Hostile design–whereby public spaces are modified to deter certain activities such as rough sleeping and skateboarding–is a “stealthy way of policing public space. These designs legitimise the point of view that homeless people are the enemy. Instead they need support, often with addiction or mental health.”
Blog
Yale’s New Cultural Hub Gets A Director
The center, designed by Robert A.M. Stern Architects and due to open in 2020, will present performances for people at Yale and the general public — from poetry readings to rock concerts. Located in the current freshman dining hall Commons (which will remain) and Memorial Hall, the center will also serve as a communal campus hub, with multiple gathering spaces, including a bistro and pub on the renovated basement level.
They Play Classical Music In London’s Underground. For What Purpose?
“Anti-loitering tactics first came into UK law as part of the Vagrancy Act of 1824, which was aimed at tackling begging, prostitution, and sleeping rough, which are still criminalized today. The approach of a government of 200 years ago to tackle a symptom of a social problem rather than its root cause has fundamentally not changed. I began to think that the classical music played in these stations was symptomatic of a backward society.”
How Washington Post Critics Look At The Arts
We have our little ways, we cockeyed critics — tips and techniques picked up over years of writing reviews, sometimes at leisure and sometimes under extreme deadline pressure, responding to something familiar (Beethoven again, or Meryl Streep) or to something barely identifiable flying in from left field.
Singapore Is Losing Its Place In The Art World To Hong Kong
“Hong Kong is a more mature market and the community is more spontaneous in terms of buying art. Singapore is a young market and apart from a small handful of established collectors, new buyers are a lot more considered, and they keep galleries on their toes.”
How Is It We Came To Hate Talking On Our Phones?
Not only are phone calls unstable, but even when they connect and stay connected in a technical sense, you still can’t hear well enough to feel connected in a social one. By their very nature, mobile phones make telephony seem unreliable.
Call To Action: Curators, Historians, Artists Call For More Engaged Cultural Institutions
“We are writing to affirm the leadership role of cultural institutions in advancing cultural and social as well as political public discourse. As stewards and advocates of contemporary and historical cultural expressions, we directors, curators, and staff members of cultural institutions, as well as the board members to whom we are accountable, have a particular obligation to facilitate the free and safe exchange of ideas about our contemporary world with art as the catalyst.”
The Curious Case Of The Movie Whose Studio Lost Confidence In It
Annihilation will still hit screens in the world’s two biggest markets—the U.S. and China—but the Netflix partnership is an unusually public show of nervousness over the film’s profitability. Paramount can use the money from the deal to help recoup the film’s reported $55 million budget, but if Annihilation is a hit, the studio will miss out on any international grosses. The deal also effectively signals Paramount’s lack of trust in the vision of the filmmaker it hired.
Do We Code-Switch When We Laugh The Way We Do When We Speak?
Of course we do – think of how you’d laugh in an office meeting versus how you’d do it at a bar or a theater. But how much of the switching is based in the situation at hand, and how much in the personal identity of the laugher?
Why It’s Important To Study “Useless” Subjects
“As robots take over routine jobs, we will need people who can think creatively, imaginatively, logically and laterally. Acquiring a narrow “skillset” of the kind society increasingly demands will, in fact, leave students not equipped for the future, but vulnerable to it.”