Today’s post is going to be about a handful of things that have caught my attention.
- Gary Hack, who is the former dean of the University of Pennsylvania School of Design, recently published a book called Site Planning: International Practice. It is a textbookish guide to planning processes, new technologies, and sustainability, with an emphasis on rapidly urbanizing countries. Thank you to my friend Michael Geller for bringing this to my attention.
- Sidewalk Labs Toronto is opening a new experimental workspace here in Toronto at 307 Lake Shore Boulevard East (Queens Quay & Parliament) on Saturday, June 16th from 12 - 6pm. It’s an old fish processing plant that they have turned into their office. The team will work there during the week and on the weekends they will open to the public to showcase what they’re up to. Register for the June 16th event, here. I just did.
- Alexandra Lange has a recent piece in the New Yorker called, The Hidden Women of Architecture and Design. It’s about the important role that women have played in the “design of childhood”, which is the title of a book by Lange. There’s also a short but interesting story about Detroit’s Lafayette Park (Mies van der Rohe) at the beginning of the article.
- Finally, here is a blog post by Witold Rybczynski where he talks about the shortcomings of architectural education. Obscure theories. Technical or made-up jargon. And no concern for budgets and schedules. I have always shared a similar view and have long felt that there needs to be more business school in architecture school.
Hopefully there’s something in here that is of interest to you.