Hello and sorry for the long hiatus, due to overwork at Microcities, lately. This quick post is to thank friends at Think Space and Adrian Lahoud, … [Read more...]
Tango, by Zbigniew Rybczyński (1980)
Tango is certainly a prodigy of pre-digital animation. The experimental short video shows thirty-six characters interacting in one room, moving in … [Read more...]
Hoppla Kultur (50 pictures to the glory of our time) by A. Paul Weber
Ambiguous figure in German history and art, Andreas Paul Weber, prominent lithographer, draftsman and painter, was imprisoned during the Nazi regime … [Read more...]
Grant Wood and Regionalism (Visions on Rural Life and Work)
Together with John Steuart Curry and Thomas Hart Benton, Grant Wood was one of the three major figures of American regionalist art movement of the … [Read more...]
Images of a Changing World: Settai Komura (1887–1940)
Settai Komura (1887–1940) was a refined yet prolific Shin Hanga artist. As a kabuki stage set designer, he produced around 200 works. He also was an … [Read more...]
Salaryman 6 – A Modern Tale of Overwork in Japan
Salaryman #6, a short 2002 movie, is a tale of modern life in Japan. A man is seen sprawled on the floor in an office; his colleagues help him to his … [Read more...]
“Taking Measures Across the American Landscape” by James Corner and Alex McLean
James Corner, internationally renowned landscape architect and forerunner of the landscape urbanism movement, was author in 1996 of "Taking Measures … [Read more...]
Pierre-Antoine Marraud, Proposal for a Dystopian Architecture
Some days ago I've been invited as part of the final jury for Pierre-Antoine Marraud (a former student of our atelier at ESA) diploma. This is his … [Read more...]
The Territory as an Abstract Cartography
Waiting to find some time to write a more extensive post, we leave you with the marvelous details of early geological maps from the 19th and 20th … [Read more...]
Atemporality at Work *
* Kazys Varnelis couldn't possibly better resume this series of collage drawings recently featured on Archive of Affinities: "Chief among these is … [Read more...]
Relational Cities, by Fabio Alessandro Fusco
Fabio Alessandro Fusco, Italian architect and teacher, made a set of drawings entitled "Relational Cities". The Relational Cities are conceptual … [Read more...]
Book Review: Pamphlet Architecture 11-20
Pamphlet Architecture is a Princeton Architectural Press publication founded in 1977 "as an alternative to mainstream architectural publishing". With … [Read more...]
Chris Marker’s Junkopia
Passed away the last month, Chris Marker will be mostly remembered for his 1962 film La Jetée, a post-apocalyptic tale of time travels constructed … [Read more...]
A Collection of Italian Board Games (Mostly 19th to 20th Century)
Kindly offered by the artist and architect Maurizio Cilli through his facebook account and mostly based upon the Game of the Goose. This collection … [Read more...]
Mark Lombardi’s Narrative Structures and Other Mappings of Power Relations
(...) the great question today is the question of globalization, the question of the unity of the world. Globalization proposes to us an abstract … [Read more...]
Mas Yendo Speaking of Himself
Two days ago Socks featured the work of Mas Yendo. Thanks to Stefano Massa (@doctorcrowd on Twitter) we can update the post with a video interview of … [Read more...]
Mas Yendo: Machines for Living in The End of Times
“What I speculate in my work is that new technologies will play an important part in how architects embrace new ideas. The advancement of seemingly … [Read more...]
Oscar Newman’s Underground City Beneath Manhattan
The architect and city planner Oscar Newman, better known for his dreadful "Defensible space theory", (pdf here) also fostered in 1969 the bizarre … [Read more...]
About Metropolis
Metropolis is probably the film that set a standard for 20th century science fiction. The futuristic urban dystopia depicted by Austrian director … [Read more...]
A False Paris Outside Paris: a ‘City’ Created to be Bombed
With exactly the same title, on 6 November 1920, the story of Sham Paris was revealed by The Illustrated London News. Located in the northern … [Read more...]
dOCUMENTA13: Francis Alÿs’ REEL/UNREEL (2011)
"On the 5th of september 2001, the taliban confiscated thousands of reels of film from the Afghan Film Archive and burned them on the outskirts of … [Read more...]
dOCUMENTA 13: News From Nowhere, by Moon Kyungwon & Jeon Joonho, [a Retrospective from the Future]
News from Nowhere is probably the most ambitious art-project of Kassel's dOCUMENTA 13. Presented in three forms: a film, an installation, a … [Read more...]
The Future of Architecture and other Collages by Nils-Ole Lund
Danish architect, teacher and collage-artist, author of Collage Architecture in 1990, Nils-Ole Lund's fosters the idea that modern architecture … [Read more...]
Otto Dix, Der Krieg (The War) – 1924
First World War was such a traumatic experience for Otto Dix, (he served as a machine-gunner in the Western front from 1914 to 1918) that he later … [Read more...]
