Category: visual

Ma Yansong “says that the ‘machine age’ drive to build grid-shaped cities filled with cubic buildings that race each other into the sky — first in the West, and now in China — alienates people from the spirits of nature and from each other. Silo-like skyscrapers, he says, should give way to structures that emulate the forces and forms of nature — clouds, mountains, waves — in cities of the future.”

“Small drones have been helping a growing number of researchers produce three-dimensional models of Peruvian sites instead of the usual flat maps – and in days and weeks instead of months and years.”

“Manhattan’s Hudson Yards mega-development is rising again, twice as large as Rockefeller Center and more centrally located than London’s Canary Wharf.”

After a long-running legal battle, Barcelona finally took ownership over a private residence left to the city in 1991. But works by Rembrandt, El Greco, Vélazquez, Botticelli and Goya seem to have disappeared.

“What’s odd, of course, is that 400 years ago, people were not shocked by a shitting dog, but years later, there are people out there that don’t like it.”

An Oakland artist (and the owners of the buildings where he painted) missed the info on Portland, Ore.’s “mural permit,” so police order him to paint over two large pieces.

An architectural historian says it’s time to distinguish between Germany’s “good” architectural sins – the ones that make people the angriest, like a shopping mall that looks like a meat cleaver cut it in half – and the boring bad ones.

“It really is the next generation of reproductions because they go into the third dimension. If you’re a layman, they are pretty indistinguishable [from the originals].” (And only £22,000!)

“In a happy conclusion to a roller coaster of a summer, the museum announced Thursday that Sicilian cultural authorities, including Mariarita Sgarlata, the island’s highest official for the arts, have rescinded the cancellation. Sicilian authorities will allow the show to go on without attaching extra loan fees, as they had proposed in July.”

“Using bright, messy paints and a knack for arranging trash that rivals Japanese ikebana masters, [Francisco de] Pájaro has transformed a construction dumpster into a toothy shark, a stack of cardboard boxes into a lecherous centipede, and piles of bin bags into what looks like a Smurf snuggle party.”