PLACES : REINHOLD MARTIN

Occupy: The Day After

Earlier this fall, on Places, Reinhold Martin explored how architects and urban designers might contribute their expertise to the proliferating Occupy protests here and abroad. Now, following the eviction of encampments from multiple U.S. cities, he looks at what might happen next — how the movement can confront the structural inequities of transnational capitalism and "build something new out of obsolete forms."
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CHANGE OBSERVER : THE EDITORS

Designing an Educational Breakthrough

"Breaker’s goal is to drive alternative learning and social innovation by mobilizing interdisciplinary teams of young creative collaborators to help solve some of the world’s most pressing problems," says education innovator Juliette LaMontagne. "We connect our teams of 18- to 24-year-olds with global thought leaders and industry experts to answer major challenges like, in the case of our summer pilot, the future of the book and its impact on literacy."
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FROM OUR SPONSORS

Go on, tempt the fates. Enter the show celebrating the best design ever printed on Mohawk paper. This year, you can even enter one-off books, too. Like Blurb's new on-demand proline books featuring Mohawk Superfine and Mohawk Prophoto paper. Check 'em out at blurb.com/proline.
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Learn to be a design critic through SVA's D-Crit program.Design as subject matter, criticism as a literary genre and the range of tools with which to practice design criticism.
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PLACES : PLACES EDITORS

Public and Private

Places Journal seeks articles that explore the complex dynamic of public and private in contemporary politics and culture, and how this dynamic influences the design and production of buildings, landscapes and cities.

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OBSERVERS ROOM : ALEXANDRA LANGE

When Modernists Get Crafty

What's the difference between a textile, a door, and a screen? At the Museum of Arts and Design's Crafting Modernism only the material. The argument of the show is that modernism wasn't a one-way industrial street, and that, during the 1950s and 1960s, there was a great deal of back-and-forth between craft and design, the rough and the smooth.
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OBSERVERS ROOM : ROB WALKER

Image of the Year

My vote for image of the year is an image that's never been made public: There's nothing more surprising today than an image we want to see, but can't. And Errol Morris's outstanding Believing Is Seeing (my vote for book of the year, actually) makes me wonder: What do we think access to that unseen image would prove?
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PLACES : DAVID HEYMANN

A Mound in the Wood

"Only a very small part of architecture belongs to art: the tomb and the monument." So declared Adolf Loos in his 1910 essay "Architecture." Here, in the second installment of his latest series on the charged relationship of buildings and landscapes, David Heymann offers a close reading of Loos's famous and still shocking essay, which is, he says, "more radical today than when it was written."
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OBSERVATORY : JOHN FOSTER

Accidental Mysteries, 12.04.11

Accidental Mysteries, a weekly cabinet of visual curiosities curated by John Foster, highlights images of design, art, architecture and ephemera brought to light by the magic of the digital age.
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OBSERVER MEDIA : DEBBIE MILLMAN

Andrew Gibbs

In this audio interview with Debbie Millman, Andrew Gibbs discusses his love of packaging, the role brands play in people's lives, his blog the Dieline, and the book, awards competition and conference, the Dieline has inspired.
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CHANGE OBSERVER: PROJECT ARCHIVE

Emergence

Emergence, a new massively multiplayer online game (MMOG) fosters diplomatic skills.
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OBSERVATORY ARCHIVE

PLACES ARCHIVE: WINTER 1983

In No Order Whatsoever

Just before his death in 1984, the influential urban planner Kevin Lynch compiled a list of topics he thought important for the future of cities. The list is as relevant as ever.
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Tala Gharagozlou, David Sadighian & Ryan Welch, editors

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Jennifer Bass & Pat Kirkham

Cultural Strategy
Douglas Holt & Douglas Cameron

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