S K Y L I N E | Midsummer Multitudes
Shannon Mattern, Christopher Hawthorne, Anjulie Rao, David Chalmers, and more
Issue 119. Our latest print issue is out and makes for great beach reading! Subscribe here.
Pinning down the official midpoint of summer appears to be much more complicated than one would have thought (is it Midsummer or Lammas Day?), but going by the simplest calculation, this issue of SKYLINE arrives one day shy of that mark. And yet, the architecture calendar has been surprisingly full. The following dispatches span numerous topics, from the intelligence of trees and the possibility space of AI to the crisis of criticism and architectural practice more widely.
— Palmyra Geraki
DISPATCHES
06/21: Wood Wide Web
MORNINGSIDE HEIGHTS — As part of Columbia University’s Arguments Lecture Series, historian SHANNON MATTERN, who studies big data and smart objects, led a wide-ranging conversation on how we conceptualize intelligence and what we can learn from trees. She talked about tree rings as progenitors of data collection and spoke of how in cities, tree canopy aligns with income, employment, race, age, and health factors, whereas in rural areas, it can hinder the already slow broadband internet or 5G, especially once trees grow into their summer foliage. She likened the “wood wide web”—the mycorrhizal network that connects forest trees and the fungi on their roots through an underground system of resource exchange (a theory a recent article in Nature called “largely disconnected from evidence”)—to the internet and human interactions. She critiqued half-hearted tree planting campaigns used as abatement measures by coal and gas interests to avoid reductions in emissions. Mattern conceded that her research is still only “a sapling of an idea” and described her talk as a series of as-of-yet loosely related branches, motivated by the recognition that “our cords and cables are entangled with roots and vines.”
— Kayla Seikkula
06/28: Critical Cuts
LOWER EAST SIDE — In a discussion organized by Urban Design Forum and The Architectural League, CHRISTOPHER HAWTHORNE and ANJULIE RAO described the role of the critic as principally educational: to make government language accessible to the greater public, to make culture transparent to their readers, and as Rao offered, to “put a name to something that the public cannot describe.”
The pair was joined in conversation by fellows of the New City Critics program, which engages diverse perspectives in writing about cities. If criticism is in crisis, asked fellow CALIL ARGUEDAS-RUSSELL, then what can be done? “There is always the crisis of not being paid enough and having healthcare,” said Rao, who is based in Chicago. “But I want the crisis to be reporting and editorializing merging together and editors not knowing what to do with it.” She added that her critical practice was connected to her experience as a lecturer who pushes her students to investigate the interconnectivity between architecture and city politics.
Hawthorne commented on the niche quality of criticism. “We live in a culture of marketing and things for sale. Critics are on the periphery of that culture.” he said. Not exactly inspiring words, but a look at Hawthorne’s CV offers some hope: in 2018, he left his long-standing post as architecture critic of the Los Angeles Times to become the city’s first chief design officer. He has since relocated to New Haven and teaches at Yale, but his career shifts exemplify the idea that those who write are not limited to words, they may also take up action.
— Michael Piantini
06/28: Duet with the Machine
MEATPACKING DISTRICT — In the offices of venture capital startup betaworks, philosopher DAVID CHALMERS, author STEVEN JOHNSON, and betaworks CEO JOHN BORTHWICK speculated on the rapidly developing paths towards human-level artificial intelligence. Referencing Chalmers’s and Andy Clark’s extended mind thesis from 1998, Johnson advocated for creatives to embrace “working in a duet with the machine.” When asked about the links between virtual spaces and AI, Borthwick suggested that they are “the places [where] we are going to first meet other forms of intelligence.” Citing the earliest failed attempts at human flight, which analogically reproduced flapping wings, the group predicted that the technology that gives rise to an AI worthy of the name might not resemble the biological structures of human or animal intelligence. “It might be more simple than we thought,” mused moderator RUFUS GRISCOM. But Chalmers tempered the enthusiasm of his co-panelists: “The things that excite me the most are the same things that scare me the most. I have infinite excitement and infinite fears. Everyone should concede there is a risk.”
— Taylor Dover
6/29: Training Mode
ZOOM — As part of a collateral event of the Venice Architecture Biennale organized by New York Institute of Technology, faculty member PABLO LORENZO-EIROA led a discussion about his recently published book Digital Signifiers in an Architecture of Information (Routledge). The conversation centered around the role of big data in enabling AI models and the inherent bias within those models. Lorenzo-Eiroa questioned the currently prevalent mode of working with externally created “black box” AI models and challenged architects to get their hands dirty. “If you don’t own the means of production,” he said, “you are not the author. We have to access the processes. Otherwise we become the product.” He offered as a case study work realized in conjunction with his students, who collected immense amounts of data in the form of 3D point clouds and trained their own algorithms to imagine new neighborhoods, hybrids of existing landmarks, and altogether new forms in the urban grid. When respondent ALEXIS MEIER raised questions about the conspicuously absent concepts of materiality and subjectivity in the work, Lorenzo-Eiroa defended his process: “I start with deep structure, but the objective is to arrive at experience.”
