My Bookmarks
Post-Castro
Places Journal
Six decades after the revolution, Cubans envision a new society that blends the equities of socialism with the energies of capitalism. The challenges are daunting.
Hitler's Revenge
Places Journal
Once a formidable critic and teacher, and now largely forgotten, Sibyl Moholy-Nagy deserves new attention.
Architecture and Popular Taste
Places Journal
Douglas Haskell was a leading figure in 20th-century design journalism. His work deserves to be better known.
“An architecture which is whole”
Places Journal
Vincent Scully has long been one of our leading architectural historians, and one of the most confident and audacious. Even when wrong he was stirringly, scintillatingly wrong.
The Man Who Wrote Too Well
Places Journal
Reyner Banham was not only an extraordinary scholar but also a prodigiously productive journalist. Consider his remarkable analysis of a legendary crash-test dummy.
Metropolis Regained
Places Journal
Grady Clay was a prodigious observer of American cities and landscapes, dedicated to cutting through the overlay of conventional ideas that so often crowds out original thinking.
You (Still) Have to Pay for the Public Life
Places Journal
Half a century ago Charles Moore was a rising architect and Ivy League academic. He was also the first in the field to look seriously at Disneyland — and he liked what he saw.
(Not So) Anti-Architecture
Places Journal
Robin Boyd was the most famous architecture critic Australia ever produced. In a still relevant essay from 1968, he calls for architects to cast aside their perennial political timidity.
Apostle and Apostate
Places Journal
Josef Frank’s humanist manifesto “Accidentism” denounced the banality of orthodox modernism and called for a new pluralism in design.
The (Still) Dreary Deadlock of Public Housing
Places Journal
Decades ago Catherine Bauer argued passionately that governments must ensure that all citizens are well housed — a call to action more vital than ever as our shelter crisis deepens.
Memorandum on the Plan for Jerusalem
Places Journal
Decades ago Lewis Mumford argued passionately that Jerusalem should become a world city, both de-politicized and de-nationalized. His argument remains powerful and problematic.
The Domestication of the Garage
Places Journal
J.B. Jackson’s 1976 essay on the evolution of the American garage displays his rare ability to combine deep erudition with eloquent and plainspoken analysis.
Housing and the 99 Percent
Places Journal
How the governmental and banking policies that have structured home ownership across the decades have worked to reflect, mediate, promote, and endanger the American dream.
The Case for Truly Public Housing
Places Journal
A municipal authority in Massachusetts has deftly negotiated the privatization and deregulation of the market. But its hard-won success underscores the need for a new narrative of public housing in America.
Housing and the Cooperative Commonwealth
Places Journal
In America we have an escalating crisis of housing affordability — yet we are overlooking one of the best and most basic solutions.
Beyond Foreclosure
Places Journal
Can we transform suburban housing — make it responsive not to dated demographics and wishful economics but to the actual needs of a diverse and dynamic population?
Tent City, America
Places Journal
Tent cities are now so common that advocates are campaigning to make them semi-permanent settlements of micro-housing. But is this a genuine solution or a cheap fix?
Fundamental #13
Places Journal
How should we understand architects’ complicity in the global real estate system? How should we understand the Venice Biennale, as curated by Rem Koolhaas?
The Modern Urbanism of Cook's Camden
Places Journal
The council housing designed 50 years ago for a progressive London borough remains a potent symbol of the achievements of postwar social democracy.
The Essential Indifference of American Suburban Housing
Places Journal
A British architect offers a close reading of American suburbia, where mass production meets the myth of the frontier.
A Tiny Orchestra in the Living Room
Places Journal
The introduction of stereophonic sound systems, in the postwar decades, transformed the American house.
Postcards from Paris
Places Journal
Social good versus commercial gain. Affordability versus gentrification. Freedom v. surveillance, local v. global, public v. private. Which forces will define the future of the Marais – of Paris?
The Multilevel Metropolis
Places Journal
Urban skyways have radically altered the form and spatial logic of cities around the world, from Minneapolis to Calgary to Hong Kong.
Demedicalize Architecture
Places Journal
Curators at the Canadian Centre for Architecture explore the evolving concept of “healthy” buildings and argue against the new moralistic philosophy of healthism.
Corrections and Collections
Places Journal
Intriguing parallels in the design of prisons and museums, from the Panopticon to the Guggenheim to contemporary work by Peter Zumthor and Rem Koolhaas.
The Emergence of Container Urbanism
Places Journal
The repurposed shipping container, now a fixture of urban architecture, is part of a movement that can be traced back to Archigram and the Metabolists in the 1960s.
Zone: The Spatial Softwares of Extrastatecraft
Places Journal
The phenomenal rise of the free zone, an opportunistic urban hybrid that has powered the rise of glittering world cities like Singapore and Dubai.
The Arab City
Places Journal
Today there is no better context in which to investigate the complexities of global practice in architecture than that of the rapidly changing Arab city.
Mexico City: History of the Present
Places Journal
An unpopular president, a myth-making architect, and a multibillionaire tycoon build a giant airport in a nature preserve.
Above Grade: On the High Line
Places Journal
A native New Yorker traces the pre-history of the High Line, and ponders whether the celebrated park will be a victim of its success.
The Irrational Exuberance of Rem Koolhaas
Places Journal
The architect’s career embodies the inevitable contradictions in trying to marry art and capitalism, radicalism and pragmatism, icon-making and city-making.
Notes Toward a History of Non-Planning
Places Journal
The argument about the strength of government and the freedom of the marketplace has been boiling for decades. It is more relevant than ever.
The Public Works
Places Journal
Why isn’t the Great Recession inspiring a new New Deal? Places’ editor argues that we no longer believe in public-sector solutions — or even in the public itself.
Rexford Tugwell and the Case for Big Urbanism
Places Journal
New York City’s first planning commissioner lost a bigger battle against Robert Moses than the fight Jane Jacobs won.
Tahrir Square: Social Media, Public Space
Places Journal
It wasn’t the Facebook revolution. An urban historian in Cairo argues that the occupation of public space was vital to the Arab Spring.
Architecture and the Aestheticization of Politics
Places Journal
The Turkish plan to destroy the vital public space of Taksim Gezi Park by turning it into a shopping mall reflects a global democratic crisis.
Scarcity contra Austerity
Places Journal
Understanding the distinction between the political ideology of austerity and the physical condition of scarcity will enable designers to operate more creatively.
Jane Jacobs, Andy Warhol, and Community
Places Journal
An urban geographer compares the radically different New York worlds of Warhol’s Factory and Jacobs’s Greenwich Village — and comes to some provocative conclusions.
Gordon Matta-Clark and the Politics of Shared Space
Places Journal
An artist in the era of urban renewal thinks through what it might mean to fully collaborate with local communities.
A Short History of the Campsite
Places Journal
A landscape historian traces the story of the campground, from early wilderness caravans to today’s domesticated sites.
All Those Numbers: Logistics, Territory and Walmart
Places Journal
Walmart is targeting major cities as the next big (box) market. How can architects adapt the retailer’s logistical expertise to make better-performing environments?
A Map of Radical Bewilderment
Places Journal
Forget his reputation as a nature writer. Henry David Thoreau was also a highly trained, well regarded, disciplined though eccentric land surveyor.
The Shape of Space
Places Journal
What the orbital space habitats designed for NASA in 1975 can teach us about living in new geometries.
The Corner of Lovecraft and Ballard
Places Journal
H.P. Lovecraft and J.G. Ballard both put architecture at the heart of their fiction, and both made the humble corner into a place of nightmares.