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The Nationalist Library
 

The Nationalist Library

Shouldn't a state project — the National Library of Israel — be by and for its citizens and subjects? Should it not include and serve the Palestinians in Israel and those Palestinians incarcerated only a few kilometres away and barred by the wall from accessing the building?

 

Op-ed / Eyal Weizman

Design Projects and Metaphors

ICSplat's New Concordia Island competition, focusing on a deliberately paradoxical theme such as the Costa Concordia disaster, was a perfect catalyst for further design reflections and a sure approach not necessarily restricted to the Giglio Island context. Few Italian commentators realised this; the others got wound up in their indignation.

 

Op-ed / Luca Silenzi

Memory of the night

The renovation of Mexico City's historic centre has profoundly altered the neighbourhoods' streets and buildings, as well as their dynamic, private daily rhythms. Susana Iglesias laments the night that is now lost under the weight of the new.

 

Op-ed / Susana Iglesias

Who asked for a New Institute? A farewell to the NAi

The dissolution of the Netherlands Architecture Institute is incredibly short-sighted: not only will it be translated into less visibility for architecture, but also endangers the remarkable accomplishments of Dutch architecture in the past twenty-five years.

 

Op-ed / Sérgio Miguel Figueiredo

It's about time all over again

Where architectural post-modernism evoked historicist symbols with the intent of moving the profession forward, it seems that now we are unwittingly fishing out of the historic pond, be it modern or retro. Could the existing not be the instigator or catalyst of the new? Can it trigger new relationships, intensifying our subjective experience of space?

 

Op-ed / Florian Idenburg

Future faculties

Leading American universities are witnessing an accelerated transfer of teaching from the actual physical campus to online platforms. In the future, responsibility for learning will in fact be switched from teacher to student, paving the way towards a new architecture of education.

 

Op-ed / Troy Conrad Therrien

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Architects made in Italy

The long-awaited government authority National Agency for the Evaluation of Universities and Research Institutes bridges a gap between Italy and other European nations, in an attempt to introduce a culture of quality based on clearly defined educational and research objectives, to be ascertained and monitored by self-evaluation.

 

Op-ed / Mario Lupano

Thinking about future in India

All cities in the past had been founded, then thrived and eventually declined. Some had even disappeared as will the megacities of today. We need to look to the future; but it seems that somebody has arrived here to write our urban future for us.

 

Op-ed / Romi Khosla

Sandy, one month later

One month after Hurricane Sandy made landfall north of Atlantic City, the narrative of the storm has shifted from the immediate impact and near term recovery efforts, to the question of "what will we do to protect the city against storms in the future?"

 

Op-ed / Ben Abelman

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Contemporary Architecture in Chile: pending horizontality

Chilean architecture suffers from excesses and inequalities — both of which are ingredients of an economic crisis that this time can be felt in a professional ecosystem. However, the dangerous mixture of these ingredients is diluted when seen from a different viewpoint.

 

Op-ed / Francisco Díaz

Museums: programmes for the public, public for the programmes

When we invite the visitor to play a role at a museum, which role are we talking about? And why? If meaningful goals are established, projects and programs become their natural consequences. Interpreting them as isolated devices for achieving short-term goals, measurable only in terms of numbers, we risk forsaking culture's true opportunities.

 

Op-ed / Gabi Scardi

Fighting for the relational city

The crisis in Spain can be used as a lens through which to consider the future of architecture in the country: capitalism, as we know it, is not an option anymore, when the exploration of the everyday and the understanding of the relational city is what we need.

 

Op-ed / Ethel Baraona Pohl