— Taylor Dover
06/29: Garden Variety?
LA GUARDIA PLACE — During a two-hour lecture at the Center for Architecture, FRANCOISE RAUNAUD and JONATHAN THORNBILL of Paris-based architecture practice Loci Anima presented a multitude of projects, loosely grouped by project typology and catchy ecological headings such as “respecting the ground” and “continuity of the soil.” The office’s oeuvre can be parsed not through a singular aesthetic but via a diversity of techniques, programs, and sites. The primary motivation behind the work stems from a belief that places have souls and therefore rights.“If we allow ourselves to believe that places have a soul,” said Raunaud, “we are more inclined to respect them, to preserve them.” But for all the talk of a building's internal life force, it is external pressures that rule the design of the Urban Fractal Tower in Hudson Square. While the pair cast the project in poetic terms (they spoke of it as being “grown from the soil” and likened its silhouette to a “vernacular verticality”) keen observers will see something more banal: a savvy development modeled on vintage New York towers and oriented to take advantage of million-dollar river views.
— Layna Chen
06/29: Comfort Levels
ZOOM — The final pair of presentations from the Architecture League Prize’s Uncomfortable series treated the audience to a playful, animate vision of architecture as facilitator of empathy, love, and “second lives.” For KATIE MACDONALD and KYLE SCHUMANN of After Architecture, technology can breathe new life into materials considered waste by-products or at end-of-life; for instance, in one project felled diseased tree trunks became tessellated interlocking tile walls and roofs. For JOSEPH ALTSHULER and ZACH MORRISON of Could be Design, elements of walls, floors, and roofs become colorful anthropomorphic assemblies. According to Altshuler, these “creatures,” though remaining within the architectural, “form connections between people and build relationships between biotic and abiotic beings.” Connecting the two addresses was a hopeful, buoyant disposition toward the uncomfortable crises of our times.
— Malaika Kim
07/06: Let It Flood
MONTREAL — Straightening the unpredictable flow of water, enforcing the binary paradigm of water/land, and erasing the “otherness” of swamps are strategies that have always been employed to transform territories into devices of power, according to researcher and writer ANDREA BAGNATO. In the study room of the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal, the Italian scholar, one of the CCA’s 2023 research fellows, presented his research on Luca Danese. A professionally fluid figure (as was customary in the pre-modern era), Danese had a background in literature and law and was an architect, engineer, and political figure. Active in seventeenth-century Italy, he oversaw the construction of canals, embankments, and bridges in the Po River delta. His interventions, often devised after destructive floods, were theatrical, with a muscular affect that telegraphed their aim of taming the “feminine” fluidity of water. Today, the marshy landscape of the delta is gone, the result of agricultural sprawl and overexploitation of natural resources, causing disastrous floods (this spring, a flood displaced some 20,000 people), while rising sea levels are expected to “reclaim” the former swamps. Constantly flipping between historical drawings and recent satellite imagery, Bagnato argued that Danese’s work should be read as part of the never-ending human efforts to separate water and land. “How do we make space for water,” he asked in conclusion. A question that inevitably makes me wonder when we will finally accept fluidity.
— Giacomo Rossi
07/10: The Kids Are Alright
ZOOM — Reimagining the foundations of financial and social security is a challenging yet crucial endeavor. In the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, the nature of the workplace has become a focal point of debate and transformation. In an event cosponsored by the American Council on Germany and New York event space 1014, labor expert THORBEN ALBRECHT explained that “the pandemic has been an accelerator of trends” within the labor market, such as remote work and the spread of white-collar unions. Historian ANNELISE ORLECK commended the emerging Gen Z workforce for their different way of thinking. This global generation, she argued, demonstrates a broad and personal approach to their work style and purpose, which plays a crucial role in exposing geopolitical and geoeconomic inequalities. By challenging the status quo, Gen Z spotlights the existing disparities and advocates for positive change within the workplace internationally.
— Anthony Reyes
07/10: Get the Money
LA GUARDIA PLACE — Do clients and the public understand an architect’s value? Do architects understand it? Are architects a self-selecting group of business-averse introverts? These were the questions that anchored a lively, wide ranging, and vital conversation on the complicated relationship between architects and value, organized by AIANY’s Future of Practice Committee. Co-chairs JACOB REIDEL and ANDRÉ SOLURI shared the stage with ERIN PELLEGRINO and MICHAEL CATON, with MARJANNE PEARSON, ENOCH SEARS, and JAKE RUDIN joining virtually (all have found ways out of conventional architectural practice), to discuss the “elephants in the room”: academia, the AIA, and a professional culture persistently aloof from business. “Are we missing the business development gene?” asked Soluri. Pellegrino responded that business acumen is not a gene, but a skill that is learned in school. Sears lamented how owner representatives and construction managers are taking over. Successful larger firms, mentioned Pearson, always have a business manager, but panelists agreed that smaller firm leaders have to embrace both sides. The panel ended on a positive note, with Pearson noting that a culture shift was in the offing: Gen Z seems more comfortable talking openly about and advocating for money.
