urbanity
Seagram: Union of Building and Landscape
Places Journal
The evolution of Mies van der Rohe’s architectural philosophy, culminating in his design for the Seagram Building.
The Architect as Urbanist: Part 1
Places Journal
The late work of Paul Rudolph deserves renewed attention. A leading historian focuses on the architect’s projects in Southeast Asia.
The Architect as Urbanist: Part 2
Places Journal
The second installment in a two-part series on the late work of Paul Rudolph focuses on the architect’s projects in Singapore and Jakarta.
Library as Infrastructure
Places Journal
Reading room, social service center, innovation lab. How far can we stretch the public library?
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.
Sidewalking: Along the Miracle Mile
Places Journal
Food trucks, public art, a vibrant and organic walking culture: the evolution of Mid-Wilshire mirrors the ongoing transformation of Los Angeles.
The Social Project
Places Journal
On the complex architectural and social legacy of postwar public housing in the banlieues that ring contemporary Paris.
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.
The Village Against the World
Places Journal
Inside the Andalusian village that has been working — successfully — to create a communist utopia.
Unfinished New York
Places Journal
Preservation has evolved from a rarified special interest to an institution — an ethos — entrenched in our culture. But has it become too conservative, elitist and even racist?
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.
Fundamental #13
Places Journal
How should we understand architects’ complicity in the global real estate system? A response to the Venice Biennale curated by Rem Koolhaas.
The Housing Question
Places Journal
A debate inspired by the controversial MoMA exhibition Foreclosed: Rehousing the American Dream.
Methodolatry and the Art of Measure
Places Journal
The new wave of urban data science (and solutionism) is trending toward an obsession with data-for-data’s-sake and an idolization of method.
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.
State of the Commons
Places Journal
We can marvel at the power of Internet tools, but let’s not forget how much more public they could be.
Factory of the World: Scenes from Guangdong
Places Journal
A journalist investigates the living and working conditions of migrant laborers in Guangdong, and what she sees as the increasing ruthlessness of Chinese urbanism.
Beyond Zuccotti Park: Making the Public
Places Journal
In the wake of Occupy Wall Street, we need to focus on the making of the public as an engaged citizenry.
Little Libraries in the Urban Margins
Places Journal
One of the most promising dimensions of tactical urbanism is the rise of pop-up, guerrilla, and ad-hoc libraries.
The Interventionist’s Toolkit: 4
Places Journal
What happens when the grassroots tactics of activist designers collide with the top-down strategies of urban institutions?
The Interventionist’s Toolkit: 1
Places Journal
Provisional, opportunistic, ubiquitous, and odd tactics in guerrilla practice and DIY urbanism.
The Interventionist’s Toolkit: 2
Places Journal
DIY urbanists are making ingenious use of print media to spur urban activism — and sometimes revolution.
The Interventionist’s Toolkit: 3
Places Journal
How do we judge the success of DIY tactics — of ephemeral works that skirt the edges of activist art and community organizing?
“The eye traffics in feelings, not thoughts”
Places Journal
“Havana: 1933” was one of the first major projects by photographer Walker Evans. Eight decades later it inspired a rephotographic journey through the Cuban capital.
“The Spectacle of Growth”
Places Journal
The São Paulo Architecture Biennial examines the wave of economic and urban development reshaping Brazil.
Lina Bo Bardi and the Architecture of Everyday Culture
Places Journal
Key moments in the career of the under-appreciated Italian-Brazilian modernist, with a slideshow of significant projects.
The Displacement Decathlon
Places Journal
Olympian struggles for affordable housing from Atlanta to Rio de Janeiro.
Five Ways to Change the World
Places Journal
An idiosyncratic and partial guide to activism through architecture.
Working Public Architecture
Places Journal
Can we envision a contemporary counterpart to the New Deal? WPA 2.0 is an ambitious competition and symposium created by cityLab at UCLA.
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.
Relearning the Social: Architecture and Change
Places Journal
The MoMA exhibition Small Scale, Big Change reinforces the museum’s focus on design as an agent of change.
Jane Jacobs and the Death and Life of American Planning
Places Journal
An urban historian assesses the complex legacy of Jane Jacobs, including the rise of community activism and the marginalization of professional planning.
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.
Occupy: What Architecture Can Do
Places Journal
Can architects once again participate in a movement to make a better and more equitable society?
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.
Public and Common(s)
Places Journal
A philosophical view of the terms public and commons, from the 20th-century treatises of Hannah Arendt and Jurgen Habermas to recent books by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri.
Reality in the Balance
Places Journal
Both Trump and the Brexiteers are using power in an effort to overwhelm truth. What can we do as citizens in these politically uncertain times? What can we do as citizen-architects?