Record talks with the eminent architecture historian and architect who organized the comprehensive new Le Corbusier exhibition at New York's Museum of Modern Art. Le Corbusier (Charles-Édouard Jeanneret), Villa Savoye, Poissy, 1928–31 (Photo 2012) You might say it’s about time. Finally a retrospective of the pioneering master of modern architecture has been mounted by the Architecture and Design Department at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. Le Corbusier: An Atlas of Modern Landscapes (on view until September 23), presents a vast range of the work of the influential architect who was born Charles-Edouard Jeanneret in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland in 1887,
What began as architects Catherine Johnson and Rebecca Rudolph’s provocative response to the question “What is architecture?,” posed by the American Institute of Architects Los Angeles chapter as part of a 2010 competition, became the ethos of the duo’s collaboration: “It is design, bitches” was their answer.
Installation image of Lost City Arts at the Collective.1 Design Fair. New York architect Steven Learner needed advice. While fairs like Design Miami/, which cater to collectors of 20th century and contemporary work, have popped up around the world, New York City lacked a similar event, and seeing a hole in the market, Learner decided to start his own. To bridge the knowledge gap between being an architect and being a design market impresario, he called on a group of some 13 dealers, collectors, curators, and other advisors, including fellow architect Alexander Gorlin, to help conceive a new fair. This
New York set designer Christine Jones has turned heads with her evocative rendition of Las Vegas in the new Met Opera production of Rigoletto. George Gagnidze as Rigoletto and Vittorio Grigolo as the Duke of Mantua in the Metropolitan Opera's production of Rigoletto. The Metropolitan Opera’s new production of Verdi’s Rigoletto premiered this this winter to rave reviews—including its set design by Christine Jones, known for her Broadway shows Hands on a Hardbody and the Tony award-winning American Idiot. Rigoletto’s director Michael Mayer has placed the staging of the opera in 1960s Las Vegas, rather than late Renaissance Mantua as
Two years ago, Los Angeles Times architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne, writing in Architectural Record, lamented the “shrinking fraternity” of fellow newspaper critics focusing on the built environment. “At American dailies,” he wrote, “there are fewer than a dozen writers covering architecture with any regularity, and perhaps just four or five full-time critics.” The Dallas Morning News, however, is bucking the trend. In April, Mark Lamster, an editor at Architectural Review and contributing editor for Design Observer, will become the newspaper’s architecture critic. Lamster’s position is a partnership with the University of Texas at Arlington; he’ll teach a graduate seminar at
Filmmaker Su Friedrich discusses Gut Renovation, a personal and impassioned documentary about the transformation of a Brooklyn neighborhood. Still from Su Friedrich's documenatary Gut Renovation. This week, When SHoP Architects unveiled plans to overhaul the Domino sugar factory in Brooklyn’s Williamsburg neighborhood, it marked the most recent chapter in the area’s transformation from low-rise industrial zone to inexpensive artists’ enclave to in-demand residential district. In her impassioned new documentary, Gut Renovation, director and Su Friedrich chronicles that change over the course of several years. The film is at once a documentary about 21st century urbanism and an extremely intimate look
RECORD speaks with the Philip Johnson Chief Curator of Architecture and Design at New York’s Museum of Modern Art about an exhibition devoted to the 19th-century French architect Henri Labrouste (1801-1875). Bibliothèque Sainte‐Geneviève, Paris, 1838‐1850. View of the reading room. Barry Bergdoll, the Philip Johnson Chief Curator of Architecture and Design at New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), opens a major exhibition devoted to the 19th-century French architect Henri Labrouste (1801-1875) on March 10. The show, Henri Labrouste: Structure Brought to Light, on view until June 24, 2013, looks at the major accomplishments of this progenitor of modern architecture,
Elemental is at the fore of socially conscious design. Gary Hustwit featured the Chilean design office’s subsidized-housing units in Santiago in his well-received 2011 documentary Urbanized. And the firm’s monograph Incremental Housing and Participatory Design Manual appeared in time for the 13th Venice Architecture Biennale last August. Record caught up with Elemental’s executive director, Alejandro Aravena, to talk about the firm, its soon-to-be-completed housing in the Chilean city of Constitución, and Aravena’s stance on the role of architects in sheltering the world’s expanding population.