Forty-Niner
Okay. Lots to share this week. A reader recently asked me why I include as many links as I do in each email. They felt it was a little overwhelming and, at times, daunting. To address that idea, I'd like to think that I include enough links to appeal to the individual tastes of everyone reading. Even though I get new subscribers daily, people unsubscribe every time I send an email, so maybe I'm not as appealing to everyone as I thought. Anyway, I don't expect readers to click and read through every article I share, but I do find it fun to try and connect each link to the one it follows while staying within the theme of the newsletter.
I also suppose I'm inspired by the Japanese magazines I've spent a lot of time collecting and looking through. They're packed with so much information that I constantly find myself revisiting them to discover things I previously overlooked or skipped. As a result, they never really feel outdated to me and, in some ways, act as a visual archive. So I guess I strive for this newsletter to feel somewhat similar and be a less-chaotic place I can return to later.
Speaking of Japan, my eight-year-old son and I will be in Tokyo and Kyoto in a month. It's been a few years since I've last been, so if anyone has any recommendations, please send them here: murphy@therealmurphy.com.
This week’s newsletter starts with some international news, then a few NYC-related links, before getting into the architecture and interiors, and finally finishing up with art stuff. Now, on to the links.
Ukrainian artists reflect on first year of invasion
A Banksy mural postage stamp is issued in Ukraine
Authorities install protective glass around Ukrainian Banksy murals targeted by thieves
A mom chats to Banksy as he paints on a wall in Ukraine, not knowing he's the elusive artist
IKEA Foundation supports deployment of 5,000 modular shelters in response to earthquake in Turkey and Syria
As US coastal home values fall to reflect climate risk, wealthy homeowners and investors dump their distressed assets and flee, while middle-class homeowners are left to deal with climate catastrophes and costly mortgages
The fascinating and forgotten history of America’s first freedom village — Brooklyn, Illinois
Before Manhattan’s Lincoln Center, San Juan Hill was a vibrant Black community
The artists resisting the gentrification of New York’s Chinatown
Should poorer areas undergoing the threat of gentrification be exempt from upzoning or perhaps downzoned?
NYC bans sleeping at overnight drop-in centers for homeless and runaway youth
How city policies are harming NYC’s unhoused youth
A new MoMA exhibition takes a look at projects for public-facing spaces in the city and what young designers are doing for New Yorkers
How Manhattan’s Hell’s Kitchen got its name
Researcher digs into NYC’s past to find out who its roads, bridges, and tunnels are named after
Teaching architecture through a critical race theory lens
Interior race theory is a creative way to decolonize our homes
How the peacock chair became a symbol of Black power and liberation
Exploring how to celebrate Blackness without flattening it into a single category of experience
A conversation with a Black architecture firm
Bedford Stuyvesant campus aims to confront the prevailing racial inequality
Apartment construction is booming, but that won’t change your rent
New book explores architecture, equity, and the public realm in Chicago
Chicago's iconic neo-gothic Tribune Tower skyscraper has been turned into residential apartments
Using raw and natural materials, a warehouse in Brussels is transformed into four-story townhouse, studio, and co-working space
A former girl’s school in Puglia is renovated into a couple’s dream home
An Italianate wood-frame home sits in the middle of Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn
Colorful yet practical furnishings refashion Bed-Stuy townhouse for young family
This serene oasis in New York’s West Village is only 450 square feet
A Georgian-style townhouse in Brooklyn’s Boerum Hill is reimagined to be a geometric, intimate, and adaptable family home
A minimal loft in Brooklyn centered around cooking and entertaining
A monochrome makeover for an artist’s apartment in Kyiv
A warm and welcoming apartment in the heart of São Paulo
A clothing workshop turned loft in Paris
An early 1900s apartment in Spain is brought back from the brink of ruin
An artist’s Milan home finds the beauty in raw, unfinished materials
An Edwardian terrace home in London is refurbished into a comfortable, low-energy dwelling
Kansas couple gets Dutch colonial house for free, then spends $95K for relocation and renovation
An ordinary suburban garage in the UK is turned into a tranquil and spacious studio workspace made out of charred timber
A curated co-working space for design-minded nomadic professionals opens in Williamsburg, Brooklyn
Architects create facade from offcuts of leftover oak flooring in Norweigan retreat
A jungle-themed hotel in China where parents and children can learn to communicate and exchange with one another
Long-awaited Ghibli Park opens in Japan
A sustainable farm, outdoor art museum, and underground library in Chiba
With the help of AI, a twenty-three-year-old artist imagines the fantastical world Antoni Gaudà never built
Fifth Avenue’s tallest residential building features a monolithic-looking façade made up of concrete and glass
A $3.3B two-year-old Manhattan skyscraper, built to be an environmental marvel, is already out of date
The skyscraper told through satire
Saudi Arabia unveils design for a large-scale cube-shaped skyscraper that can hold twenty Empire State Buildings
The biggest buildings mankind never built
Why are liminal spaces eerie?
Star Wars-esque dome home hits the market in California
Frank Lloyd Wright’s only oceanfront home sells for $22M in California
1950s Arthur Jackson Hepworth modern house in England is now for sale
Peek inside this brutalist home in Mexico’s Guanajuato farmlands
A concrete retreat in Norway’s remote wilderness
Bold concrete geometries embrace a home in a Portuguese village
A folding concrete shell wraps the terraced gardens of a home in Taiwan
Inspired by their natural surroundings, two old buildings on a Chinese island are turned into a hostel
London-based archive project aims to preserve IKEA designs from the past five decades, with a particular focus on postmodern designs from the late 1980s and early 1990s
A coffee table starter kit
London-based architectural studio upcycles ocean plastics from Japan into fishing gear and furniture for fishermen
Examining the legacies left behind by artist estates and foundations
New book tells the story of Newark's activist collector of African art
A guide to the museum exhibitions and art events to check out this spring in NYC
A massive graffiti and street art show is now open in London
Art fair visitor accidentally shatters Jeff Koons Balloon Dog worth $42K
The National Museum of Asian Art will hold on to looted artifacts intended to return to Yemen to protect them from conflict
Spanish art collector sentenced to four years in prison for attempting to sell fifteen forgeries of works by Munch, Lichtenstein, and others
Florida art dealer pleads guilty to selling fake Warhol
Louis Vuitton accused of using Joan Mitchell art in ads without permission
A photographer who found Instagram fame for his striking portraits has confessed his images are AI-generated
AI-generated visuals don’t deserve to be called photos
Lessons that can’t be learned when shooting digital
There’s a William Eggleston photo exhibit up in Berlin
The photographs of Renata Cherlise capture Black people experiencing moments of love, joy, rest, leisure, and everyday life
Photographer tells the story of gentrification and displacement through portraits of the community that lived and worked along Boston’s busiest railway route during the 1980s (seen above)
Photographing teen subcultures in New York's East Village
A day with the NY Sanitation Department’s resident artist
RISD announces withdrawal from US News & World Report's Best College rankings
Fifteen remote architecture job opportunities
Renowned sci-fi magazine closes story submissions due to a massive increase in machine-generated stories sent to the publication
AI-generated fiction is flooding literary magazines — but not fooling anyone
How a documentary on great whites aroused romantic notions of sharks — and raised distressing questions about race
Once again, I appreciate you letting me creep into your inbox each week. Hopefully, you found something to click on or learned about something new. I’m always looking for feedback and links to include, so if you find something that’ll fit here, simply reply to this email to send it my way.
Thomas