Why Wang Shu
An op-ed from New York by Brendan McGetrick
Could it be coincidence that in the same year that the Oscar for best picture goes to a silent film, architecture's top prize goes to a designer who disdains computers and claims "craftsmen are smarter than architects"? Was the Pritzker committee struck with the same guilty feelings that apparently inspired the Academy to, at long last, acknowledge the massive backward leap from Billy Wilder to James Cameron? Is the selection of Wang Shu, a noncommercial, nonfamous architect, as 2012 Laureate an attempt to absolve architecture of its greed and vanity and restore its self-image as a serious, civic-minded profession?
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A photo-essay by Iñigo Bujedo Aguirre
As Bardi pointed out, Ponti's oeuvre resonates with the principles of humanism on many levels. Like him, she would, in her later work in Brazil, commit herself fully to the promotion of humanist values. Similarly to Ponti, Bardi placed emphasis on the social and cultural aspects of architecture, stretching her design activities from the making of garments to the design of masterplans. Perhaps most importantly, Bardi taught Brazilians to appreciate the value of their popular, vernacular legacy, which had until then been deemed worthless in relation to its European counterpart.
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Kengo Kuma for Starbucks
A news report from Daizafu
Japanese architects Kengo Kuma & Associates have recently completed a Starbucks coffee in a somewhat unexpected location, sitting in the main approach to the Dazaifu Tenmangu, one of Japan's major shrines.
Established in 919 A.D., the shrine is devoted to "the God of Examination," and receives about 2 million visitors a year who wish their success. Along the main path to the shrine, there are traditional Japanese buildings in one or two stories. The project aimed to make a structure that would harmonize with such a townscape, using a unique system of weaving thin woods diagonally.
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A news report from Milan
Italian furniture company Molteni&C has announced its collaboration with Israeli designer Ron Gilad in a new collection, including tables, mirrors, shelves and "occasional tables," to be presented at the Salone del Mobile 2012 in Milan.
According to the company, the still unnamed collection will "combine the designer's material wit with aesthetic play."
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Through the Looking Glass
An art report from Minneapolis by Kimberlie Birks
Lifelike is about the encounter and the way in which it alerts us to how we—consciously and unconsciously—design and define the world around us. An appreciation of much of this work requires a different type of attention span than the one that 2012 has armed us with. Sam Taylor-Wood's Still Life video of fruit progressing from ripe to rot makes clear the centrality of time, and the importance of noticing what gets lost between the fast-paced moments of 21st century living. And yet, it is this very knowledge of the speed and transitory nature of things that invigorates life and renders it all the more precious in its banality. Lifelike appropriately raises more questions than it answers. These works, at first so familiar, ask us to see things with new eyes: to examine life without and within, and to see the ordinary and the extraordinary interchangeably. Take them as so many looking glasses for life.
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