— Pierce Reynoldson
In June, a group of activists, artists, and educators launched a new initiative called the Shape of Cities to Come Institute (SCCI). Describing themselves as “a New York City based co-learning and strategizing platform for urban activism that brings together experienced and powerful movement builders from many different worlds to shape equitable, compassionate and just cities,” SCCI invites New Yorkers rooted in local movements to apply to their inaugural “STUDY.PLAY.ACT” program, in which a group of peers will be given the time, space, and resources to engage in collective study and group project development. Applications are open until July 24 and info sessions are open to anyone who’s interested. Learn more and apply now at www.shapeofcitiestocome.org.
IN THE NEWS
Bad news: in the first union vote at a private sector architecture firm in fifty years, the workers at Snøhetta turned down the union. Architectural Workers United made a statement saying management hired a law firm to wage an anti-union campaign. The Architect’s Newspaper pointed out the many countries where architects are already unionized, including France, Portugal, Australia, and Snøhetta’s home country, Norway.
More bad news: the Financial Times broke a story that David Adjaye has been accused of sexual misconduct by three women, opening up further accusations and leading to a rush by current clients such as Rice University and the Studio Museum in Harlem to distance themselves from Adjaye Associates. It will not be easy. As the New York Times pointed out, “buildings in their solidity and permanence are more difficult to cancel.” One client that is not worried? The brokers at 130 William, who in fact speculated, on the record with Curbed, that “the news about Adjaye could even push up resale prices” because of a possible “future where 130 William is his only luxury building in New York.”
Good news: after a series of columns this spring (including a fiery denunciation of gray), Kate Wagner is now officially the architecture correspondent for the Nation. By the way, Fiat recently announced it will no longer make gray cars. Coincidence?
In publishing news, Bhaskar Sunkara, founder of Jacobin and now president of the Nation, took one more publication under his wing when he brought Bookforum back from the dead. Yasmin Nair ripped into the Drunken Canal’s successor, Byline, after the website’s founders admitted—to the Times, no less—to not paying their writers.
In infrastructure news, ASTM North America launched an aggressive publicity push for a better design for Penn Station…and won Michael Kimmelman’s endorsement. Construction is set to (finally) begin on a new tunnel under the Hudson River, which may not be entirely a good thing as apparently all of our tunnels and basements are actually significantly heating up the ground below cities.
In infrastructure-less news, New York’s homeless population reached a record 100,000, testing the city’s right to shelter.
And…it would appear MoMA’s Martino Stierli got bit by a shark.
DATELINE
The week ahead…
Friday, 7/14
Summer Lecture Series with David Freeland & Laure Michelon
12:30 PM PDT | University of California Los Angeles Architecture and Urban Design
Strange Matters Issue #2 Launch Party
7:00 PM EDT | 472 Gates Avenue, Brooklyn
Saturday, 7/15
Performance by Ali Dineen
5:00 PM EDT | Storefront for Art and Architecture
Monday, 7/17
National Letters: Languages and Scripts as Nation-building Tools with Marek Nedelka
12:30 PM EDT | The Herb Lubalin Study Center & Type at Cooper Union
Summer Lecture Series with Natalie Alima
12:30 PM PDT | University of California Los Angeles Architecture and Urban Design
Wednesday, 7/19
Arguments Lecture Series with Chip Lord
11:30 AM EDT | Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation
Alloy Block Tour with AJ Pires, Stephen Cassell, Adam Yarinsky, & Kim Yao
4:00 PM EDT | Urban Design Forum
Friday, 7/21
Summer Lecture Series: Nabi Boyd with Sean Boyd & Mora Nabi
12:30 PM PDT | University of California Los Angeles Architecture and Urban Design
Monday, 7/24
Summer Lecture Series: Katarina Richter-Lunn & Joel Kerner
12:30 PM PDT | University of California Los Angeles Architecture and Urban Design
Make the Road NY Tour
4:00 PM EDT | Urban Design Forum
Tuesday, 7/25
Stories from Neighborhoods Now Film Screening with Kate Levy
7:00 PM EDT | Van Alen Institute
Wednesday, 7/26
Arguments Lecture Series: Habitability with Urban Soil with Mio Tsuneyama & Fuminori Nousaku
11:30 AM EDT | Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation
Our listings are constantly being updated. Check the events page regularly for up-to-date listings and submit events through this link.
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New York Review of Architecture reviews architecture in New York. Our editor is Samuel Medina, our deputy editor is Marianela D’Aprile, and our publisher is Nicolas Kemper.
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