architecture / design / urbanism / culture / opinion columnist @dezeen bylines @archrecord, @artinamerica, and beyond. I curated a show on view @centerforarch
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Articles by Alan G. Brake
Gluckman Tang Architects
TV producer Danielle Chang worked with architecture studio Gluckman Tang and artist Warren King to create a snake installation made of CNC-cut aluminium panels at Santiago Calatrava's Oculus to mark the Lunar New Year. More
AlterStudio architecture and design
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Mentors | EnergyLab
Join our mentor network 366 investors, successful entrepreneurs, specialists and industry experts have volunteered to mentor EnergyLab's startups, 331 of which are listed below. If you're passionate about helping clean energy and climate tech startups and have experience or expertise to offer, we hope you'll apply to join the network. Aaron Schimann Principal, Schimann Aaron Zadeh Director of Business Development, Array Technologies Inc.
LMN Architects Expands and Restores the Seattle Asian Art Museum
Beginning in February 2020, visitors to the Seattle Asian Art Museum will have a vastly improved experience, with expanded galleries, educational and community facilities, and sweeping views of the city’s beloved Volunteer Park.
Furniture in Context: Lina Bo Bardi & Giancarlo Palanti at Gladstone 64
Home » Furniture in Context: Lina Bo Bardi & Giancarlo Palanti at Gladstone 64 Architecture News Installation view of Lina Bo Bardi & Giancarlo Palanti: Studio d’Arte Palma at Gladstone 64 in New York Photo by David Regen, courtesy Nilufar Gallery, Milan, and Gladstone Gallery, New York and Brussels Installation view of Lina Bo Bardi & Giancarlo Palanti: Studio d’Arte Palma at Gladstone 64 in New York Photo by David Regen, courtesy Nilufar Gallery, Milan, and Gladstone Gallery, New York and...
New Leadership for New York’s Design Festival
Image Adam Sandow, chief executive of Sandow, last year. His media company will now run the design festival NYCxDesign, which was previously city-run. In January, the New York City Economic Development Corporation, N.Y.C.E.D.C., announced it would turn over operations of New York’s design week organization, NYCxDesign, to Sandow in 2020 through a multiyear, renewable contract.
"Hudson Yards is a billionaire's fantasy of the future of city life"
Manhattan's newly opened Hudson Yards is all shine and no substance, and New York City deserves better says Alan G Brake in this Opinion column. This past weekend, the public gained access to much of the first phase of the vast Hudson Yards development on Manhattan's Far West Side, one of the island's last major swaths of developable land, now outfitted with trophy architecture, an enormous mall, a new public plaza, and several spaces seemingly designed for Instagram.
An Object Lesson from Glenn Adamson
Design By ALAN G. BRAKE | January 22, 2019 MANY READERS OF MODERN MAGAZINE POSSESS a high level of “material intelligence,” even if we have never heard the term before. An appreciation of design history, an interest in provenance, a feeling for materials, and a regard for the designers and craftspeople who make the objects we cherish are some aspects of this important concept, the understanding of which has profound social, cultural, and ecological implications.
"Amazon HQ2 will strain spaces and systems on which all New Yorkers rely"
Amazon HQ2 will only exacerbate New York City's already stretched infrastructure, cramped public spaces and sky-high rents, says Alan G Brake in this Opinion column. Amazon has announced it will locate tens of thousands of high-paying tech jobs in New York City. Instead of swelling urban pride and a sense of opportunity, the company's expansion has prompted well-founded dread of skyrocketing housing costs, overburdened infrastructure, and degraded public space.
Paul Loebach creates tea set with laboratory glass
Brooklyn designer Paul Loebach has used simple forms and materials for a teapot and matching glasses to provide an alternative to the "grandma look" of some ceramic designs (+ slideshow). Made entirely of glass with a natural cork lid, the Ora teapot for design brand Kikkerland is based on laboratory beakers. "I was approached by a manufacturer to design an affordable mass-produced teapot using a particular factory that specialised in laboratory glass," Loebach told Dezeen.
