Gottland: Mostly True Stories from Half of CzechoslovakiaMariusz Szczygiel
Glass! Love!! Perpetual Motion!!! A Paul Scheerbart ReaderEdited by Josiah McElheny and Christine Burgin
The Sympathy of Things: Ruskin and the Ecology of DesignLars Spuybroek
The Pentagon of Power: The Myth of the MachineLewis Mumford
The Bone Clocks: A NovelDavid Mitchell
January 26, 2017
Back in October, when I walked into the small gallery at MoMA that housed an exhibition called “Insecurities: Tracing Displacement and Shelter,” the thing that caught my attention was a Dorothea Lange photo called Young Mother, a Migrant taken in California in 1937. It’s not the same one you see above, but similar. It was a reminder that once, in our own country, millions of people became what relief organizations now call Internally Displaced Persons [IDPs].
January 19, 2017
January sunrise in Prospect Park’s Long Meadow.
One of the things I’ve been working on lately is trying to understand Prospect Park for what it is, a work of engineered nature. I’ve been trying to figure out how to write about a place I visit daily, how to analyze a familiar landscape that was willed into being, conjured from swampy ground and farmland,
April 1, 2016
Zaha Hadid’s Moon System sofa for B&B Italia, London 2007
Confession: I have still never set foot in one of Zaha Hadid’s buildings. Nor have I ever written about her except in passing. I think I met her once, briefly, at a conference where we were both speakers, but if the discussion went beyond the bare minimum, I have no recollection of it.
March 2, 2016
The press opening of the Met Breuer, formerly the Whitney.
I went to the press opening yesterday of the museum that’s now called the Met Breuer, after the Metropolitan Museum that is the building’s current tenant, and the architect Marcel Breuer who designed it. The building’s owner, of course, is the Whitney Museum of American Art which, last year, moved to more spacious digs downtown .
February 26, 2015
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At top, an El Producto cigar box by Paul Rand (1952) and above, the Coronet Man (1946) a character Rand invented to advertise Coronet Brandy.
What I remembered at Everything is Design: The Work of Paul Rand, an exhibition of the legendary graphic designer’s work that just opened at the Museum of the City of New York,
January 14, 2015
The view from the middle of the LA River, near the 6th Street Bridge.
Right now, I’m writing a piece for Architect Magazine on the LA River. It won’t be out for a couple of months, but I thought I’d mention it because it’s tied to pretty much everything that’s been of interest to me in the past couple of years: what it means to be a 21st century city,
September 24, 2014
1WTC as framed by Fulton Street. (Photo by Karrie Jacobs.)
For one thing, my website looks somewhat different. It was recently overhauled and fine tuned by Greg and Patricia of Kind Company. It’s now a bit crisper and a lot more functional, although the overall look (courtesy of Randy Hunt) remains the same.
For another thing, I’m now writing with increasing regularity for Fast Company‘s Co.Design website.
May 15, 2014
BBVA Compass Stadium (designed by Populous), H0uston (as seen from MFAH design curator Cindi Strauss’s vintage red Mercedes).
It’s been so long since I’ve posted anything on this blog that I’ve forgotten how Word Press works. (And Flickr is a complete mystery to me.) Where have I been? Mostly right here, in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. (Although we’re relocating to Downtown Brooklyn in the very near future. Too many hipsters!) I’ve also been on Twitter a lot.
September 11, 2013
1 WTC from Sixth Avenue in Chelsea on a June evening. (Photo by Karrie Jacobs.)
Yesterday I was mostly thinking about the primary elections here in NYC. And not about the twelfth anniversary of 9-11. Then, last night, we emerged from a party at Pravda, thrown by Pentagram, in honor of a book of drawings (of Joe McCarthy!) by Arline Simon (Emily Oberman’s mom!), and saw the Tribute in Light framing a fat crescent moon.
June 27, 2013
Urbanity, Texas style, 2011. (Photo by Karrie Jacobs)
More of my favorite “America” columns from the Metropolis website. (If you want to know why I’m compiling these columns now, go to The Metropolis Project, Part I).
Madison Square Station, December 2007
In which I realize that the problems with the Moynihan Station plan have much more to do with money and politics than architecture.
