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Zaha Hadid Wins Defamation Battle, Loses Reputation War
The London celebrity architect Zaha Hadid has attracted widespread criticism for saying she has no power to affect labor conditions reported to be akin to slavery on the building site of the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, where she has designed a voluptuous stadium. It’s reported that hundreds have died of heatstroke and other worksite Read more
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Winning Hearts and Minds in #Ferguson
Police in riot gear and armored vehicles confronting a couple hundred angry suburbanites was unthinkable until a few days ago. The ordinary middle-class people of Ferguson, Mo., turn out to be mostly black, protesting ongoing harassment after a police killing of an unarmed young man. The unrest brought back images of law-enforcement clashing with black citizens Read more
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The Stupid Starchitect Debate
“Here’s to the demise of Starchitecture!” wrote Beverly Willis, in The New York Times recently. Willis, through her foundation, has done much to promote the value of architecture. But like many critics of celebrity architecture, she gets it wrong: “In my 55-plus years of practice and involvement in architecture, I have witnessed Read more
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Why is Frank Lloyd Wright Forgiven All?
Frank Lloyd Wright was a mess. His personal life — the wives, the mistresses, the abandoned children, the crazed servant who set a tragic fire . . . . How did he ever get something like 300 buildings designed even over an extraordinarily long lifetime? His utter certainty and arrogance were usually ill-disguised. He sometimes under-engineered Read more
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Save Cities. Kill the Highway Trust Fund.
Vast, empty rural freeways to nowhere and suburban beltways clogged for miles. This is the mess the Highway Trust Fund has made. It is the best model for financing transportation. But it’s got to die. When the nation was truly dedicated to building an interstate mobility network to be funded by user fees, the Trust Read more
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Miami’s Wynwood is hot. Does That Mean It’s Over?
A small art scene develops in a neighborhood, signaled by the visual Hip Hop of wall murals—fierce faces painted one story high and fantasy scenes obsessively detailed in spray-paint tropical hues. The area quickly gains a reputation as a lively “arts” district, with performance venues, not just clubs, and galleries hanging banners to signal the Read more
James S. Russell 