This essay examines the practice of architecture and the roles assigned to female architects in Latvia in the 1950s to the early 1990s through the life and work of Latvian architect Marta Staņa. My initial encounter with Marta Staņa (1913–1972) and her work in architecture occurred in 2002 when, as a young architecture journalist, I…
In relation to the Māravijaya, an occurrence in the Buddha’s life, and Letters from Panduranga, a video work by artist Nguyễn Trinh Thi, art historian Ashley Thompson discusses ideas of land, gender, and colonial history. Thompson’s essay is accompanied by a two-week screening of select clips from Nguyễn’s video work.
Historian Sumit Mandal initiates a comparison of the architecture, surrounding landscapes, and histories of two keramat, or Muslim gravesite-shrines—Habib Noh in Singapore and Tuan Guru in Cape Town.
Art historian Y. L. Lucy Wang analyzes the architecture and photographic record of the 1955 Bandung Conference, revealing the ways in which the event visually projected its aims of South-South solidarity by bringing new meanings to architectural forms previously charged with colonial and historical associations.
As the entrepreneurial co-founder of the Société Zin, a modernist design company, Safia Farhat (Tunisian, 1924–2004), contributed to the visual aesthetics of civic space during the formative period of Tunisian socialism and state feminism. Jessica Gerschultz introduces Farhat’s key role in sustaining a mural tradition for Tunisian modernists.
Art historian Inesa Brašiškė highlights the ideas behind the work of Lithuanian-American artist and architect Aleksandra Kasuba (1923–2019), most notably her countering of the rigid geometry of architecture through the use of soft materials and curved shapes, and her emphasis on the fundamental connection between the built environment and the formation of subject.
Estonian artist Sirje Runge’s (born 1950) visionary 1975 thesis project conceptualizes the dynamics between the needs of the individual and the overall logic and construction of the city space in late Soviet Estonia.
Da Hyung Jeong proposes a reading of Soviet-built structures in the region. He attempts to reveal the intentions behind their construction through an analysis of Soviet-era cultural criticism, socioeconomic studies, and encyclopedia entries.
The exhibition Neri Oxman: Material Ecology shows the architect’s practice at the intersection of nature and computation. Her dynamic approach, though rooted in the modernist tradition, brings together material science, digital fabrication technologies, and organic design.
A look at the history of the modern house suggests that domestic living takes shape in the intermediate, and sometimes contentious, space between the aspirations of the dweller and architect.
Amanda Williams painted eight condemned houses in and around Chicago’s Englewood neighborhood, selecting colors from the consumer products and companies marketed to the Black communities of the city’s South Side. The project highlights the ways we construct meaning from color, how these associations are inextricably linked to race and class, and how they connect to the long-standing history of public disinvestment in Black neighborhoods.
Raised during the socialist period of the former Yugoslavia, Irena Lagator Pejović examines two case studies of Yugoslav art and architecture that provide insights into Montenegro’s transition to neoliberalism.
