About a month ago, I had the chance to meet Paul Goldberger, whose extensive career includes a Pulitzer Prize for Distinguished Criticism while being architecture critic at The New York Times, position he later held at The New Yorker, and Dean of the Parsons School of Design in New York. He is also author of several books, including “Why Architecture Matters” and the biography of Frank Gehry: “Building Art: The Life and Work of Frank Gehry”, to be published by Alfred A. Knopf this coming September.
Over the last few months, I have been involved, as co-founder, in shaping a collective architecture practice that I am very proud to be presenting today: knitknot architecture.
knitknot architecture is an international collective of Architects, Urban Planners, Artists and Thinkers with the aim of creating a framework to work collectively as a professional studio.
As the third part of the series “Issues in Contemporary Architecture”, curated by Pedro Gadanho, last November 22nd opened at the Museum of Modern Art in New York the Exhibition “Uneven Growth: Tactical Urbanism for Expanding Megacities”.
The name of the exhibition attracted my interest from the first moment; since seeing an institution like the MoMA using the term “tactical urbanism” is an indicative on the impact that this kind of proposals are currently having in the architectural scene.
A new permanent section has been added to “Open Source Urbanism”.
Together with the pages “About”, “Contact” and “Links” you can find now “Publications”, a place to gather all the articles published in other media, as magazines, internet sites, confence publications… in my aim to expand the reach of the topics treated in the blog.
Once more, an exciting new section that hopefully you will enjoy reading as much as I did writing.
To continue with the series OSU//Interviews, I would like to introduce Andrés Jaque, architect founder of the Office for Political Innovation, Advanced Design Professor at Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation GSAPP Columbia University and Visiting Professor at Princeton School of Architecture. He has recently being awarded with the silver lion to the best research project at the 14th Venice Biennale with the work entitled: “SALES ODDITY. Milano2 and the Politics of Direct-To-Home TV Urbanism”.
I was quite shocked when I realized how fast this second year has passed, it may sound cliché but it feels like yesterday when I was writing the first anniversary post.
In terms of articles published, it has been a bit less productive than the first one; I like to think that is because I got established after the first push. But I have also had my first experiences publishing in magazines, the Venezuelan “entre rayas” and the Autralian “Post magazine”, both of them great experiences and with more to come.
I also had the great chance of opening an interviews section starting with Saskia Sassen, an absolute pleasure. Section that I really enjoy both writing and reading and will (very soon) keep growing.
So, one year more, just thank everyone who has spent some time reading the posts, stay tuned for what is coming!
The Death and Life of Great American Cities, by Jane Jacobs, is the last Architecture-related book that has ended in my hands. A long overdue read that currently has earned a fixed spot in the bag that shares with me any displacement I do in New York.
The book is widely known since it was first published and one of the most influential texts about the way cities work. Going through its pages, you may find yourself producing a huge amount of thoughts after almost every paragraph.
It has been a while since the last time I posted an entry, and for that reason I feel the need of writing some words before getting back in track with more articles, interviews and collaborations.
The main reason that has caused the break is my recent incorporation to a high-demanding architectural office in the city. I am taking part into very exciting and extremely interesting projects but I also find myself questioning the principles of the current practice model (something I will explain in a future post) as something in highly need for a change.
In the meantime there has been also very good news, since I will get an article published in the next issue of “POST Magazine”. It has been a pleasure working with them; I am looking forward to receiving the printed copy.
Anyhow, I feel ready, as I said, to get back on track, since I have still a lot of topics to talk about.
Stay tuned! And thanks for the support!