Oct. 30, 2024 Ι Metropolis Magazine As the front door to one of the nation’s oldest botanical gardens in continuous operation, the new Jack C. Taylor Visitor Center at the Missouri Botanical Garden’s most important job was to get out of the way and let the 79-acre campus filled with historic architecture and some of… Continue reading This Botanical Garden’s New Addition Is as Subtle as Light and Shadow
Author: zachmortice
The Tartarian Candidate
Oct. 25, 2024 Ι Bloomberg CityLab At a New Hampshire GOP meeting in January, Donald Trump took off on an odd tangent. Lamenting the Russian invasion of Ukraine, he talked about its architectural heritage. “I mean, the country, how does it ever rebuild those cities, those magnificent buildings that came down that are a thousand… Continue reading The Tartarian Candidate
Architecture Program Leaders Face Existential Accreditation Crisis
Oct. 24, 2024 Ι Architectural Record The collapse of what should have been a routine renewal of a funding agreement between the National Architectural Accrediting Board (NAAB) and its partner organizations has incited howls of protest and a near-existential crisis at many architecture programs. In 2022, NAAB requested a 47 percent funding increase, according to… Continue reading Architecture Program Leaders Face Existential Accreditation Crisis
Sometimes, Democratic Design Doesn’t “Look” Like Anything
August 26, 2024 Ι Untapped Journal There is a lesser-known shadow twin to Daniel Burnham’s epic 1909 Plan of Chicago, which synthesized many elements of contemporary urbanism we have come to expect from cities: comprehensive parks and highway systems, an orderly street grid, preserving the city’s waterfront as a public amenity, and coherent neighborhood-scaled civic… Continue reading Sometimes, Democratic Design Doesn’t “Look” Like Anything
In Chacarita Moderna: The Brutalist Necropolis of Buenos Aires, Itala Fulvia Villa’s architectural authorship of the necropolis is reclaimed
July 12, 2024 Ι Architect’s Newspaper In letters from Argentina’s Sociedad Central de Arquitectos in the 1930s, Itala Fulvia Villa, only the sixth Argentine woman architect, was addressed as “Senorita Arquitecto,” as if the letter writers feared setting a precedent with the feminine gendered form of “architect” in Spanish. They had little reason to fear… Continue reading In Chacarita Moderna: The Brutalist Necropolis of Buenos Aires, Itala Fulvia Villa’s architectural authorship of the necropolis is reclaimed
A Living Room for Bronzeville is a pop-culture revision of Mies van der Rohe’s legacy at IIT
June 12, 2024 Ι Architect’s Newspaper There are not one, but two, View-Master toys on display in A Living Room for Bronzeville, an exhibition at the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) focused on how Mies van der Rohe’s epochal vision of the modern campus inflicted itself on its neighborhood. Invented by a Black IIT graduate… Continue reading A Living Room for Bronzeville is a pop-culture revision of Mies van der Rohe’s legacy at IIT
Revisit: James R Thompson Center in Chicago, US by Helmut Jahn
Architectural Review Ι May 20, 2024 ‘Now we’re replacing the state with Google,’ says the fresh‑faced Evan Jahn, son of high‑tech postmodernist Chicago architect Helmut Jahn and president of his father’s firm. Delivered in Starship Chicago II (2023), a documentary by Nathan Eddy, it is a praiseworthy statement, for its truth on both literal and… Continue reading Revisit: James R Thompson Center in Chicago, US by Helmut Jahn
The Landscape Architecture–AI Buffer Zone
April 10, 2024 Ι Metropolis Magazine As part of his research into landscape architecture and digital technology, Aidan Ackerman, landscape architecture professor at the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry, has been examining landscape design magazines and periodicals going back to the 1980s to see how they conceptualized and predicted the integration of landscape… Continue reading The Landscape Architecture–AI Buffer Zone
The National Trust for Historic Preservation Helps Tell the Stories of Black Churches
Metropolis Magazine Ι Feb. 29, 2024 Throughout all of American history, the patch of city at 6th and Lombard in Philadelphia is the property that’s been continuously owned by Black people the longest. Not at all coincidentally, at that spot is a church—Mother Bethel AME—which has been there since 1794. This rare historical linage is… Continue reading The National Trust for Historic Preservation Helps Tell the Stories of Black Churches
Landmarking the Black Panther Party
Bloomberg CityLab Ι February 24, 2024 The walls of the Church of the Epiphany in Chicago are two feet thick, made of red-brown sandstone from the upper peninsula of Michigan. Designed by Francis Whitehouse and listed on the National Register of Historic Places, it’s a preeminent example of the Richardson Romanesque architectural style. The ornate… Continue reading Landmarking the Black Panther Party