Area 51
Welcome to another exciting episode of the newsletter. This one comes to you live and direct from Tokyo. Life got a little hectic before arriving here, so I apologize for the lack of posts. But as those of you who’ve been here from the beginning know, I always come back. So thanks for sticking around. Lots of good stuff this week, so I’ll get right to it.
Tickets are now on sale for this year’s The World Around Summit at the Guggenheim Museum in NYC
Conspiracy theorists target architect over urban planning concept
The 15-minute city deconstructed
The racist truth about urban highways
Unpacking Michael Sorkin’s library
Why biophilic design matters
Architect seeks to deliver mobile two-level residential structures to heavily flood-prone areas
The slum-inspired apartment complex designed by its residents
Why does American multifamily architecture look so banal?
Domed brick facade of new Little Italy building evokes historic New York
NYC mayor hints at lifting restrictions against windowless bedrooms
A two-story apartment within one of London’s best brutalist buildings just hit the market
The guy who bid $190M for the Flatiron Building didn’t show up with the money
A $140,000-a-month apartment on Manhattan’s Upper East Side
See inside a converted New York schoolhouse on sale for under $300K
Hudson Valley towns have a New York City problem
Floating solar panels are being installed in reservoirs
When did New York start building slowly?
The first residential tower in Germany designed using the “cradle-to-cradle” principle is currently going up in Hamburg
An architect’s guide to designing your first passive house
Could ChatGPT become an architect?
Engineers build new kind of concrete that’s twice as strong as the real thing
A minimal Mexican residence built on rigid concrete frames
A fortress-like holiday home with lofty interiors in Mexico
A minimal home in Barcelona
A white home in a Swedish attic
An art-filled apartment in Stockholm
A photographer’s palette-perfect inner city home in Melbourne
An artist’s 1880s Mediterranean-inspired Australian family home
Inside a 100-year-old apartment building in Australia
A Frankfurt home with Japanese vibes asks for $2.6M
San Francisco home with Bauhaus influences asks $3.7M
Richard Neutra mid-century house in LA gets a new lease of life
A 1970s California ranch home is reimagined for modern times
A tropical house in Tulum, Mexico
A Hamptons beach house that was designed upside down
The archetypal cabin is transformed into an eco-lodge in Italy
Mud and waste used in two-bedroom home half-embedded into rock face in India
A 12-foot-wide multilevel home in India
A rundown two-story brick-concrete building on the outskirts of Beijing turns into a boutique hotel
Dilapidated barn in the Scottish Isles gets transformed into a dining hall
This spectacular cliffside home in Australia is both wild and cozy
Two penthouse apartments are merged to create Australian dream home
From old brick to modern sanctuary: a Melbourne home’s evolution
This Manhattan penthouse blends Italian, Japanese, and American design sensibilities
A young food stylist’s 800-sq-ft Brooklyn home filled with family treasures
A historic Brooklyn brownstone receives a modern update
A 118-year-old power station along Brooklyn’s Gowanus Canal becomes a contemporary arts and fabrication space
A 100-year-old bridge in Wyoming is for sale to the highest bidder
The first documentary on Korean artist Nam June Paik is currently screening at NYC’s Film Forum
NYC’s Metrograph debuts interdisciplinary programming expansion with plant-themed takeover of the theatre’s lobby
Museums that are free for New Yorkers
New interactive installation coming to Brooklyn’s Pioneer Works
Brooklyn Museum brings together twelve artists to consider the complex impact of the Great Migration
Hundreds of artworks by NYC teenagers go on view at New York’s Met Museum
Hundreds of artifacts in the Met linked to indicted or convicted traffickers
$25M statue seized from the Met as restitution efforts continue to target the museum
MoMA apologizes for kicking out Black artist from installation
Miami art dealer who smuggled ivory sculptures sentenced to 51 months in prison
Native American activists prevent auction of 600-year-old Indigenous skull in North Carolina
Mexico alleges New York gallery auctioned hundreds of illegally-obtained pre-Columbian artifacts
Hi-res art scans from famous Taiwan museum leak online and turn up for sale on Chinese online shopping platform
Feng shui experts say JR's giant installation on the Hong Kong harbor is a bad omen
Indigenous artists tell the story of Hawaiian surfing
How designers are creating new ways to look at art and interact with it
Ai Weiwei recreates Claude Monet’s Water Lilies using 650,000 LEGO bricks
Spanish art collective highlights the threat of plastic waste by filling building with 8,000 plastic bags in Mumbai
Designer’s new rug collection is an ode to Japan’s influence on French modernism
An old public bus in Japan has been converted into a mobile sauna
Take a virtual tour of Richard Neutra’s iconic VDL House
Charlotte Perriand’s apprenticeship with Le Corbusier didn’t go quite as he expected
Wangechi Mutu’s fantastical creatures take over the New Museum
The New Museum’s curator on Wangechi Mutu’s arresting art
Putting Black design in a spotlight
In the 1960s, Kwame Brathwaite’s fashion photographs sent a riveting message about Black culture and freedom
In the 1980s, an unknown photographer from New York traveled through the US, capturing life in black communities
Photographer’s photos of NYC from the late 1970s to the early ‘90s are an unfiltered look at a bygone era
Have we reached peak Keith Haring?
Basquiat and Warhol are reunited in new Paris exhibition
Chinese creators use Midjourney’s AI to generate retro urban “photography”
Pleasing pastels in AI-generated retro-futurism
A Twitter thread of messy offices to make you feel better
When you’re feeling stuck, make a to-don’t list
Critical thinking is great, but in a world full of information, we need to learn 'critical ignoring'
How to foster your purpose wherever you are in life
That does it for this week. See you next time.
Thomas