...]
23 May 2007 | Americas, Architecture
Diane Brand writes on “Sets and Extras: Ephemeral Architecture and Urban Ceremony in Rio de Janeiro (1808-1821)” in the latest Journal of Latin American Studies (15:3). In the early 19th century, the Prince Regent of Portugal fled to Rio ahead of Napoleon’s anticipated arrival. There, “the royal family indulged in a combination of ephemeral architecture [...]
1 March 2007 | Architecture, Books
In the most recent Bulletin Monumental (Tome 164-3), Patrick Ponsot reviews two recent books from France on the restoration and adaptation of architectural monuments: “The ‘theoretical essay’ that introduces [Dominique Rouillard's Architectures contemporaines et monuments historiques] sets out to give a clear overview of state practices of the last 25 years. The brilliant and admittedly [...]
28 February 2007 | Architecture, Islamic, Medieval
From the New York Times: “In the beauty and geometric complexity of tile mosaics on walls of medieval Islamic buildings, scientists have recognized patterns suggesting that the designers had made a conceptual breakthrough in mathematics beginning as early as the 13th century. A new study shows that the Islamic pattern-making process, far more intricate than [...]
23 February 2007 | Architecture
The Feb. 14 Architect’s Newspaper contains an appreciation of Phyllis Lambert. In it, Jean-Louis Cohen writes: “As shown by her recent contributions to the exhibition Mies in America (Whitney Museum of Art, 2001) and the journal Grey Room (2005), Phyllis Lambert is a rigorous scholar of North American architecture. But before all, while she could [...]
17 February 2007 | Architecture, Conferences, News, Theory
The line at Starbucks seemed longer than ever this morning, but apparently it did not include very many lovers of architecture dragging and drugging themselves out of bed this Saturday morning to make it to this session, “Detecting Architecture: Questions of Evidence in Architectural History.” There are twenty attendees here at best. Or perhaps it’s [...]
15 February 2007 | Architecture, Conferences, News, Renaissance
Contributor Ross Finocchio writes: This year I had every reason to think that getting to CAA would be a breeze. After all, I live in New York. Although February can be brutal here, what could be worse than the deep freeze that covered Boston during the ’06 conference? The answer turned out to be stinging [...]
15 February 2007 | Architecture, Conferences
CAA has its own blog again this year. Bloggers include Benjamin Lima (see here, third paragraph), who posted recently on William Tabler, the mid-century brains behind the Hilton Hotel where College Art Association members spend so much of their time every few years. As one article cited by Lima notes, “Few Tabler hotels win design [...]
13 October 2006 | Architecture
In a recent issue of the Oxford Art Journal, Helen Hills reviews Evonne Levy’s Propaganda and the Jesuit Baroque: “Fascinated by apparent connections between Nazi propaganda and Jesuit architecture, Levy asks whether we might usefully think of early modern Jesuit architecture in terms of propaganda. Conversely, she suggests that National Socialist architecture was indebted to [...]
6 October 2006 | Ancient, Architecture, Journals
The June 2006 Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology features an article by Yuval Yekutieli entitled, “Is Somebody Watching You? Ancient Surveillance Systems in the Southern Judean Desert”: “The Panoptic model of surveillance, which enables a small number of observers to control large numbers of people, is usually considered a modern (18th century AD) invention and a [...]
29 August 2006 | Architecture, Books
Theodor Fischer Prize-winner Christian Welzbacher has published his research on the state architecture of the Weimar Republic, which was torn between tradition and modernity. Political instability, among other things, doomed efforts to define a state style (Jürgen Tietz). It was not the young avant-garde of the Bauhaus or Werkbund, but older, more measured modernists who [...]
