Log 57 – Black is . . . an’ Black ain’t . . . Cynthia Davidson (Ed.). Anyone Corporation

Posted in magazines, Theory on May 30th, 2023
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Log 57 – Black is . . . an’ Black ain’t . . .
Anyone Corporation,

USA, 
Architecture, 
Magazine, 
“Calls for more Blackness in architecture schools can be simplistic,” writes architect Darell Wayne Fields, guest editor of Log 57. Well-meaning equity and inclusion programs often simply “associate the mere presence of Black bodies with institutional change.” In Log 57, a 208-page thematic issue titled Black is . . . an’ Black ain’t . . ., 29 authors explore the complexities of Blackness as it relates to aesthetics and architectural pedagogy. As Fields notes, “In calling for more Blackness, I, for one, am calling for more Black methodology. An inherent characteristic of [which] is a measurement of difference.”
To that end, Log 57 gathers essays and reflections on architectural pedagogies, both in academia and in practice, by Sean Canty, Michelle JaJa Chang, Ajay Manthripragada, and Mónica Ponce de León, among others. Projects by young designers for whom methodological concepts of Black Signification and bricolage are central are presented in a four-color section, and built works and a preservation effort channel difference as a generative force in real-world communities. “This work demonstrates what is possible when methodological change is real,” writes Fields. “Real change, like Blackness, makes us nervous. Black difference, however, is revolutionary.”

Contents

Chelsea Jno Baptiste, Savannah Cheung & Sahil Mohan, “VERSatile Method”

Tamara Birghoffer, “House for a House”

Kenneth Brabham Jr., “A Room for Jacob Lawrence”

Alex Cabana, “Fuller’s Spine”

Barrington Calvert, “Speakeasy for the Revolution”

Barrington Calvert & Nick Meehan, “Preservation Operations: A Guided Tour of American Legion Post 218”

Sean Canty, “All the Things You Are: Latency as an Aesthetic Practice”

Brian Cavanaugh & Darell Wayne Fields, “University of Oregon Black Cultural Center”

Michelle JaJa Chang, “Shadows and Other Things”

Eunice Chung, “Bigness and Blackness”

Matt Conway, “Drunk Datums”

Melinda Denn, “A House for Rosie Lee Tompkins”

Nitzan Farfel, “A House Is a Brothel”

Darell Wayne Fields, “Prologue to a Black Pedagogy”

Rachel Ghindea, “House for the Dead”

Mitzy González, “Nepantla: An Altar for Gloria E. Anzaldúa”

Bernardo Guerra Jr., “Asylum–Proximity”

Kaleb Houston & Hannah Terry, “Black Architecture 101”

Reese Lewis, “The Speculative Devaluation of 270 Park Avenue”

Ajay Manthripragada, “A Double Untying”

Sydney Rose Maubert, “the gate: the erotics of Black worship”

Nick Meehan, “House for No One”

Christina Moushoul, “A House for Sitcoms”

Rudabeh Pakravan, “Building Fronts”

Mónica Ponce de León, “Modest Ambitions”

Elizabeth Grace Siqueira, “House for Friars”

Eunice Takahaye Slanwa, “A House for Mary and Ayak”

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LOG 56: The Model Behavior Exhibition cataLog. Cynthia Davidson (Ed.). Anyone Corporation

Posted in Exhibition catalogue, Journals, magazines, research on February 12th, 2023
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This special issue is the cataLog for Model Behavior, a group exhibition of models, architectural and otherwise, curated by the Anyone Corporation and presented by The Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture at The Cooper Union in New York City. The exhibition, which ran October 4–November 18, 2022, questioned the role of the model in projecting or eliciting social behavior. In addition to documenting the 55 exhibited works with four-color images and project descriptions, the 160-page cataLog includes essays by curator Cynthia Davidson; by architecture theorists Jörg H. Gleiter, Kiel Moe, and Christophe Van Gerrewey; and by art historian Annabel Jane Wharton.



MODEL BEHAVIOR

OCTOBER 4 – NOVEMBER 18, 2022

A GROUP EXHIBITION CURATED BY THE ANYONE CORPORATION AND PRESENTED BY THE IRWIN S. CHANIN SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE OF THE COOPER UNION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE AND ART

Models, whether physical or digital, are intrinsic to architecture. Just as science, mathematics, politics, economics, and other fields use models to visualize, reflect, and predict behaviors, so do architectural models. Model Behavior, a group exhibition curated by Log editor Cynthia Davidson, designed by New Affiliates (Ivi Diamantopoulou and Jaffer Kolb), considered how architectural models contribute to shaping social behaviors. Model Behavior featured 70 works and objects by 45 artists and architects including artists Olafur Eliasson, Isamu Noguchi, Ekow Nimako, and Thomas Demand, and architects Peter Eisenman, Darell Wayne Fields, Greg Lynn, Forensic Architects (Eyal Weizman), First Office (Anna Neimark and Andrew Atwood), MALL (Jennifer Bonner), Ensamble (Débora Mesa and Antón García-Abril), and Höweler and Yoon (Eric Höweler and Meejin Yoon).

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LOG 55. Cynthia Davidson (Ed.). Anyone Corporation

Posted in magazines on October 12th, 2022
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From a bridge to blockchain, Amazonian urbanism to artificial intelligence, Log 55 recognizes the vast concerns of architecture today. This 176-page open issue, which includes a 16-page color insert, compiles essays, building and exhibition reviews, and remarks by 25 architects, theorists, and artists from around the world. In Berlin, Tim Altenhof critiques the newly rebuilt Humboldt Forum; in Los Angeles, Victor J. Jones reviews Michael Maltzan’s Ribbon of Light Viaduct; in New York, Cynthia Davidson visits the late Virgil Abloh’s “social sculpture,” and Thomas de Monchaux views “Anthony Ames Fifty Paintings”; in Quito, Ana María Durán Calisto and Sanford Kwinter draw inspiration from Indigenous territorial intelligence; in Rotterdam, Christophe Van Gerrewey reflects on MVRDV’s Boijmans Depot; in Taipei, Kwang-Yu King compares two new cultural venues by OMA and RUR; and in Tokyo, Jan Vranoský pens a postmortem for Kisho Kurokawa’s Nakagin Capsule Tower. Matthew Allen looks to computer science for a way out of the theory-practice divide; Simone Brott considers the ways NFTs will change architectural practice; Karel Klein draws parallels between memory and AI; and Marija Marič warns against digitized real estate fractions.

In addition, a special section guest edited by Francesco Marullo is devoted to Notes on the Desert. The section, which raises issues of climate change and the extraction economy, includes essays by architect Nathan Friedman on the US-Mexico border, artist Kim Stringfellow on jackrabbit homesteads, feminist scholar Traci Brynne Voyles on the 49ers, and architect Lydia Xynogala speaking for a desert toad; photo essays by the Center for Land Use Interpretation on nuclear tombs and by photographer Susan Lipper on desert utopia; as well as an interview with photographer Richard Misrach on his Cantos series.

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