Barbie dolls now available in four body types
The iconic Barbie doll is now available in several different body types, including a more full-figured version for the first time. Produced by the American toy maker Mattel, the 2016 line of Barbies comes in four body types: original, tall, petite, and curvy. The "curvy" doll is meant to reflect a more realistic idea body image for young people. The company's new campaign slogan is: "Imagination comes in all shapes and sizes.
Women in design: Jessica Helgerson
“I TELL OUR CLIENTS WE VALUE WHAT the house has to say. I think the people who come to us respond well to that—they want what’s best for the house,” says Jessica Helgerson, the founder of the Portland, Oregon–based interior design firm that bears her name. With a background in sustainable building, Helgerson specializes in updating older homes in a variety of styles—mid-century modern, Tudor, Victorian—with long-lasting materials and period-appropriate built-ins.
Women in design: Egg Collective
AFTER MEETING IN ARCHITECTURE school, the founders of Egg Collective realized they preferred working together. “We discovered our design was better together, and when we went out on our own, we realized we had complementary skills in running the studio,” says Crystal Ellis, Egg Collective’s cofounder with Stephanie Beamer and Hillary Petrie. The trio operates a stylish showroom and office in Manhattan’s Hudson Square neighborhood and a woodshop near the Brooklyn Navy Yard.
Sass pedestals MPBMB Souda Ettore Sottsass tabletop
Pomo summer: Montreal designers Marie-Pier Guilmain and Maud Beauchamp of MPGMB have created a trio of stacked pedestals influenced by the work of Memphis Group founder Ettore Sottsass (+ slideshow). Designed for Brooklyn brand Souda, the wood and marble Sass stands come in three sizes of different circumferences and heights. The pedestals can be used as platers, dessert stands or plant holders, or can be used to display artwork or everyday objects.
Asian Art Museum Releases Renderings of Renovation and Expansion by wHY
The Asian Art Museum in San Francisco has unveiled a renovation and expansion plan by Los Angeles-based wHY Architecture. Located in the city’s Beaux Arts Civic Center, the design for the 12,000-square-foot addition draws inspiration from Asian and European art and architecture. The new pavilion tops an earlier expansion designed by Gae Aulenti, and itself will be capped by a large art terrace, extending the indoor–outdoor experience of the museum.
Westward Ho | The Aluminaire House | Modern Magazine
AFTER DECADES OF NOMADIC EXISTENCE, the Aluminaire House, a pioneering example of modern prefabricated construction, has finally found a permanent home in Palm Springs, California. Completed in 1931 by A. Lawrence Kocher and Albert Frey, the house was built as a demonstration of new building technology and products and of modern design for the Allied Arts and Industries and Architectural League of New York Exhibition that year.
Kentucky Museum of Art and Craft by Christoff : Finio
The Kentucky Museum of Art and Craft (KMAC) in Louisville is a small museum with big ambitions. Founded in 1981 as a center to promote the state’s traditional crafts, such as quilting and wood carving, it has evolved to become a contemporary-art museum with a focus on materials and artistic process. In line with this revised direction—and to better serve its growing audience—the museum was recently renovated by New York–based Christoff : Finio.
In the Flesh: Mark Bradford in the US Pavilion
Visitors to Mark Bradford's exhibition as the official United States representative to the 2017 Venice Biennale must enter the neoclassical US pavilion using a single side entrance, where they immediately encounter a massive, hulking obstacle suspended from the ceiling.
Exhibit | Early Modernism at MoMA | Modern Magazine
HOW SHOULD WE LIVE? It is a question so open-ended it could serve as the title of an experimental short story collection. Instead, it is the name of a subtly subversive design exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York that questions the canon of early twentieth-century modernism and the museum’s own history of inclusion and exclusion in building that canon. Drawn from the museum’s permanent collection and including some key new acquisitions, How Should We Live?
Las Vegas Revisited
Returning to Las Vegas after more than four decades, Brian O'Doherty finds that enveloping new spectacles have replaced the gigantic signs he once praised in these pages. TIME IS ODD everywhere, particularly in America, where a century can seem shunted into a decade. And time is especially odd in Las Vegas: held in suspension, elasticized, circadian rhythms canceled, a version of immortality promised, no tick-tock, just a smooth air flow in the desert.
