Friends of The New York Review of Architecture,
We are happy to be mailing No. 18 this week, managed by Nicolas Kemper, and designed by Freer Studio. Subscribe here and we will send you a copy. Here it is, at a83:
As we continue to experiment with our format, we made a few unusual moves. The designer overprinted a single image, that extends across both pages, so that after you read it, you could put the issue up on the wall, like a poster. He rendered all of the headlines and art in line work, to create a flat, consistent texture that is perfectly legible for a reader, but drops away from a distance - say, viewed across a room. The poster is festive. It restates our goal to become a cooperative (we are currently organizing as such), festooned in produce.
The opposite side is more serious - it features an edited dialogue about War & Architecture in Yemen with reporter Iona Craig, editor and writer Madeleine Schwartz, and Professor Salma Samar Damluji. The designer went above and beyond making a map that calls out all the places named in the discussion, and pulled on Damluji’s new book The Architecture of Yemen and its Reconstruction, to provide plans, sections, and elevations that illustrate the discussion.
It may seem like a bit of a non-sequitur to focus on Yemen. We foregrounded it as a matter of principle. It has been a terrible war to which America and has been complicit and from which America has in fact profited. As we change administrations, we thought it a good time to focus our energies on bringing this conflict, this people, and their extraordinary architectural heritage to life for our readers. As it turns out, after we had sent the files to press, the new Biden administration put an end to years of American hedging and announced its intention to stop the war just last week.
Throughout the rest of the issue we have a great set of articles, including a profile of Walter Hood by Tess McCann, a review of sidewalk sheds by Dan Bergsagel, a piece about the Public Design Commission by Amanda Iglesias, a review of Alan Mallach’s Divided City by Ian Lundy, a review of the New York City Ballet’s New Works, by Leticia Wouk Almino, a review of Anish Kapoor’s upcoming sculpture squished beneath 56 Leonard, by Mark Talbot, a review of Joy Knoblauch’s book, The Architecture of Good Behavior, by Thomas Wensing, and a catchup with Lesley Lokko by Tyler Survant.
The issue also features our longest ever SKYLINE column, with twelve dispatches bringing the conversations of January to life for our readers.
We are proud and excited to be sending this issue to our subscribers. Support the work, secure your copy, and join them, by subscribing here.
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