Category: visual

“The way in the Welsh parliament the public walk over and look down on the politicians. The courts we built in Bordeaux are not prisons, they are places where people can learn about the law. I like the idea of trying to influence society by taking a brief then maybe subtly changing it or looking at it in a new way to see what interesting things can emerge.”

“Artists and designers are asked to donate their energies in a way that other professionals are not. They are paid in ‘exposure’ or perhaps one artist is given a cash prize. This can devalue what artists do. At the same time, there is also a culture of free exchange that exists online that is about building community and engagement and is perhaps better off being divorced from too many commercial concerns.”

“A proposed levy on sales of antiquities to raise funds for source countries to help them better protect their heritage has been proposed at an academic conference. But specialists in the antiquities trade have questioned the feasibility of the idea.”

“Sicily has canceled a major traveling exhibition of ancient treasures scheduled to open Sept. 29 at the Cleveland Museum of Art. The cancellation comes several weeks after Sicilian cultural authorities complained publicly that the prolonged loan of important antiquities to the Getty Museum in Los Angeles, where the show is now on view, was hurting the island’s tourism economy.”

“A 100m tall cliff-face of blue mirrored glass, stretching 500m along a triumphal plaza, the New Century Global Centre [in Chengdu] houses an entire seaside resort, along with a 14-screen Imax cinema, Olympic-sized ice rink, two five-star hotels and its own Mediterranean shopping village – all wrapped with a vast ribbon of offices.”

“The Palais Lumière, a 254 metre-high skyscraper planned for the ex-industrial area of Marghera, 9.5 kilometres from the centre of Venice, will not now be built.” Cardin is “abandoning the project because two and a half years had gone by without the necessary permissions being granted,” due to opposition from local officials and residents as well as Italy’s culture minister.

“The Centre Pompidou in Paris is abandoning its mobile museum project at home and plans to launch instead a temporary exhibition in Saudi Arabia, modelled on the show that has toured the French provinces for the past two years.”

“The Design Museum has been located in a former banana ripening factory at London’s Shad Thames, near London Bridge, since it opened in 1989. On Tuesday, the museum announced it was selling the building to Zaha Hadid Architects.”

“The battle over the preservation of Moscow’s architectural heritage has become visibly political in recent weeks, as prominent opposition parties criticized acting mayor Sergei Sobyanin’s policies. Several candidates have promised to address the issue in the run-up to this September’s mayoral race.”