George R. Kravis II Collection | Cooper Hewitt
THE PHILANTHROPIST AND COLLECTOR George R. Kravis II began collecting industrial design as a child, though he didn’t think of it that way at the time. “I was interested in anything with a dial or a cord that made sound,” Kravis recently told MODERN. His first purchase at age ten was an RCA 45-rpm record changer. With his love of radios, turntables, and other musical technology, Kravis went on to start one of the first FM radio stations in Tulsa, Oklahoma, when he was twenty-three.
Seeds of Resistance: Complex Movements in Detroit
In Detroit, just north of where the I-94 freeway cuts across Van Dyke Street, neatly separating several up-and-coming eastside neighborhoods from a stretch of no-man's-land that remains determinedly godforsaken, a message is scrawled across the side of a dilapidated garage: "they tried to bury us but they didn't know we're seeds." The message and the setting are emblematic of a particular strain of resistance to Detroit's recent comeback narrative.
Roberto Burle Max
You may know the work of Roberto Burle Marx (1909–1994) without even realizing it. If you have ever marveled at the sweeping grandeur of Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro, you’ve seen his iconic design for the promenade running alongside it. Using the traditional Portuguese pavement method, in which gray and black bricks are laid out in mosaics, he created undulating patterns big enough to be admired from an aerial perspective, to suit the drama of the city.
Roberto Burle Marx
You may know the work of Roberto Burle Marx (1909–1994) without even realizing it. If you have ever marveled at the sweeping grandeur of Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro, you’ve seen his iconic design for the promenade running alongside it. Using the traditional Portuguese pavement method, in which gray and black bricks are laid out in mosaics, he created undulating patterns big enough to be admired from an aerial perspective, to suit the drama of the city.
Experience Economies: The Work of João Enxuto and Erica Love
Institutional critique has a complex legacy in contemporary art—long canonized, the self-reflexive and participatory strategies of artists like Hans Haacke and Andrea Fraser have been thoroughly assimilated into the operations of many present-day museums.
Shifting Speed | The Speed Art Museum
Architecture By ALAN G. BRAKE | October 16, 2016 KULAPAT YANTRASAST, AND HIS FIRM WHY ARCHITECTURE, USE WHAT THEY CALL “ARCHITECTURAL ACUPUNCTURE” TO TRANSFORM KENTUCKY’S SPEED ART MUSEUM THE WAVE OF MUSEUM EXPANSIONS of the last decade and a half has slowed. Museums are still being renovated and expanded, of course, but new trophy buildings now come in small handfuls rather than in what seemed like droves.
Domestic Troubles: Dislocation at the Oslo Architecture Triennale
“After Belonging,” the title and theme of the current edition of the Oslo Architecture Triennale, explores contemporary conditions of domestic life, questioning the notion of fixed residence and location-based identities. Migration and refugees, house sharing, intergenerational living, homelessness, and climate change-induced displacement are some of the subjects that “After Belonging” investigates.
Forms of Address: Ray Johnson’s Bob Boxes
For legendary mail and collage artist Ray Johnson (1927–1995), any ephemera of everyday material culture he encountered could potentially be art—including the bottle caps, abandoned toys, tennis balls, fragments of fractured ceramics, stickers, gloves, shells, and lost bathing suits found on his many beach walks. He made fishermen’s trolling lures, a box of neckties, and mannequin feet designed for sock displays into sources of meaning by approaching them as facts of the environment.
"Architectural innovation can still be put to the public good"
Opinion: the light-filled, social spaces at Diller Scofidio + Renfro's medical education centre at Columbia University could make future doctors demand more from their workspaces and ultimately pave the way for better hospitals, says Alan G Brake. Diller Scofidio + Renfro (DS+R) have produced a strange, striking, and sophisticated new building for the Columbia Medical Center.
Up Close: The Once and Future Detroit
Detroit's troubles (poverty, crime, and failing public schools) have been well publicized, but over the past decade, the media has turned its attention to new developments in the city. You often hear Detroit referred to as a blank slate, as a city undergoing a renaissance.
"New York is evolving beyond a Manhattan-centric identity"
Opinion: major landscape interventions like West 8's recently opened The Hills on Governors Island, along with planned improvements to transport links, will bolster New York's coherence as a multi-island metropolis says Alan G Brake. Starting this week, New Yorkers and visitors to the city will have a new must-see landscape offering a whole new perspective of the metropolitan archipelago.
Dreams for Detroit: The US Pavilion in Venice
Pita & Bloom: The New Zocalo, 2016, axonometric drawing showing band shell, theater and cultural center, part of a new neighborhood hub. Speculative project for Mexicantown/Southwest Detroit seen in The Architectural Imagination, an exhibition for the United States Pavilion, Biennale Architettura 2016, Venice. Courtesy Pita & Bloom. The curators of the US Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale have tackled the thorny and fashionable subject of the future of Detroit.
Alan G Brake on New York design week
Opinion: New York's design scene would benefit from looking outward and engaging with America's manufacturing centres further west, says Alan G Brake, who found a lack of originality at the city's design week this year. New York's design week has just concluded, revealing once again the promise and limitations of the city's design scene and its relationship to the American and global marketplace.
Alan G Brake on Calatrava's WTC transit hub
Opinion: Santiago Calatrava's World Trade Center transit hub may be Instagram-friendly, but it is part of a troubling trend for public spending on spaces that aren't really public at all, says Alan G Brake. On a recent Sunday afternoon children sprawled on the gleaming white marble floor beneath the oculus in Santiago Calatrava's new transit and retail hub at the World Trade Center site. Young couples Instagrammed the white ribbed ceiling with light streaming through a strip of skylights.
Dust to Dust: Design Observer
The Polygon Nuclear Test Site I (After The Event), Kazakhstan 2011 Priozersk XIV (I Was Told She Once Held An Oar), Kazakhstan 2011 Nadav Kander’s series of photographs of de-mapped nuclear sites in Kazakhstan, called Dust, helps make visible the physical and temporal destruction of the former Soviet military’s presence in the region.
MIT researchers plan "death of the traffic light"
A group of researchers has developed a conceptual traffic system that would enable driverless vehicles to whizz through intersections without colliding, eliminating the need for signals (+ movie). Researchers from MIT, the Swiss Institute of Technology and the Italian National Research Council came up with the idea for a new type of intersection called Light Traffic.
WHY expands Speed Art Museum with corrugated metal facade
Los Angeles architecture firm wHY has completed an expansion of the Speed Art Museum in Louisville, Kentucky, featuring facades of fritted glass and corrugated metal panels. The project includes the renovation of the 1927 Beaux Arts building and a pair of new additions, including a 5,500-square-metre North Pavilion housing the modern and contemporary art galleries.
Coded Couture features clothes that detect lies and read tweets
A new exhibition at the Pratt Manhattan Gallery in New York showcases a range of futuristic fashion concepts, including a shrug that reveals when the wearer is distressed and a dress with integrated lie detectors (+ slideshow). The Coded Couture exhibition includes garments, jewellery and shoes fitted with technologies such as speech recognition sensors and heartbeat monitors, and created with methods ranging from 3D printing to hand-embroidery.
Steve Wozniak criticises Apple Watch for "taking us into the jewellery market"
Apple co-founder Steven Wozniak has criticised the company for its smart watch, which he says has taken Apple "into the jewellery market". In a Reddit interview, Wozniak said the Apple Watch was more of a status symbol than a technological breakthrough, and questioned how it fit with the company's mission.
SHoP and West 8 masterplan extends Philadelphia's skyline
New York studio SHoP Architects and Dutch landscape firm West 8 have designed a new city quarter for Philadelphia that would extend the skyline beyond its traditional boundary, the Schuykill River (+ slideshow). Working in coordination with the City of Philadelphia, Drexel University, and Brandywine Realty Trust, SHoP and West 8 have drawn up a 14-acre (six hectares) masterplan for a site near Philadelphia's 30th Street station – the third busiest train depot in the US.
Hauser & Wirth opens LA gallery designed by Selldorf Architects
Switzerland-based art gallery Hauser & Wirth has opened a large outpost in Los Angeles, designed by local firm Creative Space with consultation from New York-based Selldorf Architects (+ slideshow). Located in LA's Arts District, Hauser Wirth & Schimmel occupies the 10,775-square-metre Globe Grain & Milling company buildings, a series of conjoined industrial structures dating from between 1896 and 1929.
Architecture for Humanity rebrands as Open Architecture Collaborative
Following the bankruptcy and collapse of Architecture for Humanity in 2015, local chapters have banded together to create a new organisation called Open Architecture Collaborative (+ movie). More than 30 chapters in North and South America, Europe, Asia, and Africa have ground together to form the new organisation, which pledges to pursue community engagement through design.
10 Years of Studio Job on view at the Armory Show in New York
A capsule Chamber gallery exhibition covering 10 years of work by designers Studio Job is on view at the Armory Show art fair in New York (+ slideshow). The gallery is showing six Studio Job pieces at the fair, which is located on the far west side of Midtown Manhattan and runs for 3 - 6 March. The objects created by the Belgium-based artists range from a bust of a horse mounted on a vacuum cleaner to a drawing of a sinking ship and a large three-part mirror.
Alan G Brake applauds the Met's move into the Breuer building
Opinion: the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art's temporary move in to the Whitney's old unprotected Breuer building is the result of behind-the-scenes machinations of a major donor. Thank goodness, says Alan G Brake. It might be surprising that one of New York City's best examples of publicly accessible modern architecture could be passed from one museum to another with no public oversight.
Foster + Partners' 3 Sutton Place tower in New York cancelled
The developer behind Foster + Partners' 3 Sutton Place tower on Manhattan's East Side, originally planned to be 290-metres tall, lost a fight to block foreclosure proceedings on the site before declaring itself bankrupt this week. Developer Bauhouse Group defaulted on a $127 million (£89 million) loan from Gamma Real Estate and the site was set to be sold, effectively cancelling the project.
NASA designs supersonic passenger jet for overland flights
NASA has unveiled a conceptual design for a supersonic plane that would be much quieter than Concorde. The image released by the United States space agency shows a long, slim craft with a pointed nose and curved wings at the rear of the plane. Aircraft designers and operators have long pursued the idea of flying faster than the speed of sound. But commercial supersonic flight ended when the iconic Concorde aircraft went out of service in 2003, which NASA hopes to change with the new quiet aircraft.
Daniel Arsham evokes knocked-through walls at SCAD
Snarkitecture co-founder Daniel Arsham has opened a solo show at the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) Museum of Art in Georgia, which features eroded, rippled and cloth-like wall installations. Called The Future Was Then, artist and designer Arsham's exhibition includes a series of faux concrete walls called Wall Excavation, which looks as if a series of vertical surfaces have been blasted through.
University of Texas architecture dean leaves over gun law
The dean of the School of Architecture at the University of Texas has resigned over a new state law that will allow students to carry guns on campus. Frederick "Fritz" Steiner will leave the Austin university after 15 years in the role to take up the post of dean of Penn Design, the University of Pennsylvania's architecture school. The Pennsylvania university, Steiner's alma mater, announced the appointment yesterday.
Monumental architectural object unites an LA office by Domaen
A pair of conference rooms are housed within a sculptural glass and plywood volume at the centre of this Los Angeles office, created by California studio Domaen in a converted warehouse (+ slideshow). Domaen created the interior for Pasadena-based creative agency Conscious Minds, whose clients include Nike, Levis and Red Bull.
Virgin Galactic reveals updated passenger spacecraft
Virgin Galactic has unveiled an updated version of its commercial SpaceShipTwo craft, the Virgin Spaceship Unity, which will begin renewed testing in California and New Mexico following a fatal crash in 2015. Virgin Galactic owner Richard Branson said the spacecraft comes with "new bells and whistles" in a promotional video, though the company was vague about how the new plane's technology differs from SpaceShipTwo.
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